As you know I have been working to try and create a picture in Blender of Shade, the location of my fantasy novels. As a Blender noob, I have been referencing some absolutely brilliant YouTube videos. Problem is, I have been creating a scene that really does not match my internal vision of the place. Here is where I have go to:

It looks pretty cool – a real modern city-scape. The problem is that my original concept is of a place like Venice crossed with Jack the Ripper’s London crossed with an Indian slum. Definitely not this. Disappointingly it has taken me hours to get to this point. But one thing that I have learnt over the years is not to throw more resources at something that does not fulfil the requirements.

Ah!

And there it is – I had no idea of my requirements when I started. I had merely seen this wonderful video tutorial by Gleb Alexandrov and thought “I must do that!”

So what image should I create to represent Shade?

Probably many – not just one.

Firstly I might want pictures of that strange magical city-within-a-city of Shushtar, seated within the huge stone butte called The Krak and also within the labyrinthine caves of