The Original Post on Deviant Art Can be Found Here:
https://www.deviantart.com/rivals-rapture/journal/Fill-the-Holes-Why-PNG-844162738
Preamble: As always, I want to start out by saying that I use the term artist, in relation to myself, only because it is easier than trying to come up with some other term for my still nascent and underwhelming skills as a Daz3D user. That being said, allons-y.
I have noticed, in perusing the various other female fight artists on Deviant Art, of which there are many, that I seem to be one of the few who makes images without backgrounds.
Now, that’s a simplified way of saying, I make PNG images where the models are the only elements. I’ve seen such images referred to as “renders” or “cutouts”, but regardless of what you call them, they are the bulk of what I make.
Why? You might ask.
Well, the answer for me is one of purpose. As though I do enjoy immensely working on the various pieces I have posted here and on my website https://www.fights.sexy , I also use them. Not yet for my long-form stories (which can be found here: https://www.fights.sexy/the-stories/) or my blog posts (which can be found here: https://www.fights.sexy/the-rivals-blog/), but instead to fill in holes.
Holes? lulwut…? You mumble, as you read. Well, WordPress, the web development system on which my site is built, uses “Gutenberg Blocks”. Which means that the site is made up of squares or rectangles.
Sometimes I can use fully the space in one of those two shapes with the story teases I am displaying or the information I am conveying, but sometimes, I cannot.
As, on occasion, I have areas where the left side of a block is fully filled in, and the right side is not, or vice versa. That can be for a lot of reasons, like one stories chosen blurb or description is just longer than the one chosen for the story displayed next to it. Or, because the description of a sub-page is so short, that it looks odd when displayed as one sentence, strewn across a full page (butter scraped over too much bread, if you will). Each scenario leading to, at least what I perceive as a hole — one that I wanted filled.
At first, I was content on either buying images from Battle Belles (https://www.battlebelles.com/), which is a site that allows those who purchase their images to use them, basically, in anyway they like. But, as their posts slowed (to the point now of basically being once every 4 months), I started turning to Catfight Factory (https://www.catfightfactory.com/), who is a legend in the 3D fight art space.
And though Ard, the mind behind all of that wonderful art was willing and generous beyond belief, I started feeling bad about asking him to fill the many gaps on my site. Especially when, for anonymity’s sake, I could not pay him. But along with that guilt rose a question based on inspiration, one that came to me one night as I tucked myself into bed.
Could I try to do what Ard did and does? At least poorly, so that I could have a site with filled gaps, and sexy art I could provide to site-goers without relying on others. I didn’t know. I could hardly guess, the entire process being not mystifying, but worse, completely unknown to me.
The next morning, I Bing’d and searched. Read blog posts, articles, and forum threads until my eyes stung. And then finally, after all of that, came to the conclusion I could. In fact, not only could I make 3D fight art images, I could also makthose images PNG’s of women battling and struggling without anything behind them.
That realization made me swoon with excitement, as I had come to love PNG’s during my time in the comic book roleplay community. Knowing how wonderful it was to have an image that could be used for multiple purposes, in multiple settings, again and again. Most importantly, it could be superimposed over something else, and look as if it was just part of the item you were looking at.
In the comic book roleplay community, PNG’s were used for image edits for roleplays and for wonderfully detailed watermarks, but on my site, they could be used to just make the fully black site pop. Not with images that felt to the site-goer like I just put one rectangle inside another, but to give the illusion that the site was not bound by that restriction of shapes.
To make readers hungry for their favorite authors and stories, feel like images of their fantasies and fetishes were coming to life on the web page before them, not separated from the stories they were browsing through, but in and amongst them.
Is that how people actually feel?
Iono. Could be. I hope so. But either way, the holes are filled, the looks how I want it to look, and I have found a hobby that I absolutely love.
Oh, and P.S.: 4k Images without backgrounds render in about an hour and a half (which is what I make exclusively), whereas those with backgrounds can take up to 6 hours even on my beasty PC! Yeesh!
The issue of anonymity can be resolved on platforms, like Patreon, where under a pseudonym, a member can be a contributor, and only that gets exchanged, and Ard has a Patreon page the last I remember.
Also, it’s nice to know that a fellow Eastern European reached legend status 🙂