Steve of Theseus I
It Started as a Sticker
Although I’ve long had visions of pickled brains dancing in my heads like so many sugar plums, this illustration most directly descends from one of my sticker artworks, also called Steve. There’s at least a passing resemblance.
I imagine Steve, or “Ste.Ve” is the love child of two human researchers working on Mars. My long-time friend Devi Snively speculates that seasonal workers holding the same job took turns bringing “Ste.Ve” to life.
Final Artwork (Sept, 2022)
Production Gallery
These are some of the milestones in the development of this illustration.
The first steps in developing this version of Steve were using a discontinued 3D layout tool called Maquette in Virtual Reality to explore some basic ideas and let my imagination wander. After that I moved in to blender to block out a number of the key scene elements. Most of the everyday elements of the scene are based on models from a library called BlenderKit.
I also used Midjourney to generate textures that really enhance the narrative and production value of the final image. The book cover art, scope screen, can label and crown are all the fruits of AI art and it was a thrill to see how much richness they added to my vision.
