Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
7533 S Center View Ct #4664
West Jordan, UT 84084
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2025 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
...at this point the discussion about backing up is "water over the dam". I already have taken steps to prevent such a situation again.
Regarding presentation, as I mentioned, first, my narrative gets too long winded. I find it simpler and more effective to describe a setting or situation with an illustration. Second, text only novels don't too all that well in digital format as it is too much strain compared to a "dead tree" book to read. That in mind, the only way to publish a "dead tree" book is to get caught up in the racket of of mainstream publishing which means paying for an agent (which I cannot afford) and most likely compromising your work because some editor with a fly up his butt always thinks his concept of your idea is better than yours because "it sells" (like skimpwear does here). No, this is a story very dependent on illustration to tell as I am much better at that, and one I wish to maintain the integrity of.
Yes, what I am doing is a bit unusual for this day, but it was very common many, many years ago. In a sense I view the entire project, both writing and illustration as an integral work of art.
As to cloud services, nothing is "hackproof", we have seen so relating to business, various online services, engineering, as well as highly classified information.
Can we try to cnfine ourselves to the topic, not to comments on posters, please.
Nitpicking here, but Rembrandt actually did 300 illustrations for The Bible (my aunt once gave me a copy that included them): https://www.artbible.info/art/rembrandt-biblical-work.html
I was reading this early today and have been thinking about it ever since, and even though I suppose the subject has wound down, I'd like to just mention something for kyoto kid:
I'm so close to being in your situation that it hurts to even think of what you're going through. I'm retired at less than half the poverty level. The only motivation I've had to even try computer art is for my Mom, a great painter of Sumi-e and other styles... But she passed away last June.
Now it feels like a whole 'hard drive' full of plans for the future are gone. I'm too old to find a new partner/teacher, nor do I want to, because it just wouldn't be as fun. No one can replace her.
All I can suggest is to look at your original goal and see if there's a way to condense the whole thing into a number of short, simple and fun projects. It's what I'm leaning towards. I don't need to study art theory and plan how to incorporate my Mom's techniques into mine, etc etc. I only want to throw together ideas & stories into images, animated gifs, whatever comes to mind, and enjoy doing it. I won't make a penny but I don't care anymore.
I hope you can find pleasure in what you do now and in the future. The past is a resource full of experience and memories. The future depends on how you make use of them. There really hope, KK.
Text-only digital novels can do extremely well, even in this day and age. Honestly, the single illustrated book I've done has sold much worse than everything else I've published. Most of my books do have print versions (NOT the illustrated one because the price would be beyond reasonable) but 99% of my sales are digital.
That said, I found the process of producing an illustrated story very enjoyable, so I'm not going to knock doing it at all.
...I may be in the minority, but I find sitting at a desk reading a heavy amount of text on a computer screen to be more tiring than curling up in a chair or bed and reading an actual book. I'm. one of those voracious readers who much "devours" a book in a single setting (one of the good things about being retired) It takes me longer to read from a screen than a physical book I have in my hands. Some of it has to do with physical comfort (or discomfort of sitting upright at a desk) I guess, the other part, on a book the light is reflected off rather then being produced buy the page surface which I find a lot easier on the eyes.
Again I've always been better telling stories in pictures than words.
Also this is something I don't really intend to make a living at anyway.
That's pretty much the impetus behind Kindles, electronic books that don't rely on emitted light and you can curl up with in a big chair.
...as well as the ability to enlarge the font size for us less "opticaly endowed" ,and read with one hand.
...which means buying a new device on an already tight budget. The one that looks and handles most like a book (with the largest screen and actual "page turning" controls) is the Oasis which retails for 250$ (sans accessories like an adapter for charging and case), though it's screen area is still smaller than that of a standard paperback book page.
However we are drifting into other territory here.
The idea of a classic illustrated storybook has been a project that intrigued me for a while, much more than a graphic or straight text novel. Even my old Sci Fi idea I had many years ago was intended to be presented in this format. I feel it has become somewhat a lost art-form (save maybe for children's books) but still has a place.
We’re talking the larger market. If you are seeking an audience, it’s worth considering what other people are doing.
Kyoto Kid, I agree with Griffin Avid. Don't work for perfection. Rebuild chapter one and put yourself on a personal mission/deadline to make chapter two. If you think your stuff is worth paying for then use something like Patreon to get started. You are retired so deadlines should not be an issue and are the only way to produce results.
For backup use VeraCrypt software to make encrypted container files small enough to upload to your multiple gmail/gdrive accounts.
If you lack the resources to make final renders of your artwork ask here for help. Make a non disclosure/competition agreement specific to your project and get in personal contact by LINE, Facebook Messenger, or Skype.
Do not wait get publishing now!
Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly: SS18E10 - Advertising Alumni: Famous People Who Started in Advertising
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/shows/under-the-influence/episode/15587764
I like reading regular books too but avoid it because I won't stop until I read the whole book. I read The Hobbit & the Lord of the Rings Trilogy once while I was laid up for two weeks with badly sprained ankles and snowed in to boot and those books were so good. I did take out time to eat, sleep, and shower though.
I restrict myself now to cereal boxes and such.
...interesting programme.
Unfortunately, at this stage in my life, a little late.
I washed out of customer support because first, I am absolutely terrible at marketing and sales, and second, I was required to upsell services to people who were struggling just to pay their monthly bills so their service wasn't turned off, something that ate at me more and more as I've been in similar positions.If you didn't upsell, you not only didn't get any bonuses or raises, but usually were out of a job in a few months because you're not bringing in more revenue.
This is what advertising essentially is, selling goods or services, often which people really don't need. It also can mean having to compromise your conscience by supporting something you disagree with or don't believe in for a paycheque as you have to take what is assigned to you to keep your job (which is why I never pursued it earlier in life).
Again I feel this is straying. I'll know if I was successful in backing up what was on that drive in a few days. I feel we've exhausted the topic of what I plan to do form that point forward.
You don’t pay agents upfront, they take a percentage. Or you can self publish on Amazon through Createspace. You can format it for print and Kindle.
Also I use Dropbox, $9.99 a month for 1TB and it’s been great and I’m super paranoid about piracy and watermark all my posts like crazy, but I trust Dropbox and also use Apple’s iCloud. The chances of someone hacking an unknown artist for their art is pretty low, if not non-existant...
Arguably the fact that the shark was broken all the time made the picture a lot better. All those early shots where the people are reacting in terror to the invisible predator with the creepy music would have had a rubber shaark flopping around in them if Speilberg could have done it. Instead we are left to imagine the danger, and it's 100x more suspenseful because we don't know where it is, when it will strike but we know it's there..... somewhere. So he worked with what he had and it made a routine monster movie into a cinema classic.
So sorry to hear that Kyoto. I know this place. Lost my "Gargantuan Runtime", a 1 TB spinner that had only my external Runtime on it. It had grown to almost 900 GIGS. Then two years ago, the machine wouldn't boot. Another bad drive, this one a WD Caviar Black Series. You might think 'bullet proof' huh? I'm an electrician/mechanic, some 30+ years, and honestly I know better than to put faith into a mechanical thing. It has moving parts, it WILL fail. Two more drives, spinners, failed this past year. OK yeah so they were all years old. I did lose a total of 4 of 5 running hard drives. I am down to one spinner and three SSD's. And a lot of BD data disks, 25 gigs each. But our respective cows are out of the barn now. Closing the door still helps, as we keep on doing what we enjoy doing. I lost every Centaur I'd put together, every Figure I'd dressed up and made "Render Ready". I didn't lose any of the content, actually. I lost the work that went into putting all those characters and scenes together. Just like you did.
There is a trade-off in there, somewhere. I'd hoped it would be easier to re-create all that stuff, being as I'd already done it, once. Time erodes our memory, not just HD platen data.
Am I sensing a bit of gloom? You are sitting down, sad, tired, worn out, and then THIS. It could actually be worse. You have been a careful sort for a long time, so I am pretty sure you backed stuff up too.
But, it IS a darn chore having to get another device, then start in putting things together again. Tedious, yeah. I know. After some 5 years I still haven't put all my Centaurs together again. My little 3D Barnyard Dollhouse and Centaur dollies. poof. Kyoto, I can only commisserate with you. Sigh.
Hi Kyoto Kid,
I am sorry, I did a bad job of communicating to you. The point I wanted you to get from the radio episode was that what all these people learned from the ruthless world of advertising. Make it clear. Make it to the point. Be brief. Do it now. I had a friend who was an advertising executive in New York in the 1950s to 1970s and the he thing he kept trying to teach me is 90% of my ideas are worthless because I never acted on them. I am only a few years younger than you so I get that time is running out.
If you spent 10 years on this story of yours then chapter 1 should easy to rebuild. You should already have the arc of the story start to end and some fleshed out details in the middle. Simplify, cut out the parts people won't read/care to view. Get the first part out get feedback on your story. Be more like James Patterson and less like Stephen King. Think of it this way, it is better to be a great talent of an unfinished work then person who always wished they publsihed a story but nobody ever saw it.
It doesn't take courage to publish your work, it takes a kick in the pants. Do like the guy in the radio episode who spent mornings writing his story and afternoons doing his job.
Get up each morning and finish a step in your story and don't stop until lunch then push it all aside and go have a beer. Make everyday one step. It will give purpose hope and focus to your life. This is what I wnated you to get from that radio episode. You should listen to the rest of the episodes. This guy's story telling is great.
I wish you the best and I hope you will try to take that first step and keep your head down and keep taking steps after that.
And remember Grandma Moses! Do you want to be beat out by a little old lady :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grandma_Moses
..that's also what made the original Alien film so good.
..thank you.
The part of time eroding the memory is something I have been dealing with. As one gets older, setbacks like this tend to become more discouraging to deal with and starting from square one again more and more difficult. I don't have many years left ahead of me and days seem to go by faster and faster each year. (wasn't it just summer and it was light until after 22:00?, crikey, the sun was down just a few minutes after 18:00 yesterday).
Hoping that hasty backup I created after the first warning of impending doom worked. Again I'll know when the new drive gets here (received notice this morning that it shipped so it should be here by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest as I'm just up the coast for Newegg [and it ships directly from them in California, not some third party vendor in Korea or China]).
...the written parts are fine, those were not what was not lost. It was the characters and settings for the illustrations which I was developing that were on that drive, along with works for other smaller unrelated projects (including a few commission jobs), some that were experiments, and a few which were just for fun.
So it is not a matter of "sitting down and writing" everyday, it is perfecting my technique with, and my understanding of this new visual media that I am still pretty new at when compared with the decades of experience I have in working with traditional tools. I would like the quality of my 3D work to be on par with what I used do do using pencils, paper, paints, and canvas. It has a bit of a way to go yet. Part of this includes getting a handle on modelling as yes, there are items I need that probably will never be available commercially (boring everyday stuff usually doesn't sell as well) or at an affordable price and without severe licencing restrictions.
The actual impetus to do this at a story kind of grew over the last several years. When I first got into this it was primarily to create illustrations of characters and locations for use with pen and paper RPGs with the idea of maybe landing an illustration commission with a game publisher (and boy, did game books need good artwork). The idea for developing the storyline grew out of a character I had in one game after a couple people who read her background and the notes I had mentioned it had strong potential for being a novel. Indeed it had a several good elements, tragedy, intrigue (both political and mystical), suspense, introspection, and overcoming adversity. It is also is set in a very dark dystopic world as well where certain "ancient" aspects (the mystical element) have resurfaced. In a sense, it is a very dark futuristic fairytale for us "older" children. Several people I know who have very deep literary interests are fascinated by what thye have seen of this project. They are not "fanboys/girls" of a specific genre or world setting from a film serial or television series, these are very well read individuals with diverse tastes who are encouraging me to continue with what I am doing and how I intend to go about it.
Kyoto Kid I wish you the best in your endeavours. Maybe consider being the story writer and the storyboard illustrator and find someone with 3D skills and equipment to partner with and get your story out there at the quality you seek.
Kyoto Kid, like I hinted at before, if you could find a way to list the relevant Genesis figures and morphs, etc that you own and provide a render or pic of your characters, I bet there are lots of people that would take a shot at recreating them and sending you the .duf file (assuming they have the same content). I'd do it. I'm not good at much else with DS. I don't really have the creativity or focus to do anything useful, but if I have a clear image of what I'm supposed to be working on, I do a pretty good job. Just an idea. Think about it.
...can't afford that as my only income is Social Security. This is why I have been learning how to do this on my own.
..again, let me see the results of the backup I ran. If my characters "survived", I'm good. The point with letting somoene else in is "interpretation". I don;t want Leela and her best friend Tacey to have 36" busts and wasp waists because that is looked on as being "sellable" (that is what dissuaded me from the graphic novel format as big boobs and hips are the norm, apologies, but Leela has the physique of a 12 year old, not a fashion model).
Lol. I guess that is true. I was mostly thinking about face morphs. Anyway good luck with the recovery.
I've been doing full HDD cloning via Seagate Discwizard about every month. Of course you need a spare drive of equal capacity but with the costs
so low these days, it's good insurance. If a drive fails, all you have to do is connect the cloned drive and you're up and running again. Also, you should backup any
completed renders and duf preset scenes (that have changed) on a daily basis. It doesn't take long and can save you a lot of potentially lost work.
Having experienced a very similar situation where I lost 4 years of work due to drive failure, and even the backup I had conked out soon after, I know the pain and the frustration of being in a situation where it could have been avoided, if only you had the resources to do so. That's time and effort you can't get back, double that when it's a labor of love because the only benefit you have from it is doing it and seeing the results.
I won't pretend that's not disheartening, even depressing, but I do know you can get through it. So go ahead. It is fine to brood and cry out for the loss. Get it out of your system. But always, with the thought that you are stronger than the circumstance and you can get better and do better. Only you and enough time can answer when that will be.
Hi kyoto kid, I am so sorry to hear this.
I was able to recover stuff from a work hard drive several years ago when my hard drive crashed. I used a program (maybe someone here has already mentioned it ) It is called "recuva" https://www.ccleaner.com/recuva. There is a free version of it and you may be able to recover some of the files from it- of course you would have to have enough space on another drive or thumb drive to back it up to. Once they gave me a new computer, I plugged the crashed hard drive into the motherboard/power on the working computer and installed/ran the program from the C drive. It took around 4 hours to run, for me, but I was able to recover my email and most files. Don't give up, you still may be able to recover some or all of your data.
...yeah, just look at what are supposed to be young teen characters in comic books. Kitty Pryde was supposed to be 13, Jubilee 12, yet they had physiques more like someone who was 18 - 20.
When I was doing pre-production drawings for my old Sci Fi story decades ago (which I hoped then to produce as a graphic novel) I would constantly get critiques about the females of the primary race not having breasts as it would hurt potential "sales". After that I shelved the project in spite of years of work as the only way to keep the vision I had was to self publish.
...tried it and it didn't work as the system did not recognise the drive existed (even in the BIOS).