Ian M. Palmer - SF & Fantasy Art

How it's done
As you'd expect, there's very little photography involved here. If I could photograph these subjects, they wouldn't be fantasy. But there is a wide range of software used. As always, it's all about the end result. If I have to model a ship in one program or download it in a rare format, use another program to convert it, then render it in a thitd and composte it in a fourth over a background produced in a fifth... then I will.

The main programs used here, apart from the modelling itself, are Bryce, Mojoworld, Vista Pro, Terragen, Poser and Paint Shop Pro.

Influences
Like many other SF artists, I've been hugely influenced by the great British paperback cover illustrators of the 1970s, as collected by Stewart Cowley in the TTA books. Figure art is more influenced by comics and by European illustrators. But I've also been swayed by the wonderfully loose and impressionistic spaceship paintings of John Berkey. As I get better at constructing the renders, I'm experimenting more with finishes, and sometimes getting a little less representational - bearing in mind that the aim of most SF and fantasy art is to make the unreal real.