This image began from a mental image I've had for a while of a dance scene lit by reddish light with copper reflections. The Richard Thompson song "Razor Dance" added the idea of a sword dance and of the male/female aspect. I also wanted to create a scene which gave an impression of motion. The result was this image which you can take as a metaphor for the battle of the sexes or simply as a depiction of some event in a fantasy world. This particular rendering, with its checkerboard plane stretching to the horizon lends itself more to a metaphorical/allegorical interpretation.

The figures are in Poser 2, detailed nudes who were perfunctorily clothed by use of Booleans. The nudity is a little gratuitous - the fact that I choose to create images of bare-breasted women waving swords around probably reveals ominous things about my psyche - but I'll let it stand. The sword-blades were created in Extreme 3D and then integrated with hilts built out of primitives in Bryce. Perhaps my favourite original part of the scene is the mirror, which was built entirely from Bryce primitives with limited use of Booleans.

The image was touched up slightly after processing to remove minor visual artifacts on the Poser figures resulting from problems with the mesh.

Two alternative versions of the image are available, one of which is closer - at least in terms of the color and light balance - to the way I originally conceived the scene. The 'official' final render was fluke, the result of playing around with camera angles and sky/fog. The other is an early render in which not all the final scene elements are present, but the image has a certain attractiveness of its own.

The Bryce scene file for the mirror is also available in Macintosh StuffIt and BinHex format.

Razor Dance by Firelight [33K]

Razor Dance Checkerboard [31K]

Mirror model [16K]