A weekee-greeting to all Hivers!! "What the heck with this cover image...?!" Bet that was your immediate reaction to this. I mean, Arachlet had fair reasons to jumpscare its healer. We'll get to know them eventually in this post.

So yeah, I recently finished Arachlet's rig, game ready.

It was time for the usual render. I didn't know what kind of scenery would have fit it better, and also didn't want to make another cave render, not for now at least. But I've been wanting since a while ago to make a picnic scene, for unknown reasons. Don't ask, it just felt like it xD

My knowledge about materials in blender is way too basic. Made this picnic blanket using a checker texture and a noise texture with a bump shader but it sucked, it didn't look like an actual picnic blanket.

With the help of a youtube tutorial I managed to make this material. I learned a lot about materials in general during the making and now instead of deeply hating it I'm starting to love experimenting with the nodes!

I posed Arachlet on it, looking at us. I called it cute, but it got mad at me.

That was it, Arachlet got mad at its healer because he called it cute. Arachlet wanted some kind of revenge for that. Arachlet got its paws dirty with...

... IT'S KETCHUP, IT'S JUST KETCHUP, DON'T FREAK OUT!! Also, shhhh... the healer is not watching, it's gonna be a creepy surprise for him ;)

Using metaballs I made ketchup drops in the blanket under the paws and making a path behind the cu... ahem, spooky spider.

I wanted to make Arachlet forget to hide the evidence, so I quickly made a basic ketchup bottle...

... and squashed it.

Added some drops behind the tip and under it too. Now this was the perfect crime scene.

Settled the camera.

Added and HDR texture for nature ambience and proper reflections and lighting.

Everything was ready. The healer suddenly turned around to check on Arachlet. Little do you know his reaction.

Final Result - JUMPSCARE!!!

All this took like... 5-6 continued hours??
I really didn't notice the time passing by, I just now the sun was up there in the sky when I sat down and it was pitch black by the time I was done rendering it. I like a lot to get drawn in by what I'm passionate of, it's my comfort zone.

Hope you liked this one and got jumpscared too, it'd make Arachlet's day and my day :3 (well, my night)!

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_{All images are renders/screenshots of my progress in the Blender project}