This morning I received a very interesting email from someone that I met on Hentai foundry. Hentai foundry is where a lot of artists like to go to share their more explicit artwork, the kind of art that would never be allowed on a "clean" and "Innocent" family friendly site such as Renderosity. Now of course, I am someone who STRONGLY prefers websites that barely have limitations and restrictions on content. However, the staff isn't all that nice about us Poser and DAZ users because in their eyes they don't view the purchase of someone else's work really your own work. Such as buying textures, props, environments, models, poses, etc. They fail to realize that some of us do create our own work sometimes and not all of it is purchased from vendors. Anyway, let me get to the point of this piece for the day. I developed a keen sense of style that has been influenced by the Noir era. Noir existed in the 1940s back when everything was done in black and white. But that's also because at the time, movies and Television lacked color. Color became a huge thing somewhere during the 1950s-1960s (not sure, just guessing). Noir defined a genre of black and white motion picture that dedicated itself to Crime Drama and Romance. The style itself was associated with a gritty visual style unlike any other of its time. Here in USA during the 40s we had a very strong taste for the noir era because it was different from everything else. The reason why the Noir style of art became my influence was due to the way stories in Noir were told. I was always influenced by films like Casablanca which is considered a Drama Noir style movie. I remember seeing it sometime in 2008 when I studied Theater arts and we had to watch classic Noir movies. Eventually I went into the direction of developing a Noir style of my own despite my influences came from the science fiction aka Tech-Noir style. That explains the reason why the lighting in the Ghost Runner series looks the way that it does rather than creating all of my work in black and white. I added color but still maintained the Noir composition without color restriction. Noir is the foundation of my style and it will always be the style I choose to use for suspense and thriller work. When someone asked me to share my lighting secretes with them. I told them the basics, I didn't go into any detail about the lighting settings and such and that's because I prefer to maintain the artistic style that I possess as a secrete. That way people are left with wondering "How did he do that?" Instead of me just telling them how I did it. Tech-Noir would be the best way to describe my style of work in terms of lighting. Ghost In The Shell, The Terminator, The Matrix, and other major science fiction films used a noir style of art of their own. Sometimes people like to say that generations go out of style, but then people like myself come along in the current era to reinvent the themes of the past by improving upon them rather than ignoring them. The 1940s had a lot to offer, and even though World War 2 is the only major history of the 1940s just like Vietnam and Disco were for the 1970s there are other interesting things about these time periods that defined an artistic era. Noir is a challenging concept that makes you question the effect. Just because something is in Black and White doesn't mean that it's Noir. Noir back in the 40s reflected a culture of American life in cities like NYC, Chicago, California, and so on and so forth. Women were a lot more beautiful and feminine too and they took pride in this. At times Noir may have been cliche to some people that struggled to see the creative nature of how well it captured American life in such artistic ways. Noir has many different meanings in the art industry that can't really be defined by one word or meaning. Check out the source for more information regarding Noir (film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir http://www.eddiemuller.com/top25noir.html http://www.filmnoirstudies.com/timeline/index.asp