The Parlor Renders on YouTube

A short little video of Mayfair Witches house renderings...

The Mayfair Witches' Garden

The flowers are chicory, which is used in Café au lait for its added taste

Afternoon In the Haunted Garden of the Mayfair Witches

The Parlor's Dammit Doll

Stella Mayfair In 3D

I've been doing a little revising and improving upon the next Mayfair Witch in 3D, Stella Mayfair.   I'm still learning how to make 3D people in the way that I want them made, and that particular pose, I thought, was perfect for a ghost one sees in a mirror.

The Mayfair Witches in 3D

 

Now that I've been able to build (for the most part) a 3D model of the Mayfair house with interiors that can be shown even while the entire house is incomplete, I'm turning more attention to...the Mayfair Witches themselves! 

I've included this image and some details about its creation on both Come Into My Parlor In 3D and The Face of Come Into My Parlor's Mayfair Witches.  I am working on some other models of the Mayfair Witches alongside the ongoing 1239 First Street in 3D project.  From what I can tell, it looks like the Witches themselves are what people really want to see.  I can't disagree with that!

That is my ultimate goal--to create the Mayfair Witches as Anne Rice described them.  As we begin to look toward a possible Season 2 of Anne Rice's Mayfair Witches on AMC (actual status unknown), I am reminded that reactions to Season 1 were most definitely mixed.  People either really loved it or really hated it.  Some of the most important main characters were missing completely, there were jumps from one plot line to another that made no sense, among other things.  Most of all, there was a diversion from the source material (the novels themselves) that was too much of a diversion and made people ask a number of times, "Did the writers even READ the books?!"

To be fair, The Witching Hour is a long book.  It's challenging to bring a book so long with four different parts to it to the screen, even as a television series.  There is so much material there that I would imagine it's hard to determine what to somehow translate to the screen and what not to.  I don't know; I am not a filmmaker.  

One thing I keep meaning to do is to expand more on the differences between the books and the series so far.  There are some things from the series that I actually loved seeing, because they did give me a new feel for the atmosphere of the settings of the story.  Another was that Suzanne, the village midwife of Donnelaith, Scotland and the first Mayfair Witch, was brought to the screen.  Then, though I was confused about a few details at first, there was the inclusion of the Mayfair Emerald as a literal key.  Which, symbolically speaking, is what the Mayfair Emerald was.

I decided to limit what I included from the series in the model itself.  One thing I did decide to do, since recreating the mural on the walls of the dining room would be a challenge, was to find a suitable panoramic image for the mural.  Also, I would include framed portraits of each of the Mayfair Witches on the walls of the dining room, which is what was done in the AMC series.  

One of the photographs Rowan finds in Ciprien Grieve's cellphone is an old one that appears to have been taken in the 1920's.  Guess who that has to be?  Yes.  Stella.  The novels refer to photos taken of Stella's Roaring Twenties parties in the Mayfair house, including the last party she threw before her murder in the parlor of the house in 1929.  Photos are mentioned again in connection with some pearls and a Victrola once owned by Julien Mayfair.  The photos were also of Stella and others, like Ancient Evelyn as a young woman.

That photo is one you'll no doubt see tucked in somewhere.  The other photos and portraits, such as the ones seen in the opening credits mounted on crumbling walls with twisted branches of the family tree, I think are one of the ways the Mayfair Witches' tale has spanned generations of this family.  Indeed, there is a lot of interest in the Mayfair family tree. 

But let's get back to The Witching Hour.  As stated, it is a long book.  I understand cast members themselves read the books and are longtime fans of Anne Rice.  At the same time, reading a book that long, with so much in it, seems to be something some readers struggle with.  That's not a criticism of them as readers, however.  The book has so much in it that it can be hard to keep the flow of the story in mind while reading.

This might be a bit overdue, but perhaps it's time the Parlor devoted extra space and time to a more detailed discussion of The Witching Hour?  

In fact, I was just reading through parts of it last night when I came across a section I had been meaning to review anyway.  The reason being that I have been working on other parts of the Mayfair house and needed to review details on a few things in it so they will be accurate in the model.  As to what that might be, I'll give you a hint.

It's something that has me doing yet another search to see if I can find architectural details of the second floor of the Mayfair house.  I want to make sure the master bedroom door is in the correct location...

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year from the Parlor!

I've been working on 3D graphics like crazy.  Mostly because I kept having issues, which in turn led to at least one software upgrade and a major cleanup of graphics files.  It's unfortunate that at the moment, I have system limitations that prevent me from creating more of the type of graphics I want to create.  That's a wordy way of saying my laptop is an old fa--older device.

Perhaps I will be able to obtain a more powerful machine that will be able to handle rendering software at some point.  Lumion is one example.  I'm especially anxious to be able to do more because I would love to be able to do even more with 3D models like what is in this animation:

This animation also appears on the Parlor's home page.

In it, you see a 3D model of a woman, a Mayfair Witch.  The image created using AI technology of Charlotte Mayfair provided the textures for the face on the 3D model.  It's not perfect, but it's not exactly finished, either.

The emerald key from the AMC series that she is wearing is a 3D model of it that I also made.  You know, I had to actually draw the symbols freestyle in the 3D software, and it was sooo tedious!  I tried to keep the model as close to the one in the series as possible, and I will improve it as I am able to reproduce other details of the key.  

When I make graphics for the Parlor that include the key, more and more, you will see my 3D model of the key in it.  I have another version with slightly different metal textures that might still be seen here and there.  

I think now that I have made as much progress on the model of the Mayfair house as I have, it is time to begin introducing the characters themselves, including Lasher.  His first appearance is the image of Lasher created by Jennifer Harris for MAYFAIR, and his entry has been made via Tante Oscar's phone, which has been moved from Tante Oscar's fridge to the Mayfair fridge.

What a coincidence--that is the spot in the Mayfair house where Lasher first revealed himself to Rowan.  Lasher had shown himself to Rowan the moment her mother, Deirdre, died and again on the flight from San Francisco to New Orleans for Deirdre's funeral.  But the first time Lasher showed himself to Rowan in the Mayfair house was at pretty much the same spot where we see Lasher pop up from Tante Oscar's iPhone...

This is also one of the rare occasions where you will hear notty werds in the Parlor.  For those of you who don't mind the occasional f-bomb, have a look:

Again...Happy New Year, everyone!

The Mayfair Witches Dining Room

As Thanksgiving is near, I thought I would put together an update on the 3D model of the Mayfair house at 1239 First Street focusing on the dining room.  The actual dining room has a panoramic mural that continues along the walls, and in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, this mural is described as being that of Riverbend Plantation.  This plantation is where the Mayfair Witches settled upon their arrival in Louisiana after having fled Saint-Domingue on the eve of the Haitian Revolution.

Replicating such a mural turned out to be just about impossible, so instead, I found a panorama of a Louisiana bayou.  For some reason, this just made the room "feel" more like the Mayfair Witches' dining room.  In the dining hutch, which is from the 3D model of the Addams house by Demilune, instead of a mirror, I found a rendering of Belle Grove Plantation, which was located in Iberville Parish, Louisiana.  

This is not the dining room of the AMC series, but I did manage to tuck in some of the pomegranate patterned wallpaper in the butlers' pantry, which you get a brief glimpse of.  However, I did put up some framed Mayfair Witches' portraits in this dining room.

The place settings, the dishes and the displays are inspired by Rowan and Michael's exploration of the Mayfair house the day after Deirdre Mayfair's funeral.  I've always loved that tour they took.  Then, there are the candles...

Mayfairs In 3D

Some of the 3D creations by the Parlor are now available for download on 3D Warehouse!  There will be more to come, but so far, I've added my model of the Mayfair Emerald, the jewelry made with the cameos from the cover of the 1st edition of Blackwood Farm, and a little book mentioned in Lasher: Legends of the Highlands.  It doesn't open, but I went for a nice, old leatherbound book feel.

I've also added a few paintings in frames, two of which are of the paintings by Albrecht Durer and Rembrandt.  The portrait used for the 1st edition cover of Blood Canticle is also in a frame for a 3D art gallery.

If you saw my Tomb of the Mayfair Witches video, you might have seen a little something special in it.  That one will make its way to 3D Warehouse as well once I put together a summary of its creation.

I am very busy working on individual rooms in the 3D model of 1239 First Street.  At the moment, I'm working on the dining room, a very interesting room indeed.  Then I had a thought: since the holidays are upon us, what if I set up each room to be seen at completion on particular holidays?  Perfect timing; it's almost Thanksgiving here in America and I'm already working on the dining room! 

All of this is a work in progress, so please do keep checking back for more graphics and more about their significance in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches...