Interview with Miki3dx

Media Highlight image by artist Miki3dx.

In celebration of Miki3dx's recent contest win, Slushe staffer Elayn Wild reached out for the following interview with the artist. Be sure to see Miki3dx's winning entry, and many other captivating works, on Miki's Slushe profile!

Congratulations on another contest win, Miki. Tell us about the inspiration behind Inferno.

Thanks! Congratulation to all the artists and their amazing creations, and thanks to all those who voted for my entry! It was an amazing contest, and as soon as I saw the chosen theme I jumped in immediately!

The pic and the name "Inferno" are a tribute to The Divine Comedy. I studied it at school and I've always been fascinated by how the author (Dante Alighieri) describes the infernal circles. So, I imagined a scene that takes place in the sixth circle, a pit of flames where a heretic angel gets tortured by a demon. If you're curious to see where that circle is located check this map of Dante's Inferno.

Valery as Demon and Nicole as Angel were obvious choices since I wanted to create a parallelism with the relationship they have in my other works.

I wanted to recreate something really classic with an hentai twist. What you see is a sort of hell room with a cauldron of lava and flames where the victim is trapped and tortured by several tentacles. The Demon is almost on the sidelines, she sustains the victim and uses her tail to move the angel's panties to the side, helping the tentacles to find their way to the hot holes.

Last time we spoke, you mentioned you wanted to experiment with tentacles. How did you overcome the difficulties, like posing and asset limitations?

Well, when I decided to use tentacles I knew it wouldn't be easy, and the first tests were a total mess. Tentacles with 50 bones are not easy to pose and I had several software crashes before finding a stable way to work. After that, I posed the characters and I started to add the tentacles, adjusting them with a lot of patience and sweat!

Your entry contains standard tentacles, restraining tentacles, plugging tentacles, and cum or milk harvesting tentacles. Which type of tentacle is your favorite?

Harvesting tentacles are the most fascinating to me. In hentai, they're usually used to grant the best and strongest stimulation, and lead the subject to a happy ending. When the cock is ready (most of the times after being teased by other tentacles) the harvesting tentacle appears, and the fun starts.

Also, this kind of tentacle usually has the inside covered in bumps and produces aphrodisiac fluid. Now you get why I love them!

Which tentacle is your favorite?

The one on the right side of the pic. I posed it so it's "looking" at the cock, waiting to take action!

Are these tentacles part of the layer itself, controlled by the demon, or an independent monster(s)?

As I mentioned before, I thought of the tentacles as an independent entity, the Demon is just helping them to find their way to the prey's holes and sensitive spots. Tentacles are blind, and they are attracted by the prey's smell, and Angels smell wonderful! They are also hungry for Angel's fluids, that's why they secrete a powerful aphrodisiac that stimulates the victim to produce more hot juices!

Last time you gave some great mental advice for artists and writers. Can you provide some technical tips to help learning artists level up?

The quality and the number of talented artists grows every day (just check the Slushe home page) and I guess that soon I'll be the one asking for tips from others :D. So I think I'll talk about some things I learned in the last years, some technical and some not.

• Lighting is what gives life to your image, and it's still one of the harder things I face every time. It makes me mad and I'm never satisfied. But when I finally find the right lighting setup I feel [satisfied] like after a pizza. I won't talk about lighting techniques, there's a lot and every artist has their preferences about them, and I have no secrets about that. Most of the time I use two area spotlights :D The main problem is that finding a good setup takes time. If you are not using a realtime engine the lighting setup is tedious because you need to wait for your software to update the render after every little lighting change. To shorten this time I suggest to hide all the secondary objects from the scene like small things or side objects, also hair and clothes, and keep what's important and what influences the lighting like walls, windows, etc... Then, set your render engine to draft the lighting, for example reducing the light rays. You'll have a lot of noise but you'll get a fast preview of the final lighting, and nowadays most of the render engines come with a denoiser filter that makes the preview much, much better.
• Don't over expose your render! Every burned pixel is a lost pixel and there's no way to get it back. That's why I usually prefer to have a slightly darker render that keeps every color shade and rise the lighting later.
• Make progressive saves of your project after every major change. You'll end up having dozens of files, but this will save your sanity in case of crashes or when you need to step back to a previous version of your work.
• Write documentation! I know, it's boring and nobody wants to do it, but when you finally find the right way to do a thing, like a particular workflow, the right settings for a tool, import/export options, I suggest to write them down somewhere or take screenshots. These documents will save you a lot of time when you'll need to do the same thing one or two years later!

Following on your tip about documentation, could you elaborate on that a bit? What do you feel is key for the artist to record to cover their process?

Oh well, I think there's not a key element, it's all about opening a white paper and writing things down, step by step, using references and every detail that can help you when you'll read it in one year. It sounds like a lot of work, and the problem is that writing a document is against the will of every artist. An artist just wants to follow the flow and create art! But the art nowadays goes through technology, software (a lot of software), just think about how many documents and tutorials an artist reads and watches to learn everything they know. Writing a document not only can save an artist a lot of time, but it could be helpful for someone else!

Your characters have a unique look, especially their faces. How did you arrive at the style you use, and how do you create such unique looking characters?

I think it's hard to explain the process, since it takes time and a lot of trial and errors. Maybe the reason they look unique is because each one has a different beginning. It could be from a photo, real life, a dream, or a reason to exist. I mean, it could happen that I need a new character for a story. For example, in my last comic I needed an assistant for Dr. Valery. I didn't want to turn one of my characters into a doctor and that's how Dr. Megan was born, and the creation was oddly fast.

Usually I'm never satisfied with a new character and I keep working on it until I feel that it's good enough to take part in my stories. And I don't mean only how does it look, but if it also fits the role I have in mind for it. If you notice I have only 9 characters on my roster, and it's not because I'm lazy (I really love the creation process), but the reason is that I like to grow the current ones with their stories and their relationships with the other characters.

While working on my recent comic I started creating the character I mention inside it, for now I wasted most of the time trying different haircuts (spoiler, it won't have a ponytail) and it will take more time, I want it to have a strong personality and predominance over the others, so it will probably be one of the most complex characters I've ever worked on.

Are you going to continue working with tentacles, or is there another challenge you are looking forward to?

A challenge could be doing an entire comic with tentacles! I don't know when, but I'd like to create a story around "Inferno" and I already have a sort of plot, but I'm already late with the actual roadmap and it's better not to think about it. :D Another type of tentacle I'd love to work with are the sci-fi ones, tentacles connected to a machine or a mix of flesh and metal. I'm pretty sure Dr. Valery will come up with something in her research lab.

Anything else you would like to say to your fans?

Absolutely! First of all, I really want to thank all my fans for their presence and support! You're amazing! Then I have a gift to all the Slushe readers, a fresh pic, right out of the oven, from the comic I'm working on now! It looks like Mistress Janine has a new plan for Faith...but why is Denise worried about it?

You'll find it out soon in my next release "Bimbo Training Session Three"!

Thank you so much Elayn for the interview and your time, thanks to Slushe for the amazing contest and thanks again to all my followers, I love you!

Ciao,

Miki :)

Thanks for the interview Miki!

Media Highlight by Artist: Miki3dx

Obviously today's Media Highlight comes from the Angels & Demons contest winner Miki3dx! Miki recently posted this image of Denise (from Bimbo Training Session) partaking in a snowy, winter photoshoot. The cherry red PVC jacket just makes her look delicious, doesn't it? The full image is much bigger than the one preview here, so go check out Denise's curvy ass on Miki's Slushe page. Be sure to give a follow while you're over there!