Medusa, The Gorgon

Looks like Medusa is very popular, again, since the re-imagined release of Clash Of The Titans in 2010 and actress Uma Thurman playing Medusa in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

Here's a link I found showing the artists concept's of many of the creatures created for Clash Of The Titans.

I decided to get into the act and create my own Medusa out of a hodgepodge of Poser products, both free and bought, and not only that but contribute to one of the biggest myth surrounding Medusa's mythical tale—that everyone thinks they know it, due to the fact that when most tell just one of the stories, they forget to mention that there are others, or that depending on the period in question the story has changed, just like her appearance was changed, as well as the story, in the 1981 movie Clash Of The Titans. Now, I know what you are thinking, “that it is a movie.” And to that I say, the myth has changed so much throughout millennia, that this gives even more creative license to retell as we see fit. In modern times we use modern tools to tell our stories.

My Medusa will not be a horrific looking monster, just a monster within, lonely, seductress, and a huntress of both animals and men. With the ability to still turn those that cross her path to stone, but only if she chooses to. If a lucky man can seduce Medusa's heart, he will have a chance to take her head.

To start with I decided to model my Medusa as depicted in the Clash Of The Titans' movies, with the body of a snake—a rattle snake. Most of the stories of Medusa and her sisters (yes, she had two sisters, Stheno and Euryale, they were immortal, but Medusa was not) depict them with a human body. Except for an earlier telling of the myth where she had the body of a horse, hence the name Gorgon, which when used in the context of a horse meant “Lady, Mistress of the Horse.”

Don't take my word for it, read about it from a Ph.D., Kristina Berggren, who knows what she is talking about:

The fact that Medusa is centaur explains her name, Gorgo; that her two sisters are called Gorgons; that the head is a Gorgoneion.

After the archaic period Gorgo began to signify the horrible monster that killed by the look of her eyes, but used about a horse it continued to mean “hot, spirited.”

Medusa and her sisters were, also, depicted having wings and tusks of a swine. Which makes sense that some of the accounts have her blood giving birth to the winged animals, Pegasus and Chrysaor (a winged boar). Chrysaor was, also, said to be a man. Confused, yet?

The other characteristic of my Medusa is that she will have a human upper body with breasts and a skin so pale, the color of marble, that you can see the natural color of her lips, but at the same time her skin will need the appearance of modest scales.

I got lucky in my search as much of what I wanted was already modeled. For the snake body I found Creatura Serpenta for Victoria 4. (As I use Victoria 4 for all my female figures lately, being the most popular model it is easy to find accessories for her.) This product came with claws as well, something I didn't imagine for my Medusa, so it is a plus.

Instead of using the plain Victoria V4 face and body, I went with the Erika for V4 character. I use Erika a lot for my female creature creations because her facial features lend themselves quite well; from Vampires to… well a more seductress Medusa. Another excellent face that might have been even better is Alara for V4.

For the snakes on her head I used the Medusa – V4 product. This was excellent as the snakes are not that dark and menacing. Had I wanted my Medusa to be hideous I would have opted for the Myths and Legends Medusa product. Remember, that you will have to match the colors of the upper body with the tale as best you can. For the snakes to match the tale I had to purchase additional mats that I found in the product Mystic Medusa. Of course, if you are good at creating your own skin mats you can do that for an even better match.

Then came the search for the pale skin. For a few years now I had one, and only now use it because it actually has the scales I wanted for my Medusa. The product's name is Pale Fantasy. It is just a set of mats for the Victoria V4 model, no morphs.

Now that I have my depiction of Medusa, I need to give her a weapon. I opted for a bow and arrow. For that I went with the Arcane Archery product. This product doesn't bring a quiver, I had to snatch one from another product. You may opt to use the V4 Archer product, it brings a quiver that wraps around the hip.

Finally, I applied the V4 shoulder fix.

I used the Reality for DAZ Studio plug-in to render the scene using the Lux Render engine.

In part two of this post I will talk about Perseus and how I put him together to create the aftermath of the iconic bloody scene of him just having had chopped off Medusa's head and raising his sword to the heavens in defiance of the gods, especially Zeus; his father.

Update: The title image of this post was redone after I noticed that the bottom scales of the Creatura Serpenta tale were not shown in my Lux Render images. As it turns out, they are created with a displacement map, but due to the way they are applied in Lux I had to use a subdivision of 4 for the displacement to work. This means the polygon count goes up to four times as much causing an insane amount of memory to be used, in this case over 5 gigabytes of memory! I managed to render the image as I have a computer with 8 gigabytes of memory, but for the more complex scenes with more objects (like the Temples, etc.) this is not possible, I will need a lot more memory. I had to render them without the bottom scales.

I provide two desktop wallpapers, if you're interested. The building used for these is the Aedis Catana temple.