Rough Crowd of the Farmyard

............................................................

Prints of this image are for sale here: [link]

............................................................

It's been just over twenty years now since I graduated from high school. I was recently reminded of this when I got an invitation to my twenty year reunion. In those days, I lived so close to the school that I could walk home when the day was done rather than have to take a bus or drive. However, in order to do so, I had to walk down a steep hill behind the building, then cross over a creek and take a trail through the woods. To cross the creek, an eagle scout had built a small wooden bridge (which I heard was destroyed in the great flood of 2009).

On the other side of this bridge, there was a small clearing in the woods. This was the favored spot of the "rough crowd". It was the spot where they went when they were skipping class. It was the place for after school fights, make out sessions, and beer drinking, but, most of all, it was a place for smoking.

Every week day, I would leave school and make my way down the hill towards the woods. Inevitably, a lookout was posted on the bridge to watch for any wayward teachers or nosy school administrators heading that way to investigate the area. And, of course, just past the sentry was a veritable fog bank of tobacco and marijuana smoke.

Thinking back to those days, and as a follow up to my drunken pigs image from a few months ago ([link]), I decided to make this scene. A trio of rebellious pigs has found a clearing by an old wooden cart in the farmer's fields to conduct their mischief. While one smokes a pipe and another a cigarette, a third pig stands lookout atop the hay cart with his eyes on the farmer's house.

Note: This image uses purchased content. Tools used to construct the scene: ZBrush, Poser, and Vue. Final rendering was done in Vue 9 and took about 16 hours on an Intel I5 2.8 GHz with 8 GB of RAM. Post production was done in GIMP.

The cart is a freebie from renderosity by Kessia: [link]

P.S. You can now follow me on facebook: [link]