New Art - Wolf Man

Here's a new 3D rendering, done in DAZ Studio. Got a new wolf-man figure for a project, and he's pretty cool.

Old Art - Shanghai by Royal

Here's another piece of my Shanghai character, penciled by John Royal and inked by me. This was a cover on the original issue #1 I self published more than a decade ago. Digging out all of this old art has gotten me wanting to do some more with this character and finish telling her story.

New Art - Lower Decks

While gearing up for some more hand-drawn material, here's my latest 3D piece, rendered in DAZ Studio. Some Trek inspired props and sets in this one.

New Art - Iceplex

Playing some more with DAZ Studio. This is a set for a project, working with the lighting. Really happy with the speed and ease in DS3.

New Art - Goon with a Gun

Here's another character study from some new material I'm working on. This one was also done in DAZ Studio.

New Art - Stepped in Gum

Ewww...

Rendered in DAZ Studio, post-work in Photoshop.

New Art - Tank

Another new piece, rendered in DAZ Studio, filtered in Photoshop. Some very old props on a brand new model.

A tank is a character designed to take a lot of damage from enemies and thereby protect the rest of the party. Tanks include Protection Warriors, Protection Paladins, and Feral Druids.

Purpose: To keep the enemies' attention on them and away from the rest of the party, while taking a beating.

Threat Generation

Keeping the monster's undivided attention on them is a key part of tanking. Party members, such as cloth-wearing Priests and Mages, are not suited to taking much damage - particularly from a hard-hitting boss enemy. Tanks have a variety of abilities to accomplish this which vary by class. In addition, tanks typically have an ability that will taunt the monster off another player and onto them. That way the tank continues to take all the hits and the rest of the group can do their jobs of healing or DPS.

Pulling

Another usual role for the tank is to pull enemies for the group, because it causes the monsters to initially go after the tank. Tanks have some ability or weapon that allows them to pull with a ranged attack, depending on class.

Leading

The tank is usually responsible for leading the group around to their destinations, and is frequently the member who marks the enemy targets for DPS and CC priority.

First In, Last Out

The tank should be the first person into battle under most circumstances. If the party is forced to run, the tank should be prepared to buy time for the other party members to escape - taking one for the team. The other party members can then (hopefully) resurrect the dead tank.

Main Tanks vs. Offtanks

If there are multiple tanks in a group, a main tank should be chosen. The offtanks are responsible for helping out the main tank, by backing them up or by tanking additional enemies.

Tools of the Trade: DAZ Studio 3 Advanced

DAZ Studio 3 Advanced has been my MVP software lately. DAZ 3D - DAZ Studio 3 Advanced

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpfdWZvWRm8

DAZ does a better job of explaining it, so here's the copy from their site:


DAZ Studio Advanced provides advanced hobbyists and professional artists with the features needed to bridge the gap between art and reality.

This is accomplished with added render enhancements allowing the artist to control the how, what, and where of rendering. These enhancements in combination with new features will have you rendering like never before. New features include; Figure Mixer, Morph Follower, Shader Builder, Shader Mixer, Shader Baking, aniMate Lite, Map Transfer, and 64-Bit capabilities.

DAZ Studio 3 Advanced

• Advanced Shaders and Effects - DAZ Studio now includes HDRI, IBL, Ambient Occlusion, Area Lights, Volumetrics, Velvet, Indirect Lighting, Translucency, Layered Anisotropic Specularity, and Sub-Surface Scattering. Special thanks to omnifreaker.
  
  
  
  • UberEnvironment 2 (by: omnifreaker)
    
    
    
    • Image Based Lighting (IBL)
    • High Dynamic Range Images (HDRI)
    • Global Illumination (GI)
    • Indirect Lighting
    • Color Bleeding
    • Ambient Occlusion
    
    
    
    
  • UberSurface (by: omnifreaker)
    
    
    
    • Sub-Surface Scattering (SSS)
    • Velvet
    • Skin
    • Layered Anisotropic Specularity (hair)
    
    
    
    
  • UberArea Lights (by: omnifreaker)
  • UberVolume [Fog/Smoke] (by: omnifreaker)
  
  
  
  
• Scripted Renderer - Gain full control of the rendering process. If you're into scripting and are familiar with the RenderMan API, this is for you.
• Shader Mixer (Advanced Material Editor) - Mix and match over 90 included shader bricks (or design your own) to create custom lights, cameras, and surfaces within a simple node network for amazing render effects.
• Figure Mixer - Now you can blend between different figures to create your own unique figures. This tool will not only blend two or more shapes together, but it will also provide a working joint rig and preserve the original morphs of the figure you started from.
• Morph Follower - This feature allows you to add support for new figures in old clothing by automatically creating new morphs to fit an unsupported shape. (Based on technology by EvilInnocence)
• 64-Bit for Windows - This functionality not only makes things go faster, it expands memory support, and allows large scenes to be arranged and rendered much easier.
• Map Transfer - This allows you to convert a texture from one figure's UV's so they can be used on another figure's UV's.
• Shader Builder - Built for advanced artists who need a deeper level of control and want to create shaders from scratch.
• Shader Baker - Bake surface shaders, bump maps, displacement maps, and textures into a single image-based texture for a final-render look straight out of the box. You can then share or sell to other users who may not have the same advanced shaders you use to make it look its best.
• Animation Keyframe Editor - Now you can easily see where your keyframes are. Add, delete, copy, paste and/or move your keyframes around with great visual feedback. Special thanks to GoFigure!

DAZ Studio 3 (core)

• Improved Render Engine - DAZ Studio is now compatible with version 8.5 of the powerful 3Delight render engine. Improved performance and memory management reduce render times and handle heavy, complex scenes like never before.
• COLLADA Import/Export - Now you can export figures, conforming clothing, morphs, and scenes into Carrara 7.
• aniMate Lite - Create animations by dragging and stacking aniBlocks into a timeline. Special thanks toGoFigure!.
• Visual Helpers for Cameras and Lights - Provides visual cues for the spread angle and falloff of your spotlights, as well as the limits of your camera's depth of field. Special thanks to Dreamlight.
• Selection/Bounding Box Display - Change the opacity, size, color, and length of the selection bounding boxes.
• Render Album - Store recent image renders in an album format, which can then be loaded into the Render Editor to perform various editing functions on the image. The editor provides options for blending two images, adjusting colors, comparing images, and applying filters without having to open a separate paint program.
• Visible in Render - Added support for whether or not a node's geometry is visible in render without the need to make surfaces transparent.

New Art - Sample Page 3

Here's the third page of the new stuff I've been working on.  I'm finding myself using DAZ Studio much more than Poser for the past few weeks. Enjoying it a lot.

New Art - page 2

Here's the second page of the new stuff I've been working on. Having a lot of fun with this one.

New Art - Sample Page 1

Playing around with some new stuff, and I decided to make myself a few samples pages of my comic art style for 2009.  These are rendered in DAZ Studio, and then filtered and composited in Photoshop.  My goal is to take the 3D models and end up with a look that is indistinguishable from traditional hand drawn comics.  I don't want anyone to take a glance and say, "Oh, Poser art".  I'm going for "art".  Just art.  The methods should not make the finished product any less enjoyable or readable than the printed counterpart if I do my job right.  There will be more pages posted as I finish them.

Thanks for looking, and I would love to hear your comments!

Inspiration- Letterhead Fonts

The folks over at Letterhead have an amazing site.  Any artist, related to comics or not, should pay a visit and take in the wealth of design-work that's going on there.

Letterhead is in the business of selling premium fonts.  They're not cheap.  But for designers who work with a lot of text and doing logo creation, they're a unique source for styles not just any other artist has.  I haven't bought any yet, but I have it book-marked, and when I have a need, I'll pick some up.

Browsing the gallery they have there is a great way to be inspired by the work others have done with their products, though.  The imagination and creativity being produced makes it a joy to page through all the samples.

Treat yourself, and have a look!

Tootls of the Trade - Poser 8

I was feeling like Poser had come to the end of the road with version 7.  DAZ Studio was getting better and better, and even though I've used Poser since version 1, it didn't seem to have much of a future.


Poser 8 come out a few months ago, and I was pleasantly surprised for a change.  The interface has been greatly cleaned up, and even though it's still the same old Firefly render engine, it's been tweaked a bit to make it faster and more stable, which is exactly what I'm looking for.  There are still a lot of features I don't use much, like dynamic cloth and hair, or animating, but for static comic panels, it's still my main, proven work-horse.

A lot of ray-tracing issues I had lats year seem to be gone now, and the HDRI lighting looks better than ever.  The new models DAZ has been releasing have some limitations that make them only work to the fullest in DAZ Studio, so I may end up using that mostly out of default.


DAZ is still a much better company at providing communication and previews and interacting with the community.  Poser has some good people working on it, but the feeling of connection is not quite what DAZ has.

Poser 8 has a much improved library system, which for a huge amount of content like I have, is a welcome addition.  I can now filter my items and search for things, instead of manually scrolling through folders.

Tools of the Trade - Dreamweaver

Been really working a lot in Dreamweaver the past few days, and a little bit of Flash.  I think this stuff is essential to publishing comics on the web in the future.  I'm really trying to get my directory structure set on my hard drive, so I can build my files and have them end up in the correct places.  I update multiple sites, so DW is great for easily switching between different domains.  I could even see building pages with panels laid out in tables, rather than just doing an entire page as a JPG.


Laying out a comic page in DW would also allow you go stretch a vast distance either down or to the right, breaking out of the standard page format.  I'm kind of torn at the moment - will readers accept layouts that don't look like traditional comics?  You also have to consider bandwidth and how long a page takes to load putting too much on a single page.

New Art

A quick render of the new She-Freak model, done in DAZ Studio.

Tootls of the Trade - She Freak V4

She-Freak 4 was released by DAZ 3D this week. She's a muscular morph set for the Victoria 4 figure, and she's great for comic characters!


$1.99 for Platinum Club Members

Beef up your renders with some female muscle!

She Freak V4 is a set of all-new morphs for the Victoria 4.2 3D figure, showcasing the female form at her big, beautiful best. She Freak V4 comes with four powerful body shapes and eight lovely head morphs, and is compatible with Victoria 4's skin textures.