3D Thursday #1

I used to do a good bit of art in Poser and DAZ Studio, but have fallen a bit out of practice lately. I still dabble once in a while, so I'll share some of new work and some of my old work here. It's a neat artform that I've had a lot of fun with.

I thought I'd kick this series off with one of my oldest pieces, which strangely turned out to be one of my better ones. The above image was a very early Poser figure imported into Bryce and rendered there.

Infinite Canvas

Working on some ideas for doing an online comic utilizing the Infinite Canvas idea.

A web page has an entry point, and from there, I can drop a variety of content forms on a two-dimensional plane that stretches infinitely down and to the right. Text, images, animation, sound, video, stacked layers - anything I want. The only considerations I need to make are the size of the Window the viewer sees the content through, and the length of over abundant load times. I’ll need a system to be able to jump to the next “page” in the series. But, the beauty is, the pages don’t have to be in order! There can be multiple threads and jump-points to other links.

When it’s no longer just static images, it probably ceases to be what we know as comics. It’s a hybrid medium of comic books, animation, and interaction. In short - a new art form that can no longer just be thought of as a web comic. The term “comics” doesn’t really apply anyways, as the medium is not mostly funny. It’s not comical in nature. I guess it would be considered more of an episode, or a webisode than a comic book.

The trick is maintain a flow and keep the navigation easy. I don’t want the reader to become lost or disoriented.

Publishing and updates are instant. Art is much quicker, because it’s done at web resolution, and not for print. Edits and corrections are possible and easy to do. Constant and regular updates provide daily reminders that the project is there on social media.

My obstacles are - I get bored, and I have no feedback, so I drift away. Working on a project for a long time with the intention of publishing it later, keeping it under wraps the whole time, is a killer for me. I need feedback. I need encouragement. Putting something out on the web allows me to add “like” buttons and “share” buttons. I need a forum and a Facebook page where people can comment and ask questions.

Just throwing some ideas out there.

Art for Today - Heart of the Wizard

Here's a few pages from another comic project I wrote, drew, colored and lettered. It was mainly for a test of a new style I was going for, and I was happy how it turned out.

Slideshow of my Art

Here's a slideshow of some of the art I've done over the years -

Art for Today - Ultraverse 2010

This is a piece I did last year. We have an Ultraverse group on Facebook, and it was very popular for a while, with a lot of activity. Everyone pretty much agreed that there were some great characters and stories, but Marvel will probably never allow them to be revisited.  I was playing with an armor set that I thought would make a great Prototype suit, so I came up with an idea for Ultraverse 2010.  We can always dream!

Art for Today - DAZ Studio

Until I scan some more inking samples in, I'm going to have to make do with some 3D art. This piece was done in DAZ Studio. This program has really evolved a lot, and I really like where it's heading. The pricing structure is great as well.

New Animation is Finished!

It's finally ready! Not spectacular, but I have the first piece of my demo reel in the can. :)

Animation Progress

My current animation - a 30 second clip of a small ship approaching a space station - is now up to 32 hours of render time in Carrara 7 Pro, and is 83% complete. I thought it would be done sooner, but as the geometry of the station came into the frame, it slowed down drastically.  I'm guessing it probably has another day to go.

The current uncompressed AVI file it's building is over a gig and a half in size.  My question to more experienced animators would be how do you work with files of this size? Will I be able to upload this monster to YouTube, or will I need to compress it first?

It's 1280 x 720 pixels, 24 frames per second.

New Animation in Progress

I decided yesterday to build myself a new animation demo reel.  The last one I had was about seven years ago, so it's way out of date, even if I could find where I archived it.  The software I have now is head and shoulders above what I was capable of doing back then.  I have all of these scenes built for my comic work, rendering static images, and it doesn't take a whole lot to set things in motion.  Most of the day, my machine is off, not doing anything, so I might as well put it to use.  I just hope I don't run out of drive space!

The image above is a screen shot of the first 30-second clip rendering in Carrara 7 Pro. It's got about 4 hours to go. I'm doing this one at 1280x720 pixels, so it should look pretty sharp!

Desktop for Today

Today's desktop on my work machine - another piece of my 3D art. This one was rendered in DAZ Studio, with a small bit of post-work in Photoshop.

Drawing Again

I've been working more with my Wacom tablet in Photoshop, and am getting back into doing more hand drawn comics. The 3D stuff is fun, but it's never really been something I appreciate as much as traditional art.  I'm trying to move forward and progress into the digital age, though, so it's all paperless.  The sketches were done in Photoshop with the pencil tool, inking is done in Manga Studio, and then back into Photoshop for coloring.

I'm re-writing the Shanghai storyline now, as I'm not bound my with 3D models and characters I own in my library.  The hand drawn stuff allows me to do anything I can imagine, so we'll see where that takes me.

New Art - Shanghai Cover

Here's a new cover for the Shanghai series I'm working on.  This was rendered in DAZ Studio, postwork in Photoshop.  Issue one is almost done and should be available through print-on-demand soon.

New Art - Goons

Here's a few armored goons from a panel of the new Shanghai comic I'm working on. Rendered in DAZ Studio.

New Art - Meet & Greet

A sort of detail from yesterday's large shot, collecting a few robots together. Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet, R2D2 from Star Wars, a Terminator, Robot from Lost in Space, and Gir from Invader Zim. Rendered in DAZ Studio. Thanks for looking!

New Art - Garage

Which one will I drive today?

This was a fun shot to put together. It's pretty far away from where it started. Rendered in DAZ Studio.

There's the Eagle & Hawk ships, and a moon buggy from Space: 1999. A shuttle and Runabout from Star Trek. The Jupiter 2 and robot from Lost in Space. Robby the Robot from Forbidden Planet. Flash Gordon's rocket ship. R2D2 from Star Wars. A Terminator.  Gir from Invader Zim.  And a little pet alien running loose.

New Art - Conflict

A good old fashioned fight scene. Rendered in DAZ Studio.

New Art - On the Bridge

Playing around with some of the great sci-fi outfit and prop sets from my library.  I think I have enough to get a comic done in that genre. If only real life were this cool! This one is my current desktop.

New Art - Wolfman

Taking a break from gaming for a bit to focus on my art and get the comics back on track.  Here's a practice piece I did this morning in DAZ Studio to get my hand back -

Heart of the Wizard

Looking ahead to jumping back into my comics work this week.  I ordered a few books from indyplanet.com to check out how their printing is, and browsed a bunch of online comics to see what's out there now.  I'm about half way finished with the next issue of Shanghai, and I'm not quite sure I want to do that as my first new shot in publishing.

I did about 10 pages a few years ago of a story called The Heart of the Wizard that I'm actually more excited by.  It's the same 3D art, but I had heavily filtered it to give it more of a traditional comics feel, so that it looks like it could be hand drawn, and I have to say, I like that better.

I started expanding the story yesterday, but am still keeping it very simple.  It's a fantasy sword & sorcery setting, but no highbrow plot as of yet.  Just basic fun and action.  I re-worked the main character last night, and gave her a more acceptable outfit, and I'm feeling pretty good about it.  I tossed together a test cover, which is above.  The actual cover will have more thought and time in it.

The style has bold outlines, over-saturated colors, and dot tones & flash lines like the comic art I grew up with.  Some people really like the clean look of the straight 3D art better, but I think the more stylized stuff is a better fit for me.  I'm going to try and get some new pages of this done and see how it strikes me.  I think the characters lend themselves very well to a one-shot book, with the chance to come back and tell a lot more stories, as opposed to one grand story arc that I lock myself into.

We'll see.  Either way, I'll have something new in print soon!

Getting back into Print

I've been wanting to get back into mainstream comics for quite some time now. I have lots of new material in various stages of production, but have been unsure about how to get it into the hands of readers in a way that would make a modest amount of money and not be easily duplicated and passed around illegally on the web.

I bought a set of markers last night, and did some drawing, which I've not done in a long time. I was intending the resulting art piece for eBay, but I was disappointed with what I ended up with. It's frustrating, because I'm trying to duplicate on paper what I can do with my art software on the computer in a fraction of the time. The digital art looks much better, but I can't sell it as an original in an auction.  It just seems like a lot of time and effort to sell to one customer.  It feels like I should be working to a larger audience.

Back in the 90s, I self published a few full-color comics of my own.  Paper printing is pretty expensive, but I think I finally found an option that will get me back into print at almost no cost, and no risk. There are several print on demand services that will custom print in small numbers - like 10 books if you want, or hundreds. It's not the quality of Marvel & DC, but it gets you a handful of books, and they also have an online store that only prints what they sell. It's basically a method to get some material in print so a bigger publisher will notice you. And if I get a small stack of books done, a trade-paperback is easy to do the same way.  I don't have to pay for 5000 copies and hope the major distributor will pick it up.

I'm still researching, but I think this is what I've been looking for. I get to do my own thing, have it in print, and I can go to comic shows with a small stack of books to peddle. I can be an independent publisher for very little investment or risk, which is perfect. It also has the possibility to open doors down the road.

I'm going to sift through all of my years of artwork tonight and see if I can come up with enough material to do an "Art of Skulfrak" book.  I've always wanted one of those!  The Shanghai series will be back in print now as well, and I have lots of other concepts waiting in the wings.

More to come!