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A work in progress. Really more an attempt to give the Xi Futuristic Home Office a manga-esque treatment. Who would have known there was a whiff of a story waiting to get out.
I jumped in the middle, so I'm not sure how to continue. Maybe I'll detail the preceeding events; or I'll just continue with the story from hereon. Or it can stay as a one-shot thing, which is fine too. We'll see.
Cheers!
XNJ Crime Unit: The Hidden Past | Daz assets | Blender Eevee Render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
@csaa XI Futuristic Home Office looks good with your manga effect! I also like the Cleo screen effect. Section 7 sounds pretty mysterious... I wonder if it's anything like Section 9 from GITS.
robertswww,
Thank you for the kind feedback. After a while of trying different styles and techniques, I do feel confident in this one. While it doesn't have the stipples, the hatching or speedlines common in manga, the outcome approximates the sweet spot between effort and aesthetic that leaves enough room to think about other elements of storytelling.
Speaking of which, watching a child doodle and asking about the thinking that goes into the art gives a glimpse of the "world-building" that goes on behind the scenes. There is a thread of logic connecting art and storytelling, and it comes out almost effortlessly while a child draws on paper. I find that mindset very useful whenever I experiment with rendering and post-editing techniques.
Cheers!
Sgt. Inez and Lt. Andriv | Daz assets | Blender Eevee render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
This all started with the MK205. Then pieces came in from the Hacker - Computer Workstation and the Sci-Fi Kit 2016. The bit of dialog, I imagined, took place while the unit was in the engineering bay for routine check up.
Cheers!
Sgts. Andrea & Inez: Hoplite Bot Maintenance | Daz assets | Blender render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
Sgt. Inez: The Spring Fesitval Massacre | Daz assets | Blender render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
I like this panel, there is enough information to understand the premise of the story and the motivations of the characters. Just the right amount of exposition!
Interesting. I hadn't heard this. I discovered a few DAZ based comics in their store and bought them, so perhaps not? They can be a little short-sighted about CG, and other forms of art there. They tend to be hand-drawn centric, but they'll have to adapt. Especially as CG gets better, and faster. And they are still around. I'm still producing work for them with Edgeworld and another project. And I did put a CG 'fake ad' in one issue advertising a drink that is a part of the "world". No one complained.
Sgts. Andrea, Cleo & Inez: Into the Breach | Daz assets | Blender render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
HI there !
And thanx a lot CSAA for the link of that thread , really interesting how people are making DAZ a true comic book tool with all kinds of stories ! Great job to all !
I re-link mine , which will be ended soon , I hope (lol) !
https://online.fliphtml5.com/odzyd/ppcm/#p=1
There's no cover yet , it's in progress , I have to finish all the pages of the first tome before ^^
I understand that ComiXology explicitly ban all Daz / Poser-made comics from their store, though?
One: I don't think ComiXology exists anymore (as far as indies relasing new works on the platform)...
Two: They are now absorbed into Amazon Kindle...
Three: I believe there was an certain "Look" that they wanted to avoid. They also weren't interested in comics that used raw pictures for the art.
I would submit ANY kind of post-processing removes that initial "look" CGI books had.
And that look was (in my estimation) pre-Iray and "Poser" renders with no post work.
Wow , I din't know it was possible to sell our work via amazon , amazing !
I take the story along the way, but it's intersting , I'll read the thread to understand all of that "problem" you are talking about.
for people looking a platform that is open to cgi/daz/poser style looking comics without major postwork I can recommend Globalcomix, I'm there now for about 8 month with my comic Taiduo, exclusively there since July (after webtoons has given me yet another reason to finally leave that platform)
My experience has been very positive, you chan choose to offer you comic for free or as a paid one (available to so called gold readers which paid a membership fee) and to make extra goodies available for superfans (paid beside the gold readers) you can as well chose ot offer pdf versions of your comic for download against a fee
they are currently testing an app which is in beta version for mobile access, that's not available for general public yet (launch of that was in spring, so testing is in progress) but you can access the site normaly on the mobile anyway.
there is a discord server for the creators where you can give quick feedback or ask questions and the response return time is amazing and the community of creators is very supporting (pushing your posts on social media platforms etc)
there is a good section where can look at the statistics for your readers, how many, howl long they stay, where they come from (platform wise and country) which device they used to read your work, so you can see when your advertising on some social media worked or not or if an episode is confusing (eg this way I noticed that people stopped on the first pages at the point where I added my title banner, so I moved that to be at the end of each episode, still need to change that for the early episodes.)
cons: the platform still needs growing a larger reader community, people are very attached to their webtoons platform (or Tapas) and getting them to look at another platform is hard
(disclaimer: I'm not financially or otherwise personally involved with the platform/their owners besides presenting my comic there, in case this sounded a bit overly positive)
Griffin Avid & MaloneXI,
Agree! Splicing your remarks from different discussion threads, it drives home the point that photo realism in 3D comics is still a no-go. It says something about the intertia of established conventions, which is probably too large to change, both among the comic producers and the consumers. The best we can hope for is use 3D rendered scenes as a base and build on top of it. More work, for certain, but also more room for personal creativity.
Cheers!
Sgt. Inez: Lightness of Being | Daz assets | Blender render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
Everybody do what they want , for sure. I don't totally understand the deep sense of the problem, but if there is some solutions , cool.
for me , leaving the 3D render pure , is an error. I talk for myself , not for the choices of others , I precise. It gives me a base, like you say, and after that , the other part of work starts. Modification with the wacom, colorimétric corrections , etc; But reasons for me are multiple.
In the case of a comic book, like the one I've shown here through the link, I didn't want to copy reality through hyper realistic renders. It does not interesting me. The personnal challenge here , was to give some kind of comic book look . I find it more ...mmm you know...magical. More aesthétic. But I repeat , it's only on my opinion , just my regard on my own works.
Daz is incredible to make hyper realistic illustrations , more if you have the computer to deal with it. But , in that case , why not to create a movie instead of a comic book :). That's my point.
Anyway , I'm glad to see that this community is full of ideas to lay so many stories in differents styles. This software is amazing :D
It could be optimised more... Some renders takes hours.
an error for you to create a comic that way or will it stop you from reading one in that style as well?
I just can't create a comic that way, for the reason there'no "artistic" interest for me. Understand my words, I don't reduce the way you could left a render without any modifications, daz renders are really incredibles like that , but as a drawer , photoshop user and still technics discover , I really adore finding other way to make up 3D.
Anyway , reading them it's not formerly a problem. If the story is cool , or funny , etc , it's a comic book :) It's more about the look , as we say in french "Roman photo" , (photo novel ?) that bothers me a bit. Pure personnal appreciation.
Don't worry everybody is allowed their preferences, this was purely out of interest since I am creating a comic in full 3d optics and I have heard the opinion several times that "it's not a real comic" (not your words, that's from elsewhere) but people rarely can tell me why and what actually bothers them, so that's always a point I like to explore more. And maybe learn from that to make the expereince better even in 3d optics.
Somebody else expressed further above that it's just one step away from making a movie, but honestly it isn't, there is a huge amount of extra time and computer power needed compared to what I have access to (besides I don't have talent for animation)
I have been reading sequential art in its various forms for 40-50 years, be it comicbooks, graphic novels, cartoons, webtoons, visual novels and other types, and there is one consistent realization, the art style might get you interested in looking at the panels, but it is the story, that keeps you reading. The reader has to care for the character's journey or they move on to something else. You all have great art styles. Different and uniquely yours from the panels and pages we've seen.
Well , you both are right :)
I've just finish to translate mine , french to us . Hope you'll enjoy it :)
https://online.fliphtml5.com/lzymu/gjsj/
words of the wise
that's neat work, will need to set some time aside to actually read it, just flipped through the first pages
Thanx a lot :)
MaloneXI,
I finally found the chance to look at your latest post. Thanks for translating the story to English. The added panels leading to the cliff hanger at the end are also much appreciated.
In a sci-fi or fantasy story, it's a rule that a lot of space in the initial chapters are given to world-building, filling the reader in with info about the strange and new world that is unfolding before them. Visually your panels accomplish that very well. If I may suggest: take the text at the back cover and find ways to incorporate them into the exposition. For example, instead of a third-person narrator speaking in the boxed text, have one of the two solders speak their mind, as if narrating a diary entry or a letter to a friend. This would give the reader the context -- the precis, or the big picture -- of the story as the plot unfolds.
I must say I enjoy how you use the panels and camera cuts to develop the pace. If we use animation as an reference, not only do you have the animation keys in place, you also laid out the fill-ins accordingly. This helps build the tension as the soldiers infiltrate the city. Would some say the plot is too slow, criticizing the pace is crawling glacially? Perhaps. I think for fans of FPS video games, you capture the essence very well; for those who don't enjoy the genre though, they may lose patience and wonder how soon the plot will reach its higher moments.
I've already remarked on your art style in another thread, particularly the sci-fi HUDs. I think the minimalist palette and cooler tones matches the cat-and-mouse theme of the story.
Hope to see the next installment.
Cheers!
Raaaah , thanx a lot for the critics !! It will help for the second opus :D Yep , the reading rythm is quiet slow. But , in my opinion , it will be justified in the next one. This first tome is done to be attractive , about the artistic look , and let the feeling installing. But I'm totally agree with all that you've said. I must dynamise a bit the action. It will be the case in the next tomes , don't worry ^^.
I'm very impressed with what you've accomplished here. It looks like a comic and – far more importantly – it reads like a comic. Allow me to explain.
Your line work and motion lines, of course, give it the look of a hand-drawn comic. But, and this is far more important, you are providing just the right amount of detail to tell the story, and that's where comics excel. The "problem" with hyper-realistic comics is that the creators often don't know how to reduce detail when it collides with telling the story. Hyper detail in comics is fine, and when done it's amazing (look at the early work Barry Windsor Smith did on Conan, or Berni Wrightson on Swamp Thing, or even Michael Kaluta on the Shadow or Charles Vess' work on almost anything). The difference with their work is that those artists us hyper detail to increase the sense of place but never let it interfere with the flow of action.
A few things I really like about this panel are the things I don't see, such as a sidewalk or clouds – clouds could work, but with all those word balloons and captions? Probably not. And those simplified bullets/blasts from the tiny muzzle flare. Brilliant. I also really love the way you use light to draw our eyes to the woman sticking out of the car. The back of the car and the black sound effect are neutral, so our eyes travel along the light path of the car's side to pull us right to her. I am in LOVE with the way you convey chaos with the titled word balloon text, btw. Brilliant. I'm not 100% sure I like the placement of balloon #2 because it covers the gull-wing door and it took me a second to decypher that's what it was. But, as I'm only seeing the one panel, that's probably not an issue when this is seen in sequence (in other words, if this were a cover it would be an issue, but as a panel on a page, it works just fine). And your lettering choices/execution are REALLY good, btw.
I'm VERY impressed with your work and I'm going to go back through the thread and see what you've been up to and see if your approach to using Blender is something I should look into (I already use CSP; couldn't work without it).
– – Mike
I'm working on adapting a short horror story (written by a guy I know) into a comic that is reminiscent of the old Warren magazines like Eerie and Creepy. The story will be printed (on paper) in b&w, but I added blue tones because they look better online. Here's the first character design sheet I'm makig for the project. Something new for me: I'm going to try documenting my dial and resource settings on the sheet for future reference.
his is my standard workflow: V4 renders in Poser 13 with post work in Clip Studio Paint. I'm aware there are some issues with the teeth and I haven't yet decided on how dark to make her hair (which is why it's inconsistent here). I need to do some tests against dark backgrounds before I decide. I hope the dot pattern reproduces well here (since it's a work for print, I am using CSP's screen-tint materials for the shading).
Even with the imperfections, since I haven't posted anything here in ages, I thought I'd toss it out to prove I'm still alive. ;-)
Sorry for the accidental double-post.
There's some neat stuff happening in this thread ; I'll try to comment on some of it soon.
mmitchell_houston,
Thank you so much for the kind remarks! You gave so much feedback, and it's been nearly a year since I made that image, I don't really know where or how to respond. I guess it's always easier to analyze and critique some one else's work. Heck, all I remember was that I was in-the-flow when I worked on that comic panel. Enjoyed it a lot, if I'm not mistaken. There really wasn't a lot of navel gazing.
As to Blender and Daz used in tandem to make comics, let me share my own thoughts as someone who didn't know any better and plunked in nearly three years chasing that golden ring. It's tough -- meaning if you can use Poser and Clip Studio Paint to your satisfaction, adding Blender to your toolkit may not be worth it. Essentially, for someone with little prior experience with Blender, the learning curve is steep. As one professional put it, you're struggling to pick up three things: (1) knowledge of 3D concepts such as modeling and sculpting, shaders, UVs, rigging, etc.; (2) the ins and outs of the software tool, warts and all; (3) how to actually do comic art (perspective, narrative design, character design and pose, and so on.) My experiences could server as a cautionary tale in that I started out with Daz, and then after a year thought I knew enough to dive into Blender. Whew! Unless you have an interest in plumbing the depths, staying with a user-friendly tool such as Daz or Poser would be a better way to produce comics with a faster turnaround time.
So that's my two cents.
Anyhow, you always gave good feedback here in this forum thread. Looking forward to hear more from you soon.
Cheers!
Sgt. Inez: For That Someone Special | Daz assets | Blender render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit