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Yes, the colours are somewhat intentional, though not perfectly true to the emotional sutiation. The original idea was to go by a sepia type of tone, like in an old film, but that evolved to what you see now, and I tried to move the feeling of the image into the change of colour. The warm colours here display a bit of the warmth of feeling the narrating character has for this other character in the situation. Sympathy, basically.
I think the current page displays this a bit. Here I start out with the regular coloured render "reality" and then it changes over to memories. The first image shows a rather unpleasent memoy of his friend/superior struggling with the situation. The second memory image is even more unpleasent, having his team mate going through an episode (in case anyone wonders, that's cursing in swiss language). The third image is warmth as he places the hand on his friend/superior's shoulder to give comfort, and at the same time a torn/scratch effect because he really wants to make that entire memory go away. I'm still working on a decent "tearing" effect that's supposed to look like animal claws tearing the picture to shreds, but the strain isn't that strong at this point of the story yet.
I'm not certain if the effects communicate the feeling properly, and one downside of this method is that the style appears somewhat "jumpy".
This definitely works better in the full page with the other effects added.
I've been pretty busy working on a new tutorial making horror video games. I am going to get back into the Conan style artwork from earlier.
I was messing around in Fuse and created this funny character, might look good as a comic character. He looks good when animated and with some good lighting it might come to life!
Has anybody had any experience bringing fuse characters into Daz? I would love to render this in Iray.
I've rendered a few new base images for my barbarian scene. I've set up some dramatic lighting to get good results when I convert to comic outlines. I'm quite happy with the shadows, but I'll see what kind of results I get from these.
I agree. Those are some great highlights and shadows. When you do your post work, consider adding a little more motion to his hair. That's a tiny point thoug, as this is really looking GREAT!
A couple of quick tests using Iray. Not a bad start, from here I can add details using the colour images in Photoshop. There are some obvious issues, such as the extra thick line on the woman's thigh, the lack of eye brows, etc. on her face. (I used a non shiny grey rubber material for the characters to help with the shading style), these details can be worked back in later in Photoshop
That looks pretty cool, which program are you using again for the comic outllines?
Thanks. I used Sketchy for Iray: https://www.daz3d.com/sketchy-toon-edge-and-art-style-shaders-for-iray
Looking fairly good. You're right about the thick lines on her thigh and his hand. They just don't fit with the rest of the image. Ditto on Conan's chest. The rest of the lines look okay...
I definitely see progress, but there's still need for more work.
Alright, very cool, your results look more interesting to me than the promos in that one do :D probably resulting from the choice of materials, good thinking there.
You're right with the thick lines, in some places the look too much but then for the rocks it looks fitting. I'm wondering if the amount of gloss makes a difference on the lines
I have read all 19 pages once and commenced to do a second read and your post on page 7 was a slam dunk. If this was a basketball game you won it. Much to praise here from a bunch of posters. At times it felt like Griffin Avid was knocking on wood but he kept knocking kudos to him. But I have to say, when people take the time out to help, it's better to listen and learn. When I worked with GTE, Verizon, Supermedia and Ideac in advertising dept, I learned the best way to learn was to open your ears and shut your mouth.
@magicjava Criticism makes us defensive but constructive criticism makes us better and is a blessing. Embrace it.
@ArtAngel Wow, thanks for the post, that's some really useful stuff. Composition can bring an image to life. When working in Daz or Unity I usually parent my camera to a simple cube, then I can position the cube at the focus point to ensure the camera is looking where I want it to. Then I can rotate the cube to get the right compositional angle, and obviously from there work the focal length of the camera if need be.
Some comic book covers are so epic they become collectable pieces of art in their own right.
Thanks for the comments. You may be right about the gloss. I will try that out. The lines on the piece are difficult due to the Iray shader making most of the decisions for you, however, quite easy to fix in Photoshop.
I've done a couple of quick test renders with cleanup in Photoshop starting with the female character, see what you think
I've put together my final composition. I've decided to do it quite quickly so I can get back to work on Monday, finishing my tutorial.
Overall I quite like it, a sort of graphic novel style. It was good that Daz was able to create most of the base work. In the end this might be a quicker solution than Unity.
Let me know what you think
Pete
This has a nice look to it. Same as noted before, I like the overall look but there are some odd lines here and there that need to be removed/edited to take this into production. Although I always have a soft spot in my heart for black & white, in this case the color version really has a better sense of balance. The color choices really work here, especially with your lighting choices.
BTW: I may not have mentioned this, but I really like your position of Conan's hands. They are clean and don't intersect his body, which helps us register the sense of motion you are conveying. Nice job!
I just want to pay kudos to this thread of constructive criticism. Just wow! Also, if you haven't read How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way, I can highly recommend it, even as dated as it is. Somebody told me that it's also on sale at Five Below here in the States for $5. So if you've got one near you…
I also really appreciate the constructive feedback that flourishes in this forum. I always learn a lot coming here.
And I cannot possibly agree more with his book recommendation. How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way is THE BEST BOOK I have ever rea on the subject. I was fortunate enough to buy it when i was a kid and it completely changed the way I looked at and approached comics. When my original copy was destroyed in a flood, it was one of the few books that I bought again. Even to this day, sometimes I break it out and reread parts of it again and always feel reinvigorated by it.
After yesterday's (fantastic) Webinar on Visual Narratives hosted by Digital Art Live, I decided that the only way to resolve my problem (I was having trouble placing a cut w/dripping blood consistently from panel to panel) was to go back to the original Poser model and edit the texture maps. I did that and then re-rendered these two panels so I could use the new render as a guide for placing the cuts. I think did the trick.
There is a little distortion because I had scaled the original art a little back when I first created these panels, so I did some hand editing to improve the way it looks.
Any thoughts on how this looks now? Do they look consistent enough from panel to panel?
BTW, if anyone is interested, here is the actual texture map. Well, a representation of the texture map (using some old M4 template I downloaded ages ago from I-forget-where). I left a hint of the map guide visible for your reference, but of course, the actual map used on the figure itself is pure white with just the hand-drawn eyebrows and the cut. Since this is a project that uses only black & white, I hardly use texture maps, and when I do they are usually in b&w.
This is very reduced, of course. The actual texture map itself is 4000 x 4000 pixels.
Sorry for the double post (this is also over at the NPR thread), but I made some updates to page 09 panel 1. They're subtle, but I think they make the image a little better. Any thoughts or comments?
That cut looks very good! You could now add a tiny drop that actually moved down the face as the scene goes on ( this would be just a gadget on top but with the cut now set in the face thaty rather eay to add)
Pity I couldn't come to the webinar, I really would have liked to but had to go to birthday party (at least it was a nice party)
I think this works much better. It frames the central figure nicely without drawing the eyes away from him. The background cliff faces now match the colours of the line work on the background, placing them all on the same plane. It would be good to see this image alongside the other images on the page as that can often place art into context. It certainly does catch your attention and convey character.
The cut on the face in the previous post was looking great. I liked how you modified textures for the M4 model along with drawn on eyebrows. I wouldn't have thought to do that, but it really does make sense.
Thanks for the feedback. This panel is the peak of the emotional journey of the story – this spread (there are two more panels with him) the strongest emotional scene. So I'm glad to know that, even eithout context, there is a strong sense of emotion conveyed here. When I finish the next two panels I will post an update to this so you all can see how it flows together.
Thanks also for the comments on the cut images. The odd thing about working in black & white is that there are almost no textures on my figures. I have textures on the eyes, hair and some of the props, but in general everything else is pure white (except for the eyelashes, which are transparent) so that Poser can focus on the geometry and render clean renders without the speckling that can be caused by a standard skin texture (the bump or displacement maps on skin textures add realism to color images, but they play havoc with the comic book effect I'm shooting for). The one exception (as you've seen) is the need to add eyebrows (and in the special instance above, the cut). For female characters, where you want strong lips, I either color them in the Material Room or modify the V4 texture so that they are darker.
In regards to the second panel with the cut, I've decided to start over with that panel. I'm not liking the shadows on his body and the strap is riding up too much. When i've finished updating it I will post another pic.
I rerendered and redrew the final panel in this sequence. Also, as promised, here's the entire four panel sequence between pages 4 & 5. Thoughts and comments appreciated.
NOTE: Here's the original panels I posted so you can compare the old (below) to the new (above).
I've been generating comic books based on RP groups in City of Heroes and Champions Online for quite sometime now (www.CoXComics.com) starting with Poser, then Daz Studio 3Delight and now iRay. I've produced a couple of short animations, but iRay takes a long time to produce on my main rig (i7, 16GB, SSD swap file) to get enough images for even a few seconds of animation (https://youtu.be/VE0fpPpkMwY). I'm trying to find tips and tricks to reduce the renders from photoreal to something quicker and more toony if anyone has any suggestions or recommendations.
I watched your animation. It was enjoyable.
I think one way to increase your speed is to increase the speed of the motion in your images. In other words, speeding things up will require fewer seconds of animation to render.
The second thing I would suggest is to take a look at the TOON style render. This might not get the results you want, though, as it puts a pretty big outline around the figures.
Finally, I suggest using toon shaders or editing your textures to remove all bump maps from the skin. I'm pretty sure that would speed things up.
Good luck.
The new images on the top panel are better. The hair now matches colour and style and the shadows have more detail giving them more interest. It's nice to see the progression of story across the panels and certainly places the splash page you created earlier into context. The grey line work in the backs of each panel looks good and ties each image together. How did you create those lines?
Nice video, the music fits really well with the visuals. I can relate to how long it takes to render frames in Iray. It can sometimes take upto 5 minutes to render a complete image in Iray on my computer. It's one of the reasons I don't use Daz for animation. If it were possible to render quicker in Daz I think it would be a go to solution for a lot of industry professionals. (Although, saying that, it can take a lot longer to render in V ray in Maya or 3D Studio Max, with things like Caustics involved etc.)
I like to use Unity for animation, as it is real time rendering. I use the free recorder plugin from Unity asset store to record out the videos. A 30 minute animation will render in 30 minutes realtime. With the timeline interface it's pretty much like using a video editor but with 3D models.
You can export Daz characters out as FBX models with their animations (Don't export morphs with Gen 3 or Gen 8, otherwise it messes up their legs!) Then you can apply the animations in Unity. With PBR (Physically Based Render) Textures and post processing effects you can achieve some pretty realistic results in Unity.
Check out this trailer made in realtime in Unity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDsRfbfnC_A
It's an option, if you need any help with the Unity side of things, let me know and I'd be happy to help.
Thanks mmitchell_houston and jepsonpeteCMT for the kind words, this is just a hobby for me. I'm self taught in Daz images and animation. I dug through YouTube royalty free music and effects and audio. I'll see what I can find regarding TOON shaders and I see Unity Personal is at the perfect price point for me if I can wrap my head around it!
Many thanks.
Thanks. Looking at it again (a day or two later) and I see that I still need to add some highlights to the straps, but other than that I think this material is good to go.
The background lines are added in postwork in Clip Studio Paint. They come from a texture that ships with CSP: Volcanic Eruption. The texture is really an explosion that has been sketched with lots of small, random-looking sketched lines. So I blew it up and then placed it in the background, moving it around to show areas that are lighter or darker, depending on the mood of the panel. In this case, I started light and got darker each panel because I wanted to show the darkening of his mood as the scene progressed.
BTW: I use the volcanic explosion texture because, when blown up to this size, the lines look really random. When I try for "random lines," my work tends to look too structured and even or just too chaotic. It's something that I need to work on.
Here's another sample of the Volcanic Eruption texture at work (on the figure's body only – background uses a different process), but this time scaled down much smaller so the lines are thinner.
Well, as a hobbyist, you're doing a pretty good job.
If you would like to learn more about PW Toon and other Toon shaders, that's a topic of frequent discussion over in the NPR (Non-Photorealistic Renders) forum.