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This is a commission I did for my brother.
LoreMistress Izaria,
Very nice! Was it for a book cover or a promo image?
Cheers!
It's just an OC of his. He is writing a story. I am working on a more complicated piece to give him for Christmas, and wanted to do a render after finishing the recolor of her fur. His main character meets the girl on the rooftop garden of their apartment.
Sgt. Inez: Meeting Zachary Kiranov | Daz assets | Blender Eevee render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
@csaa I love your compositions. I can't seem to grasp backgrounds and borders. Yours look so polished.
I wonder if my render below can be counted as NPR.
What do you think?
@Artini It counts. There are a lot of different NPR styles in this thread. Which rendering engine did you use for this? Looks neat.
Thanks a lot, @LoreMistressIzaria.
I have used Unity game engine and transferred Daz 3D characters to it
using Daz to Unity bridge.
Something in white...
@artini Love the vintage postcard feels.
Testing a few new things in Octane with Deep Render AOV's
Thanks a lot. I thought, it is a time for such kind of images.
DaremoK3,
I always say none of us were born with artistic skills. It's something that even the best artist had to work hard on. What I've learned is that feedback is very important in the learning process. Self-confidence too, particularly in the public eye. To these ends, I'd like to think these forums help. It's a place where we can showcase what we're trying, and get feedback in return. The positive energy this all brings helps us keep moving along.
Cheers!
@csaa :
Yeah, you can say that, but that is not necessarily true in all cases...
My father sat down three small children (I was the youngest at 5) at the dining room table with pencils and green technical graph paper to see if any of us "were born with artistic skills".
Both parents were artistic and could draw well. My father had drawn a long-body, big-block, winged dragster, and asked all of us to try to reproduce it the best we can.
Mine was better than his...
No, not really, but it was a near match, and from then on all I got from Christmas/Birthdays was art supplies while all my siblings received toys.
They nurtured my natural abilities, and I was tutored in techniques and art history. I graduated from drawing linear war scenes and anything I found interesting (mostly war, war machines, and Martial Arts) to full blown illustrations of lions on the Serengeti.
By the time I was in Jr. High School, I was winning local awards, and even beat out an entire major metropolitan city and surrounding counties High Schools in a National competition that involved a stadium and professional sports league with a 8'X16' (mural) illustration.
That landed me a part-time job where I became a professional (paid) artist while still attending school.
I continued through high school, and continued winning a few competitions. One, where my first flat-stipple (11"X14"), I was offered $1000.00 US for by the gallery owner, but I declined and gave to my father for all his support over the years.
I was the kid in school that drew everything for everyone who asked for something, the teachers let me draw all day long, and I still maintained a 'B' average (I was an 'A' student, but art was my focus). I got paid to draw things for people in art classes (my favorite -- "I can't draw noses, please draw a nose for my project" over, and over, and over).
Because of my art focus, I took many study hall classes and did not have the required credits to graduate, so my senior year I had to take an adult night class to make them up. I took an art class (self-metered) where I had to complete assignments out of a dedicated book -- I did all the assignments and worked on my own gallery illustrations (flat-stipple), and received all the necessary credits to graduate with my H.S. class. The teacher (for the self-paced, all inclusive courses) kept, and put up all my work on the walls for inspiration to future students taking the art studies class.
I have had work hanging in galleries, published in magazines, tattooed on people, printed on clothing, and even a sign for a business (though, that one was stollen from me when they 'decided' not to hire me, kept my mock-up, and created the sign from that without paying me one cent -- I found out a year later passing by the place, but I was beyond caring at that point; C'est la Vie).
I lost out on a job opportunity for a Hanna-Barbera-esque animation studio due to my portfolio being "to high end" (their words), and I once almost went to work with a friend at Image Comics (when I started drawing comics/animation art to add to my portfolio) -- But, my Achilles' heel is that I am slow -- Too slow for any kind of fast-paced production art fields. So, I believe both were for the best.
I am happy creating my 'Playboy' gallery paintings, and I have some graphic novels lingering while I get to the state with 3D to not have to draw/ink them by hand -- I was already creating 3D models/environments for the GN's, and somewhere along the line I chose to want them fully 3D (as long as I could replicate my 2D imagery).
I have participated here since the original thread -- I know search here sucks, but if you wanted to see examples of any of my NPR experiments, you could try to suss them out. For every one I showed, 75 - 100 variations of the same image was not, and I picked the one I liked out of the bunches -- Most likely, there are some that would have been liked here, but most just float by into the ether.
I would say that there's an important distinction between skill and talent. Nobody is born with skills, but talent makes acquiring and improving skills easier.
@Gordig :
I concur -- Great distinction. Change where I mention skill to talent, but I don't believe I have any artistic talent. I can just reproduce what I see with skill -- There are many talented artists here -- I am just not one of them...
@csaa :
I forgot to mention, I love watching you here, and how your style has been developing. I am more partial to the color versions for your comic, but I think both would work. Keep up the great work!
DaremoK3,
It sounds like you've lived an interesting life. Good for you!
You did mention in the prior post that you do 'coding' now. It sounds like there's an interesting story to that too. Care to fill us in on that?
Cheers!
Some other tests:
Nice! @artini
Thanks a lot. Will continue with the experiments.
Yes, @Artini , those look terrific! Are those still Unity NPR? A month or two ago I finally collected my 2021 Christmas present, and purchased a Unity bundle from Humble-Bundle for the NPR assets. I have a year to collect from the Unity store, so I am in no hurry, but when I do, and I get a newer version of Unity, I would sure love to pick your brain on the subject -- I have enjoyed watching you produce NPR in Unity, and you were my inspiration for choosing the bundle.
@vrba79 :
Very nice -- That's a solid good look. Are you using PW to get the clean flats? The hair and dress looks way better than default 3Delight toon.
@csaa :
Yeah, not really that good for me -- I am the epitome of the 'starving artist', but not literally starving -- My family sees to it that I have my daily rice. I am old, and it has all been pretty mundane -- I devote more to my first love of studying to be a master of Martial Arts (which I began training alongside art) before I die -- It's the only thing I really care about -- The rest is all just distraction.
Since you are working on a comic, you might appreciate this...
Here are early cover mock-ups of my trilogy GN -- They will most likely change by the time I finally go to print -- The first two are hand-drawn, and the third is NPR :
The plan is 90% NPR (mimicking hand-drawn/inked) with 10% hand-drawn/inked pin-ups/inserts.
* EDIT: Oh yeah, the coding thing -- That is just another thing I am doing towards my ultimate goal of producing my GN's -- So far I am working on a Blender bridge for morph work, a cloth simulation morph creator for VWD cloth simulator (in Daz Studio), and a couple of morph utilities while working with morphs in DS. They are all in states of working with bugs I am trying to iron out...
Next on the list is one to automate my digital inking from my DS NPR passes.
I took a break from coding and tried to be 'artistic' -- I do miss working on NPR...
Yup! PWtoon!
I've been leaning back into 3DL, because I'm tired of driver updates messing up rendering and IRay's very limited toon options.
Thanks a lot.
I really like playing with Unity and from time to time I am picking items for Unity from HumbleBundle, as well.
They have really good offers quite often.
Your recent images looks interesting - do not hesitate to post more.
DaremoK3,
Thanks for sharing your work. We may all have different goals and aesthetics but we can certainly benefit from the energy and the enthusiasm we bring!
For cetain, automating a lot of work using scripts is a great time saver. Between Daz and Blender, I find myself writing more code on the Blender side, mainly because of transparency of the API and the wealth of examples and tutorials on the Web. (I'm hoping that Daz 5 opens up the SDK further!) Along the way I've also learned techniques used in hand-drawn illustrations -- not my forte, or my line of work, but fascinating nonetheless. All together, it's been very stimulating, for both the left and right side of my brain.
Right now I'm exploring backgrounds. How to quickly render scene backgrounds in NPR. Sticking with the principle that backgound details aren't so crucial (compared to the foreground or the "hero" elements of a scene), I find that line art combined with basic shading is good enough. For the later, Clip Studio Paint's rich toolkit of fills, hatches, stipples and gradients work wonders! Like you, I'm pretty happy with workflow where a majority NPR is automatically rendered, and touched up a bit in post-edit.
Cheers!
LoreMistress Izaria,
Thank you. The backgrounds and the borders are image layers wholly made in the post-edit phase. Clip Studio Paint has been a big help.
Cheers!
Silent night wth the recent freebie: The Moonglow Village
Unity 2022.2.1f1 with URP pipeline.
Well done.
Thanks a lot, @tkdrobert.