Art, the arts, CGI comics, Graphic Arts, AI and everything else.

Griffin Avid

Thank you, sir.

Back then, it was a toss-up between how it looked and the amount of control you had over the images.

Marvel/DC Legend John Byrne bascially took that whole direction to its limit when he did the Star Trek series.

He made original Star Trek comics using images from the 60s television series. 

---------------------

I see you're going with a slice-of-life type comic series. Have you ever considered placing that on Line Webtoon? It looks to be done in that mobile scrolling format.

Would probably do well.

 

 

David R

I am currently on TopWebComics, which I like because there is a very wide variety of styles and genres, and also I can advertise.  It is where most of my traffic comes from. Webtoon seems massive.  I have a small but loyal readership.  I feel like I'd be swallowed on Webtoon.

kenmo

 Love how you show the progress of your comic book art. Excellent!

kenmo

Griffin Avid said:

Corrections. Part of the clean-up process for CG artists using 3D models (and the CG environment) is checking for errors.

These are some of the common errors to look for.

Floating feet - It can be difficult to see where your character's feet meet the ground. There is a function to move your character's feet to the ground.

Edit/Figure/Move to Floor 

You can make adjustments and re-render or move the shadow under the feet using post work.

Arched feet/Flat Feet- Many pose presets place the character's feet in a high heeled foot position. It's a giveaway when your character is standing flatly but the feet are still in the high-heeled pose. Also happens in reverse. Character wearing heels and a non-matching foot pose. Fixes include choosing the ankle and ...

Edit/Figure/Zero/Zero Selected Item(s) Pose

* You can also choose Zero Poses from your library and add them to favorites to reset hands and feet for fast edits.

(Most pose products in the store will have a Reset or Zero pose included among the poses) OR just pick a foot pose matching the wear of the character.

Poke Through- Occurs when overlapping clothing layers 'poke through' in certain places. A shirt sleeve may poke through a jacket. A foot or sock may poke through a shoe. There is usually an adjustment morph on the two items which can be adjusted to pull the shirt tighter and make the jacket "looser" by expanding. Sometimes it makes the outer clothing item balloon out and not fit nicely. This can be fixed in Post or, if all else fails -a drastic measure for the advanced is to make a second copy of the shirt (add it twice) and use the Geometry editing tool to cut out the poking polygons. Always SAVE before you try this. lol The reason you'd make a duplicate of the worn shirt is, once you cut the shirt you can't undo the edit. One shirt is made invisible and is still there in case you need to show the shirt later on. Almost NEVER cut the polygons of figures as they are high-poly and will almost always tax your system.

Using Tool/Geometry Editor (Marquee selection to choose the shirt parts the poke through), then right click to...

Shirt parts are cut away.

Eye Sore - Characters not looking at each other or the right object. I've used two products to sort this out over the years.

https://www.daz3d.com/look-at-me-ii-pose-control

https://www.daz3d.com/eye-clock-pose-control-for-genesis-3-and-8-male-s-and-female-s

Intersecting Objects - Getting hand poses (holding things) correct and getting characters to sink into objects. Body parts squish on impact. There are morph products to flatten and compress. At worst, sink your character into the surface a small amount (usually feet flatten when supporting weight) . Make sure fingers, feet and items do not overlap. 

Feet are sunk a little into the floor.

More later.

 

Excellent tips. Many thanks for sharing and so kind of you... 

Griffin Avid

So, we have also been combining my music with AI-filtered/generated clips to make videos. 

I've been doing this a while. And now, I get to combine my comic work with the music.

Lauryn Grace feat Kaitlyn Grace "The Color of Emotion" 

 

Disciple

Thanks for this.  I'm taking my baby steps in sequential art storytelling.  A voice of experience?  I'm all ears.

I thought my concept was of a super hero story in a comic, but as I venture forth it's morphing into a graphic sci-fi novel.

My A.I. tests haven't gone beyond websites and text prompts, but I'm mostly avoiding it since it seems to take many liberties with the media from other artists.  I did use it to generate smart phone wallpaper from a text prompt, one that I was pretty sure would match what I wanted.  Everything else is D|S and Iray.

My protagonist is a senior researcher who one day finds herself transfered into the body of a lifelike android.  In time she discovers her superhuman abilities.

Eventually she'll deal with situations where super action is needed, like when an unusually diverse gang of knife-wielding muggers attack her in a dark alley.  Here's a 'before' panel.

A fair amount of violence ensues.  Pretty boring.  I'll spare you.  Then there's an 'after' panel.

Action like this is turning out to be a minor element of her story.  It's much more about her life now and where it's headed after her unexpected transformation.  I hope to make her story a bit more uplifting than the one by Kafka.  I'm learning from comics by other creators that it behooves me to interweave the stories of several other people within my heroine's sphere of influence, a broader tale than any I've spun before.  It's a daunting challenge as a first timer.  I want to do it well.  Thanks again, and please keep growing your list.

Whatever you can share about the differences between writing comics for print versus web, I'd be interested.

Some assets used: Smartphone and Tablet, Kira HD for Genesis 8 Female, PW Area 51 S4 Base, Bighorn Truck, Street Way

[Edited for images.]

Hallelujah!
Disciple

jmucchiello

Where were you two years ago when I jumped into sequential art feet first? Heh, who am I kidding? I needed to make the mistakes to learn them. Your first post is almost perfect for all forms of art, not just sequential art. No notes. (aside: I didn't notice you were a PA until after making the whole post.)

11) Organize your ideas and assets. 

13) Use a naming system and stick to it.

You say "stick to it" but I've changed my global organization twice. And I'm better off for it.

I have a word processing document for script making. A spreadsheet for tracking assets and release cycles. And a directory structure that I'm finally happy with.

My list to add to yours, not nearly as completely:

1) BACK UP YOUR DATA

Sorry for shouting. But you've heard it before, are you doing it? I have a weekly backup system. I copy the entire set of DUFs, artwork, custom textures, scripts, etc to a second drive in the system. Then I copy that to a rotating cycle of thumb drives.

Important Note: OneDrive is NOT a backup solution. Don't treat it as such.

The important part is weekly. Do not let a lack of backups linger too long. Even twice weekly might be appropriate depending on your output.

2) Discrete save files

Every render is a DUF file. Not a 100% strict rule. But it saves some effort later if you ever need to re-render something and find out something important in frame 3 was messed up while making frame 6.

Griffin Avid

A fair amount of violence ensues.  Pretty boring.  I'll spare you.  Then there's an 'after' panel.

I see some clever writing is going to part of your work. lol

BACK UP YOUR DATA

Great advice there.

Great advice there.

Whatever you can share about the differences between writing comics for print versus web, I'd be interested.

Well, I think of it this way.

Graphic Novel = Movie [once a year]

Floppy (monthly comic) = TV Show [once a month, which in realty, is once a week]

Web Comic = Soap Opera [once a day]

Yes, it breaks apart a bit as some shows are ½ an hour and others are a full hour, but you get the general idea. There are ‘made for TV’ movies and ‘movies’ that was made from editing together clips from the TV Show. It gets grey fast.

The overall approach is FILLER versus Fast-Forward. Movies are meant to tell broad-epic stories and usually cover a larger frame of time. A soap opera is tiny slices of daily occurrences that build into a larger history. You can even use the release schedule as a guide. A Webcomic can show us EVERYTHING and a Graphic Novel tends to just show the important stuff.

Even in production terms. You are more likely to find a webcomic that is written on the fly or made up as the story rolls along. ‘Seat of the pants’ or whatever. Graphic novels and movies tend to require better planning. The ‘effort’ also scales. Quantity versus Quality. It makes sense that a few panels/page-a-day is not the same as a work that is made over months/years.

Form and Format: For monthly and daily comics, you don’t get the benefit of reading the whole story (arc) and going back and making edits/fixes/adjustments. Of course you can redo, redraw or re-edit released work, but some of the audience has already absorbed the first version of it.

Print versus digital, etc- in this case a webcomic (generally) is a bad format for print and a traditional ‘’for-print’ comic format is a terrible read for a tiny mobile screen. The writing follows into telling your story using sequential art – it’s pages versus panels. You are writing as a page layout- OR you are writing as a single panel (or what’s scrollable on mobile). Big difference. That affects pacing- how quicky events occur (as simple as counting how many panels it takes to show an event) or how long the reader is willing to wait for the good stuff.

 

I don’t think the mediums/systems are similar at all and it takes true research and study to understand, and later, to be good at either approach. ‘’And finally, the pressure from the proposed production schedule. A lot of artists struggle with making enough webcomic content to keep up with expectations. Taking a break can hurt momentum and affect readership numbers. You need to have a klot of story in you and for the characters.

Sheesh that’s a lot.

background

I've recently started doing a story with pictures ( I will call it that because it's not a comic as such ). I've found  that it's useful to try to put yourself into the position or a viewer/reader and see the story through their eyes. One thing I've started doing, which I think works well, is to include elements from a previous image, if the character is in the same area. That way the viewer has visible clues that we're in the same place..I want to minimise any risk of the viewer losing track of what's going on.

I should probably add that I have no art training whatsoever, and I'm not looking to sell the story, so it's just a hobby project.

At worst it wil be like "The play that goes wrong", only mine will be "The story with pictures that goes wrong"

chris-2599934

jmucchiello said:

2) Discrete save files

Every render is a DUF file. Not a 100% strict rule. But it saves some effort later if you ever need to re-render something and find out something important in frame 3 was messed up while making frame 6.

I don't quite go that far. What I do (to incoporate the naming convention too) is this.

1. I pick a short name for my story. So suppose the story is called "Fred the Dragin Slayer," the short name might just be "fred".
2. I pose up a scene for the first frame(s), and save it as fred01.duf
3. The cameras in that scene are named camera A, camera B, etc...
4. The render from canera A in fred01.duf is called fred01a.png. If I have to do spot renders from that camera to fix issues they'll be fred01a1.png
5. Once I've shot all the angles I need from fred01.duf, I move the characters around and save it as fred02.duf and start working through a new alphabet of cameras.
6. The number of shots I take in any give scene varies, sometimes its just 1, sometimes many more.

This approach means that if I'm looking at an image in my render library, I can tell from its name which camera I used in which duf file.

chris-2599934

Disciple said:

Eventually she'll deal with situations where super action is needed, like when an unusually diverse gang of knife-wielding muggers attack her in a dark alley.  Here's a 'before' panel.

A fair amount of violence ensues.  Pretty boring.  I'll spare you.  Then there's an 'after' panel.

I think that sequence works pretty well just like that. Our protagonist is menaced by a gang of thugs. Jump cut to five minutes later and carnage has ensued. Detailed set piece battle scenes are a key feature of superhero comics, so you wouldn't want to pull that stunt too often, but it's another tool for your narrative toolbox.

Disciple

chris-2599934 said:

I think that sequence works pretty well just like that. Our protagonist is menaced by a gang of thugs. Jump cut to five minutes later and carnage has ensued. Detailed set piece battle scenes are a key feature of superhero comics, so you wouldn't want to pull that stunt too often, but it's another tool for your narrative toolbox.

An intriguing idea, to be sure... but that isn't what I did.  There are 24 panels between those two that I omitted. It's her first moment of all-out action. We see how she deals with violent idiots, hear her inner monologue, and learn how her physical changes are affecting her mindset. I don't wish to disappoint readers who've been waiting for the hero to break loose.

But I agree about having that tool in the box, for that time when a conflict has a more important point to make than showing the clashing. Thanks for reading.

Hallelujah!
Disciple

wolf359

Graphic Novel = Movie [once a year]
 

That depends on your method of production

 

 

I produced this 80 page graphic novel
and had it listed on Amazon
(Kindle direct publishing),
in only 22 Days using AI
The world of visual media creation has completely changed

 

 

Griffin Avid

The cameras in that scene are named camera A, camera B, etc.

That's a real good point. I often forget to save the camera along with the scene. And then when I need to reopen the scene -in a case where I want the figures isolated with no background-

I can't match the original scene and have to re-render them both again.

That depends on your method of production

That's an analogy based on the readers/audiences expectation, not how long it takes to make.

I know you've always pushed technology very hard.

And I'm sure you've devised a crazy pipeline that cooks very quickly.

Even then, there's absorption time to consider. I spend most of my production cycle thinking. lol

decibel

At the risk of suggesting the obvious to most people reading this thread let me remind everyone of this great comic resource:

Understanding Comics and its follow-up Making Comics

Scott McCloud's comic book of a guy talking about comic books inside a comic.

it's not that we don't know these principles but it's a concise reminder of all the options and dense lexicon of the visual language available in graphic narratives. Helpful reminder whether I am stuck or not.

Griffin Avid

I certainly thank you for reading this thread and adding on to the resource.

But don't forget there are numerous threads for sharing general resources about comics-

Other books and websites, and things 'other people said' are best shared there.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/228061/3d-comic-book-tips-and-pictures#latest

This thread is about my perspective and people sharing their own stories and perspectives is always super-welcome.

Your journey would be great to hear about.

donniekeidic

Griffin Avid said:

So, we have also been combining my music with AI-filtered/generated clips to make videos. 

I've been doing this a while. And now, I get to combine my comic work with the music.

Lauryn Grace feat Kaitlyn Grace "The Color of Emotion" 

are all of these characters in your music videos AI generated? or are you using some kind of green screening and then having AI enhance real people? curious on the work flow

Griffin Avid

The answer is choice D) All the above.

Every video presents another challenge- which I have to figure out each time.

For instance -

Sometimes I use a real person doing something and run it through an AI filter and change the look, details, effects.

Sometimes I use a picture and have AI animate the actions or movement.

Some stuff is Stock footage that I use as is- or manipulate using AI Filters.

Mostly, it's about the models. I switch between the ones that give me the best results.

There's Kling 3, Grok, there's a CHAT/Google one, Nano Bananna, Seedance etc...

I will use my voice and then use Elevenlabs to change it.

May latest video uses some clothing from the Daz Store.

It's weird to, literally, shop for myself using the Daz Store offerings. lol

Griffin Avid

My new favorite is out. I had to rebuild the spaceship in Daz after breaking it apart in Blender.

I got lots of parts to move when this spaceship eventually shows up in the comics.

And obviously, some of the clothing is kit-bashed and AI-filtered.

3Diva

Griffin Avid said:

So, we have also been combining my music with AI-filtered/generated clips to make videos. 

I've been doing this a while. And now, I get to combine my comic work with the music.

Lauryn Grace feat Kaitlyn Grace "The Color of Emotion" 

 

That's really cool! Are you using Seedance 2.0?

Edit: Never mind, I saw your post where you said you use "Kling 3, Grok, there's a CHAT/Google one, Nano Bananna, Seedance etc..."

3Diva

decibel said:

At the risk of suggesting the obvious to most people reading this thread let me remind everyone of this great comic resource:

Understanding Comics and its follow-up Making Comics

Scott McCloud's comic book of a guy talking about comic books inside a comic.

it's not that we don't know these principles but it's a concise reminder of all the options and dense lexicon of the visual language available in graphic narratives. Helpful reminder whether I am stuck or not.

I second that Making Comics by Scott McCloud is a REALLY good one! I've not read his follow-up book yet, but I definitely highly recommend "Making Comics"!

Griffin Avid

My interview is up with Slash Music where I answer some tough questions about AI use. I explain how similar the Daz workflow is to creating using AI Tools.

https://slash-music.com/exclusive-interview-drew-spence

And there's even a very accurate analogy thrown in.

Here's an excerpt for a preview: 

---------------------------------------

You were actively creating stories and lore before AI. What is different now that you’ve incorporated AI?

Not much really. It’s a very similar workflow to how I made my CGI Comics. Daz Studio is my primary creative environment. I create characters, build sets, direct the scenes, and then use advanced editing to put it all together. I do the same thing with AI, but instead of rendered images, it’s music videos and short films.

And what has the reception been like?

Oh, very similar. We, as artists, process everything through a creative filter. How you make something is as important as what you make. It’s like being a chef and asking how your food tastes and the person refuses to answer until they know where every ingredient came from, how you baked it, and what seasonings you used. If they approve of your recipe, they will say it tastes good. If they think you are breaking their baking rules, they will say it tastes horrible. And they will do this before they even take a bite.

And you experienced this with your comics?

Yes. Traditional artists, with no experience in the CGI workflow, were suddenly all experts and knew everything there was to know about how 3D comics were made. In parallel, people who do not use AI tools think everything is created by just typing out some prompts. I did a course for Digital Art Live and the Daz Studio store where I combined AI tools with CGI, all without giving up your artistry, for the ease and speed of artificial intelligence.
--------------------------------

You can read the whole thing here: https://slash-music.com/exclusive-interview-drew-spence

And Episode 01 of the Short Films they were referencing. Age of Forgotten Heroes: The Storm, the Serpent and the Siren

David R

Griffin Avid said:

My interview is up with Slash Music where I answer some tough questions about AI use. I explain how similar the Daz workflow is to creating using AI Tools.

https://slash-music.com/exclusive-interview-drew-spence

And there's even a very accurate analogy thrown in.

Here's an excerpt for a preview: 

---------------------------------------

You were actively creating stories and lore before AI. What is different now that you’ve incorporated AI?

Not much really. It’s a very similar workflow to how I made my CGI Comics. Daz Studio is my primary creative environment. I create characters, build sets, direct the scenes, and then use advanced editing to put it all together. I do the same thing with AI, but instead of rendered images, it’s music videos and short films.

And what has the reception been like?

Oh, very similar. We, as artists, process everything through a creative filter. How you make something is as important as what you make. It’s like being a chef and asking how your food tastes and the person refuses to answer until they know where every ingredient came from, how you baked it, and what seasonings you used. If they approve of your recipe, they will say it tastes good. If they think you are breaking their baking rules, they will say it tastes horrible. And they will do this before they even take a bite.

And you experienced this with your comics?

Yes. Traditional artists, with no experience in the CGI workflow, were suddenly all experts and knew everything there was to know about how 3D comics were made. In parallel, people who do not use AI tools think everything is created by just typing out some prompts. I did a course for Digital Art Live and the Daz Studio store where I combined AI tools with CGI, all without giving up your artistry, for the ease and speed of artificial intelligence.
--------------------------------

You can read the whole thing here: https://slash-music.com/exclusive-interview-drew-spence

And Episode 01 of the Short Films they were referencing. Age of Forgotten Heroes: The Storm, the Serpent and the Siren

Great interview.  You gotta lotta stuff goin on! :D