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Filatoon has helped me considerably, though I'm looking to do a webcomic rather than deal with the headaches of publishing. Got a couple things to fix in Comic Life, but it's looking better than my older stuff.
That looks amazing, @TesseractSpace! Do you use already-enabled Filatoon content exclusively, or do you use something to set up your Filatoon elements?
I've been using 3Diva's Easy Filatoon tools. They make adapting content a breeze. And it helps to set a mostly consistent look for things, though I really need to make note of my settings so I can keep it up
That's awesome that you've got a book out! Congratulations! And thank you for sharing the cover art with us! :D
This has been one of my favorite threads over the years, and I've gained a lot of great know-how and tips from a lot of the people here. So I'm very thankful for you all!
I'm gonna have to fire that up. I picked it up not too long ago, but haven't been able to use it yet!
Right. I haven't posted in a long while. I rummaged through an old hard drive and manage to bring up an old collection of pages I never finished. I'm not sure I eve will.
Cheers!
Sgts. Cleo & Inez: Hell to Pay | Daz assets | Blender render | Clip Studio Paint post-edit
these look really cool
I apologize for not having more time to post a longer comment, but I wanted to post a quick note congratulating you on doing an EXCELLENT job with this manga. This is a stellar job of turning 3D source into something that can definitely pass for hand-drawn comics. I really like the work on the hair and your tone choices are well considered. WELL DONE!
Linwelly mmitchell_houston:
Thanks so much for the encouragement and the kind words. I stepped back from this sort of pursuit a year ago. Priorities in the workaday world just got in the way. But I do review some of my early attempts, and it's heartening to hear that it's received well. Maybe someday I'll jump back into it.
Cheers!
ArtAngel,
Thank you! I'll take that as a positive endorsement.
Cheers!
My feeble attempt of creating some cartoons to post on Renderositty, Facebook and instagram.
Here is another one.
kenmo,
LOL! It makes you wonder if elephants also have to cope with prostrate issues.
Cheers!
Only when they are lying flat on their face! ;)
3WC,
Ha ha ha! I'm not sure which is funnier: my typo or the mental image of an elephant lying flat on its face.
My bad, I admit.
Thanks for the catch.
Cheers!
Sorry but I had prostrate cancer in 2012 and now I have bladder cancer, which is what the cartoon is about.
Oo offense intended, but I see no humor in any cancer.
kenmo,
Sorry for coming off as insensitive. I thougth you were referring to run-of-the-mill prostate woes that come with age.
It goes without saying, it's important to keep an eye out for unusual signs in one's bodily discharge. That sort of vigilance may be life saving. I have a handful of older relatives who fell to cancer over the years ... but none involving the urinary system.
As I've pointed it out elsewhere, comics aren't just a form of juvenile entertainment. Serious issues can also be valid subject matter. Many single page or poster size illustrations are the means for public awareness campaigns, communicating health issues, for example. In some countries grappling with social ills or political repression, comics have become a valid way to express concern, maybe even to raise mass awareness or protest. That leaves a wide latitude for a lot of themes, serious or otherwise, for comics creators to tackle.
Cheers!
I would like to appologize as perhaps I am a bit too sensitive to the issue. Mom passed awy from occular melanoma (cancer of the eye). I truly appreciate your warm and kind response. Please take care.
Absolutely love those results!
I'm still crawling my way through my comic...
@csaa and @strangefate
These both look fantastic! Still trying to find a workflow that allows me to produce my own story in the style I prefer, but it's slow going.
StrangeFate and Xandyr78,
Thanks for the kind feedback. This thread has been a never-ending source of encouragement and inspiration. Best wishes on your comics projects. Hope you continue sharing.
Cheers!
I was wondering how many of you use thumbnails for your comics?
For me, they are invaluable. Because I work with line art, I cannot scale my renders up or down more than just a few percent. If I dramatically change the size of the renders, the lines will get much bigger or smaller (I hope that makes sense). Although varied line thicknesses from panel-to-panel isn't a big problem, it does look weird if a panel suddenly uses a HUGE brush (say a 20-pixel brush, which can happen if I scale up too much) when every single panel around it is using a 10px line. If there's no story reason to make that one panel more dramatic then it's a distraction.
My thumbnails are created on a blank sheet of paper and, after I'm satisfied that it's close to what I want, I scan it and then place the panels and lettering in CSP. From the full page scan, I cut out each panel's thumbnail and paste it into its frame. Anyway, laying out the panels and word balloons/text before I start creating the renders works well for me, as that lets me know how much space I actually have for the artwork. If you note the blue-line panels, you can see the panel measurements written in each one.
Here's a spread from the story I'm working on right now: GRAVEYARD SHIFT. These pages are filled with a LOT of dialogue, so I'm doing a lot of odd angles and lighting to try making it look more interesting.
ALSO, I'm aware that, in the middle panel at the bottom of the finished page (on the left), her left arm looks wonky. Her arm is really in a decent pose when viewed from a different angle: with her elbow away from her body and forearm bending down. This looked okay in the original camera angle I chose, but I changed it at the last minute and that's how the weird arm pose got through. If I have time I will go back and fix it, but I have a strict deadline at the end of September, so I'm going to plow ahead and try to get everything done before going back to fix problems.
If you need context for the story: She is a nurse caring for the old man who is 93 and dying. They've set up a hospital bed in the old man's den. As you can see, his son is processing his emotions about all that's going on.
As usual, my workflow is to make at least 2 renders in Poser 13 (using the Comic Book Preview to get the line art). I then layer them in Clip Studio Paint 3 Pro. Graveyard Shift will run about 10 pages; these are pages 4 & 5. The image provided here has been shrunk by 50%.
PS: I realized that I missed lettering that wide panel on the page to the right. Went back and fixed it. I found that writing the dialogue in helps me by giving me a strong idea of how much space it will take up.
Thumbnails really shouldn't be optional, in my opinion, at least not until you've really grown accustomed to visual storytelling. I love seeing your process, and how the simplistic, sketchy thumbnails suffice to help you lay the page out much more effeciiently. Appreciate the peek behind your curtain!
mmitchell_houston,
Thanks for sharing your work! Please see my remarks below ...
A comic artist posted a video explaining his workflow. He starts with thumbnails and sketches too, pencilling them down in a notebook (those sturdy ones by Moleskine, I think, that stand up to revisions and repeated erasures). At this early stage, he focuses on the overall flow and cohesion of the story as told, primarily, through panels. Working with phyisical pages also helps capture the story beats: timing a "reveal" with a page turn, for example. It's only after he has the whole story in hand (literally) that he switches to digital using CSP.
If I understand things correctly, the limitations of raster images when scaling up is the motivation for re-drawing the line art as vector layers instead. That, plus the chance for the illustration to make corrections and to introduce artistic flair, such as varying the line thickness to capture perspective depth or to express a particular mood.
I use Blender for generating line art. Blender's Grease Pencil has an option to vary the thickness of the line depending on how close or how far it is from the front plane of the camera. I render the image big enough to overcome any pixelation should I need to enlarge it in the comic panels. As I'm working in CSP, I also draw in lines (or erase them) to adjust the line art.
Have you ever used the CSP's feature that generates vector line art from an image, adding hatching and shading along the way? I've tried it on occasion, but depending on the input image I get mixed results.
It's often said that comics is a visual medium, but I don't believe this is wholly so. There are text meant for the eye; then there are words meant for our internal ears. Cadence and rhythm matters. TV saturates our culture and, if you think about it, sitcoms pack as much dialog as possible within the shortest amount of time. (Err, Mrs. Maizel -- can you slow that down a bit, please? ) Subconscioulsy we may we writing dialog at that volume and pace, like a fire hose!
The comics that I've truly enjoyed track story beats using a combination of panels with dialog and panels where characters communicate via facial expression or body language. Just as good music has varying rythm, dialog-free panels help pace and punctuate the flow of the story.
Comics written for grown ups ... that's a refreshing change. I wish you the best.
Cheers!
+1 for thumbnails.
Yours are much more detailed than mine, I often wonder if anyone would be able to tell what my squiggles and shapes mean. They are generally just for me to see the flow and figure out panel size and lettering placement.
Just a nitpick about lettering, looks like you have some crossbar capital "i's" at beginning of sentences even when they are not lone "i's".
examples of my super rough thumbnails.
Thanks for the detailed reply!
Like the guy you quoted, CSP is the final place in terms of the creative process. I also have a step before this level of thumnails: I use TINY little pages and write down what I need to accomplish on that page. That give me the rough estimate of how many pages I'll need for the story. After I have those "story beat thumbnails" done, I move on to this step, a full page of roughs (this is the preceeding page). The roughs are a guideline, though, because I still might change the layout when I get it into CSP.
I don't convert the rasters to vector because it doesn't add much value for the work put in. Poser outputs an OpenGL render that creates WSYWG line art. In other words, what I see on my screen is exactly what renders. I have a lot of control over the line thickness. There is a global setting, but I can go to the materials and adjust them individually (for example, teeth and eyes have much thinner lines that bodies and clothes). Here's a raw output from Poser 13: As you can see, some lines are thicker than others, and the texture on the blanket has differing levels of darkness. All of this is what I feed into CSP, which is why tracing it with vectors doesn't really save me any time.
Here's another thumbnail page ▼ Note that I changed panel 3. If you look above, you'll see that I added a lot of narration to this sequence. I needed this because I didn't want people to wonder why there were books in a hospital room, and I also need some narration here because I will need the narrator's 3rd-person voice on the last page. I thought it would be weird if I didn't have any narration in the story and then suddenly had some at the end.
Taking time to turn this into a raster isn't worth it, especially since I already know the dimensions of the panel. If I were winging it and needed to up or downscale things (or wanted to extract a panel and turn it into a poster or something), then it might be worth the work. But as it is, I'm already rendering at 600 dpi, so my resolution is pretty good as it is. (btw, this is an earlier version of the final panel: I had to remake the texture on the clipboard to make the text big enough to read. Also, note the hair on both of them and compare it to the final version and you'll see the many edits I had to make there.)
You make a good point about the dialog-free panels. There's actually no dialog at all in the first two pages of this story. In those, it shows her driving to the isolated house and him waking up in his recliner as she pulls into the driveway. I wanted to emphasize just how isolated they are in this house out in the middle of nowhere.
I did get a chuckle out of your last comment and I appreciate it. I'm hoping Rex's dialog adds a bit of maturity as it touches on life and death and dealing with our own mortality. But... this is a horror comic. She's a vampire and uses being a hospice nurse to get access to blood that no one will miss. :-)