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

Griffin Avid · February 21

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.

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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 · February 21

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 · February 28

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

kenmo · February 28

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 · May 25

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 · May 27

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 · May 27

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 · 1:12PM

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.

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 · 2:21PM

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"

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