Does my Art look big in this?

[Hoagy]

Your colouring is so extreme Darren. How much time of each piece does it take up?

[Darren Stephens]

Your colouring is so extreme Darren. How much time of each piece does it take up?

Cheers Tony! The coloring is my favorite bit to do and probably the fastest. Timewise, its hard to pinpoint, as I tend to work on my pics in my spare time....which is quite a rare occurrence at the mo, what with kids and such, as I'm sure you know....!  ;-)

[Hoagy]

Yuuup! Lotta coffee

[Phuz]

the first page of GUN CULTURE...

[Albion]

Cad Bane from The Clone Wars.

[Steven Austin]

Haven't been here for a while - ha I say that everytime I come here. Phuz, lovely page - great colours, got a real old school vibe about it. Here's a commission I recently completed for someone, think you'll recognise em.

[Darren Stephens]

Steven, that's incredible dude!

[SuperSurfer]

Excellent, Steve. Bet you would do a great Swamp Thing. Do tell who it's for.

Brilliant recent work on this thread though my teeth feel funny as I look at that quality Nintendo brained mutant fox.

[SIP]

Just for fun, A4 Judge Anderson in pen and ink.

[ThryllSeekyr]

Hey remember these......





Most admittedly they are based on the work of others, but rearranged by me using Paint. I redid all the lettering in the former picture myself using the fonts from Paint as well.

Despite my plagerism, I always been rather proud of these, but when they were entered into the art competition that were been held on this forum but when I did them. The board here was very quite about it and I started getting all this junk emails that have stopped a few years earlier, but they were really plaguing my system. This was on the computer I brought back in 2006-7 just after I got back from a few years down south in Sydney since the beginning of 2001.

I have another of Slaine hand drawn by me hitching a ride on the official Flying Nun



I will find it later!

[antodonnell]

Currently trying something non 2000AD related to challenge myself.

[Steven Austin]

Wow Ant, that's fantastic, figure work and perspective are spot on.

[antodonnell]

Thanks Steve, this one used a 3d model blockout for the bridge which was matched to my initial sketch to suit the perspective. The characters were then adjusted to fit the 3d model by redrawing them accurately to fit on the bridge. I found this easier based off the 3d model as it gave me a clearer view of the scene in 3d space.

Recently I'm trying to mix my skillsets using 3d and 2d to make producing images quicker but also allowing more time for art and creative choices.

[amines2058]

Hi Ant. I am trying to do similar at the moment, using 3D images to improve the quality of my 2d stuff. What software do you use for this.
Currently I use sketch-up to create a blocked out version of the scene I want, adjust camera angles to suit what I am after then add the shadows.
This image will then be exported as a Jpeg and inserted into manga studio as a layer. I used this recently on something I did and found it helped me immensely in setting out scenes and also retaining continuity between frames.
I am also interested to see how others would approach this as this is something I have only recently started doing.

[antodonnell]

Hi amines2058,

For this piece I used Maya but you can use any 3d program really. The program choice comes from what you want to get out of it.

The workflow was as follows:

- Roughs and thumbnails to define my idea
- In Maya I produced the bridge blockout very simple no major details
- Setup the lighting to work with my desired composition
- Rendered an image out that matched the dimensions in pixels of my Manga Studio file.
- Then did the same as you and I used it as a layer and drew over it.
- The characters were drawn freehand to match the bridge perspective but were still based on the original   
  thumbnail.
- From here it's pencils, inks and colours as normal.

I know 3d software can assist more by rendering out different details in layers. For example

- Initial lighting pass
- Finer texture detail
- Flat shader applied to the model to generate instant colour flats for all 3d elements
- An outline shader to even provide first pass inks.
- An ambient occlusion render to give ambient lighting information.

All these elements can be used as masks and or as a base for colouring. My next project, a short comic will be using all these methods to hopefully improve my speed and also be flexible.

I've seen many uses for 3d in comics and I'm not a huge fan for the most part as it never gels well with the hand drawn work alongside it. My recent images have all been experiments in finding that nice middle ground where it all works.

I feel the pay off will come when doing sequentials as the consistency will be perfect but also if all the above passes are rendered out production time will be decreased a lot.

The usefulness of 3d art vs just drawing it also comes down to how quick you can create the models vs drawing.