I guess I should have given a bit more context from the start, but this comic is just something I'm doing because I think I have a story to tell, I enjoy rendering with Poser (and doing some postwork in Photoshop), and a few people have expressed interest in hearing/seeing it. I'm not getting paid (or asking to be paid or planning on ever being paid), there's no assignment or deadline. So the whole thing is really a no pressure environment for me. It's as much about the journey as anything else - I'm doing this to improve my digital artistry and storytelling abilities as well as seeing if I have anything to say. Hopefully a couple of people will find it entertaining or interesting into the bargain.

Now on to the good stuff:

Sam, I'll give creating my own global lighting a go in my next page - and I do have shadows off for the floor in these.

Zarabanda, If/when I use that wall prop again in future, I'll definitely redo the texture and darken the base color. I hear you about the ceiling, but I figured adding a ceiling would have made my lighting life even harder than it already was - what's your approach to lighting when using a completely enclosed space? Also I've done a ton (well at least four months or so) of pre-production work in several other areas (textures, sets, props, faces, morph settings, and so on), and have probably short changed lighting a bit. Maybe I got a bit impatient to get started (the story is constantly writing itself in my head, but I can't get the visuals together quick enough it seems), but I figured I'd start generating the pages and smooth out the rough edges as I go along, it just felt like it was time to start putting things together and seeing some results.

About the cameras - how much room for variation is there really? It seems all there is is positioning and focal adjustment - is there something else I'm missing? I understand having multiple cameras around to help with posing and assembling a scene, but as far as actually rendering is it really valuable to have lots of different cameras? Obviously I haven't really experimented with it too much as I couldn't find a real use for it, so any info here would be enlightening.

PapaBlueMarlin - You're right about the drop shadows, I'll either shrink them or drop them completely. Would you go with a different shape for the speech boxes? I guess I just sort of defaulted my approximation of standard speech/thought bubbles. What have you or others used that's worked? Would square make more sense - elipses seem to waste space needlessly. I have a problem with getting rid of the thought bubbles - though I don't plan on going to straight narrative much, I still like to reserve unattached square boxes for that - would people get to confused if I used squares for everything?

For the text, again I just defaulted to standard comic "LetterOMatic". I doubt I'd use impact as it's not neutral enough - it's a more emphatic font - but I'll look into something more narrow, and also try reducing the font size some. If you noticed I went from 16 in the first page, to 12 in the second. I think I'll give 10 a try and see if it's legible.

Again you guys are great, I really appreciate the insights - keep them comming if you've got more.

Thanks again,

Unzipped

PS. If anyone here is actually interested in continuing on with seeing the story unfold (fingers crossed) you can email me at shulkophile@yahoo.com and I'll tell you more about it. I'm not trying to advertise here or anything like that, I'm really just after artistic criticism so I don't want to comment more about the story aspects here.