Heloo!

I'm looking for info, comments or suggestions.

Working on my first sci fi novel. It is a blast. I'm writing it for me, so I know I'll really like it. :P

I have been seeing a lot of graphic novels / comics posted, including Anomaly. (which is amazing, thanks to Boni for letting me know)

From what I saw, he created the images in poser, stripped the color out, and then "colored" them himself. I'm wondering why?

I've created a comic effect in PS using actions that I picked up here at Renderosity, and they look good, but not as good as a firefly render. I know the FF render is not "realistic" but the Firefly render is better than the comic book effect IMHO. Is this just a matter of taste? Are there comic/graphic novel rules that people just expect hand colored images?

I'm thinking of putting it out as a "picture novel" like my first kid's book, 1 pic per chapter. But, if people would prefer the story in Graphic Novel form as well, I know I would enjoy doing that even though it will take a long time to make all those images.

Anybody have experience in these areas? Do you prefer comic book effect in Poser vs. PhotoShop?

That sounds like a fun project, regarding Anomaly i think there are some reasons they prefer doing it the way they do, but its just a guess. But by not relying on the actual renders in Poser they have better control of the style they want. As they can manually paint everything and make it look the same, quickly adjust lighting etc. From the tutorial video its pretty clear that he uses every thinkable way to make the comic get along as fast as possible, whether its modelling stuff themselves, buying varies products or make it in 2D. Which makes kinda sense I think, because if you render some in Poser and some are in 2D, and some objects are bought etc. there is a huge chance that they will look differently depending on who made them and then you also need to match the 3d lighting with the 2D etc. Secondly I think if its a pure 3D render the comic might simply look to "clean", which can be a bit boring I think if you have to read pages after pages. Last if its hand painted it gets the style of you as an artist, which I think is important for any person making a comic book.

So personally for me and don't really have any experience in this area, I prefer photoshop simply because I find it more interesting to look at.

This is great! Everyone has their own reasons for the workflow they use. Brian Haberlin who created Anomaly prefered to combine digital techniques with traditional with hand painting as well as digital painting to make it more organic and tactile (if I remember what he said, please correct me if you like, I don't recall exactly). In doing so he switched back and forth between tools and techniques to get what he wanted.

A lot of people have their own workflow as I said. Perhaps if our users who create graphic novels and comics could come in and voice their preferences we can help our member with his new project.

Thanks! 3d and boni.

Sadly, I'm no artist, not much of a Poser user for that matter. I cannot draw a straight line. I suppose I could color, but probably would go outside the lines. Haven't found it that hard to keep a style going (perhaps I have none). For me, the characters and action of the chapter have to be shown and I usually keep the same settings for FF. Lighting depends on where they are or time of day. Best i can do is use Poser, and some PS.

I am hoping some comic ppl chime in.

The anomaly thing looked awesome, I just hope the story, characters and dialogue were as good.

Superman #1 was released in 1939. Batman #1 was released in 1940. The 1940's grade of paper and the printers they where printed on and the ink .Well lets just say there where more limits then possibilities .

The 2016 $100 dollar scanners that can scan any thing to day. In 1985 you could pay $1000's for a commercial grade photo .Or take the photo your self It would be a bit warp from the angle and some glare. never good enough.

In the 80's give or take decades .DC,Marvel,etc etc hade 4 to make the comic. penciler ,colorer ,inker the art, writer ink in the words.

DC,Marvel,etc etc ink in black ,does not help girls look pretty ,makes Batman look scarier thou.

This is the style every one thinks of when they think comics.

grimm fairy tales "google" tend not to ink there girls with black ink.

It's 2016 we have unlimited options now.I would advise against mix media look thou.

Since your not a skilled Artist .I'd advise renders and find some 2D filters you like. PS has endless filters n there's topaz labs "google".

I've been a Artist for Decades ,never drew in a straight line ;)

You can't get computers to get a DC,Marvel,etc etc inked look ,So Don't bother trying. Just find some cool look with filters. don't worry about inked look at all.

FWIW, I love the look of Poser 11's comic book mode. I think comics are best when they're not trying to look too realistic, partly because of the uncanny valley effect, partly because comics are about storytelling, so you don't want readers to linger too long on a single panel.

I'm still trying to perfect the look of Poser output for Japanese otome game style artwork. I made a demo game using Ren'Py and Poser renders, but I plan on putting in new graphics which are closer to the otome game cel-shaded genre than just photorealistic anime-style renders.

Hand colouring or leaving the renders alone is purely a matter of personal choice. Many DC titles use CG elements now, but are "hand" coloured and inked. Mechmaster's Second Empire graphic novel uses untouched renders.

Both look good to me.

willshetterly posted at 10:43AM Thu, 29 September 2016 - #4285083

FWIW, I love the look of Poser 11's comic book mode. I think comics are best when they're not trying to look too realistic, partly because of the uncanny valley effect, partly because comics are about storytelling, so you don't want readers to linger too long on a single panel.

Good points. The closer renders get to "realism", the easier it is to spot something that looks off. With a comic book, every frame is going to be subject to this risk. Probably better to go for a less realistic look, which, strange as it seems, is easier for people to accept.

I have the anomaly graphic novel on in "app"Format on my android tablet ( Must actually finish it someday)

I loved the look of "anomaly" because it has a very "illustrated"look much like the acrylic paintings of Sci fi cover artist Michael Whelan.

But for "comics" I strongly dislike like 3D rendered images dropped into panel layouts and called "comics", but that is just my old school marvel Comics bias.

If you have a really good cel shading render engine and choose your content carefully ,you can create a "hand inked" look using only 3D content as I did with these sanctumart models several years ago with Maxon C4D's toon module.

https://issuu.com/anabran/docs/rdl7

Wolf, beautiful work, mate. Why am I not surprised? :)

The Second Empire graphic novel I mentioned seems to work well, even though it's straight renders. Take a look if you've not already seen it.

http://www.mechmaster.co.uk/cg-lair/daleks_page1.htm

People maybe like the classic look of comics rather than straight out 3d because that is what we are used to. They seem to be imbued more with the personality and style of the artist. It's the same with photographs. For years photographers tried to photograph things without light leaks, film grain, blur etc, but today while many photographs may not be taken well, the quality is vastly improved. These can sometimes look too "sterile" to our eyes, hence the number of filters and apps that add these things back onto our photos.

Thanks everyone. Your comics are very cool. Dalek renders also very cool. I was particularly interested in the Daleks in space. Looks great even straight renders, realistic, but c'mon it's flying daleks and I don't think they're real, are they?

Thanks for all the comments. I looked at the filters, have some, have a PS comic action that looks pretty good.

I'm old school comics, but as Darren says, it is what I am used to, or was used to. Haven't picked up a comic book in some time. There are so many options in publishing these days and I do enjoy making the images that go along with my story. For me, the story and characters have to be great stand alone. The pictures are a bonus and hopefully the reader gets a peek at what I was thinking.

My renders don't look realistic (doh!) so I'm okay there. ;) Here is sample of a movie poster I put together using the comic action I purchased here at renderosity. Title goes below their feet, center, but this is just a first draft. It looks comic-book-ish better at full res, but low res for upload here. There is a little nudity here, but mostly (not entirely) covered. It's not a children's book.

I've never done the story text like in wolf's work, but I "think" I can extract it from the book.

Just some feedback for Poser users here and it is limited experience so take it with a grain of salt. I published a children's book with poser images. Most, 99% of the feedback was positive. ie. "amazing pictures," "images really helped," "fantastic full color pics" BUT, and this is just my humble opinion, the "snootier" reviewers didn't like them. These were what I call the entrenched old school children's book snobs. (just my opinon, I'm sure they're lovely albeit snobby people) The readers loved them. My feeling is that they are looking for water-colored or painted images. They don't like 3d images. Maybe they think it's cheating. Who knows.

Anyway, thanks again. Much appreciated. Any other ideas much appreciated.

"Wolf, beautiful work, mate. Why am I not surprised? :)"

Thanks Sam it helps that I have a previous 20 year career in 2D graphic design for print.

Not much time for 2D illustrations these days as I am bogged down with animated film stuff.

"From what I saw, he created the images in poser, stripped the color out, and then "colored" them himself. I'm wondering why?"

I personally don't like the end result of just applying some PS actions to straight-up renders. Opposed to the OP, I don't think the images done that way look good at all. Then again others may not like the more hand drawn -like illustrative style I'm striving to go towards with my work. People appreciate different things and for different reasons.

When I'm creating an image, I much prefer the liberty I get with Photoshop and my Wacom tablet using the render(s) only as a starting point to be shattered, mutilated and bend into the final form. I don't like something in a render? Fine, I can draw over it. I don't have an appropriate beard model? No problem, I might as well draw the beard I want. I totally understand the design choices made by the makers of Anomaly.

I mostly make just still images but with a style reminiscent of comics. For example here is a simple image composed of Poser renders post-worked in Photoshop.

12rounds,

Yep I think a lot of people would love that image. Do you have the original poser image to show what it looked like before you colored it? I'm not locked into anything, may not even do the graphic novel, but I am interested in what everyone does. I liked the look of Anomaly. He said he could color one page pretty quickly.

I'm guessing that if I only went with a comic PS action, some people would love it, marvel at the detail, wonder how it was done. Others would say it's not creative enough, looks machine done, etc. etc. etc.

Some people will like it, some won't, but I do like yours.

"Do you have the original poser image to show what it looked like before you colored it?"

Here. But it's not just about coloring. In this instance I merely changed the underlying images via filtering and drawing on top of them. The beautiful part is that the renders don't need to be very high quality and any errors can just be smoothed over via post working. Sometimes even preview renders are completely sufficient.

Another option akin to 12rounds idea is to use poser as it was originally intended, as a 'design resource'.

You don't need an expensive lightbox or even tracing paper, just print out your render, tape the render to a window, tape a plain bit of paper over that then trace with a pen or pencil.

A nice effect, in the style of Alphonse Mucha, can be gained by rendering the background without a figure, trace it with a thin fine fineliner (say 0.5). Now print and trace your figure with a felt-tip. Cut the figure out, paste on the background with a glue-stick and photocopy.

This is also good for creating graphics novels as you can add the speech bubbles in the same way. Which is how traditional comics artists work.

Some may say thats cheating, but it didn't do the very rich and famous Jack Vettriano any harm :)

http://www.alfonsmucha.org/the-complete-works.html http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4310274.stm

Oh, I nearly broke a few ribs laughing there. You just reminded me why I got into Poser in the first place. Kind of a slap in the face to realize I completely forgot about and abandoned that approach years ago, seduced as I was by all the shiny new stuff rendering could do.

Thank you for that; I may well go and try a few ideas out.

@ mr Sparky - I just "repurposed" an old scanner as a light box.

Nice idea there Sam!

Another thing thats fun to try is do a line only render, reverse that image, print and trace it. Now apply that trace to a piece of timber, and use a cheap pyrography (wood burning) pen.

A variation of this is to a dedicated engraving tool or dremel style multi-tool. Lidl's (a UK/european supermarket) sometimes does these for around £9-10 each. Or theres amazon or ebay.

Just remember using these tools can be like trying to draw with a hammer, so keep your render line nice and thick. Also to get a good solid line you'll probably need to go over your burn/engraved line more than once, which means slippage will happen.

Most important if using MDF or marine ply to wear a facemask as this material contains horrible chemical stuff.

You can also trace and burn into thin (3mm) sheets of acrylic "glass". Engraving doesn't work so well as this stuff is designed to be scratch resistant. Again wear a decent mask and safety googles if burning acrylic "glass" as the fumes ARE really nasty.

On very small pieces lighting the edge of the "glass" with lectroluminescent (EL) wire or hi-intensity LED's can give an extra cool effect. A good source of cheap hi-intensity LED's is poundstore USB powered lightbulbs.

My dad got into pyrography in the last few years of his life. I bought him a nice kit for a birthday present; my stepmom has it now but I may ask to borrow it.

And hear I always thought that pyrography was bad, and that the courts said you would know it when you saw it. ;) Doh!

No, that's photography. Hard photography. Or is it phonography? Anyhow, one of them is hard and it's bad. Can lead to hairy palms and blindness.

Excuse me while I get my glasses then go shave my hands.

One should always wear there rubbers ;)

I use toon materials in poser. quick and easy to apply olivier's art materials (sadly I think no longer available), and semidieu's toon software for applying them in a few clicks. I render in firefly and then postwork in photoshop include applying a toon filter over the top of the picture. I use some compositing - in poser where I can using screen caps from unity scenes that I have bought (I don't bring poser into unity because it is tricky and I don' thtink the toon textures would work well like that) Love esther

and

I often apply HDRIs onto a dome inside poser and take different angled shots from that which usually looks quite good.

I use comic life by plasq.com for making my speech balloons and panels. Hope that helps. Love esther

I do sometimes use the comic renderer in poser as well.

Here's a render using my technique with some DOF in poser:-

The tanktop on V4 was a M4 top that I just used the fitting room to make it fit. I put a grey layer over the top of the render, and I set it to overlay and using dark and light photoshop brushes (dodge and burn) i painted in the wrinkles and folds.

Pinging because I love Estherau and her comic knowledge.

Estherau,

That was great. Thank you.

Thank you Estherau,

Can you tell me approximate time for a single comic page from start to finish? Poser modeling, to render, to plasq, to finished product. Everything seems to take so long for me. A graphic novel seems daunting.

How long is your story? Is it only a page? Is it a novel?

How long does it take you now? How about an example?

If you are asking me,

I'm currently on Chapter 20, 180 pages so far. It is a novel. I expect another 5-10 chapters to finale. I'm only writing and "maybe" doing 1 pic per chapter. Usually takes a couple days for the shot, sometimes longer with problems. Is that what you're asking?

Hi, well the setting up the scene and dressing the characters and putting things in the scene takes the longest. So if my scene is just say a loungeroom, then a few pages can be quite fast, otherwise a page can take a couple of days. however as you go onthings get faster, you can reuse scenes and just change them a bit, you can re-use renders eg zoom in on a characters eye or something (I always render large so i can do that). The plasq bit is very fast. The postwork of the renders doesn't take me long either. My work flow is increased by using semidieu's advanced library manager. I can right click on a pose and just choose upper body or hand or head or arm with or without hand etc, and the library manager helps me find my content really fast as I can have severeal runtimes or virtual merged runtimes open at once etc. I would have trouble working without this utility. I hope it is still available as semidieu hasn't been active for awhile now. Love esther

I am going to pay someone to dress and put hair on all my characters so they are in my character folders ready to add to a scene. ie a poser secretary. She's coming around to my place this saturday to make a start.

Estherau,

Thank you so much. That really helps. Also I found the Library manager on runtimedna and posercontent. It's on sale now so I picked it up. I've been saving my characters dressed and hairy to reuse. It helps a lot. A 'poser secretary' how lucky are you! I still don't know if I'll ever do it, but it will be great fun to try. First, finish the novel. Doh!

Thanks again.

Hi, well the story takes a long time so any shortcut is a good short cut. I have other tips. HDRIs are awesome. Love esther

This was for a guru application, specific character types.

A comic series in development.

Just a sample for a rounded portfolio of styles.

A personal graphic novel series. Fan-fiction. Using Poser, Photographs and Clip Studio Art.

Nice work!!!

Boni posted at 11:06PM Sun, 08 October 2017 - #4285025

This is great! Everyone has their own reasons for the workflow they use. Brian Haberlin who created Anomaly prefered to combine digital techniques with traditional with hand painting as well as digital painting to make it more organic and tactile (if I remember what he said, please correct me if you like, I don't recall exactly). In doing so he switched back and forth between tools and techniques to get what he wanted.

A lot of people have their own workflow as I said. Perhaps if our users who create graphic novels and comics could come in and voice their preferences we can help our member with his new project.

I've started working on a graphic novel using Cycles toon shader

RorrKonn posted at 2:53PM Thu, 12 October 2017 - #4285078

You can't get computers to get a DC,Marvel,etc etc inked look ,So Don't bother trying. Just find some cool look with filters. don't worry about inked look at all.

ZBrush matcaps get pretty close, if not indistinguishable, from retro style comics to the more modern looks.

Some examples using a set of free comic shaders in zbrush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odajX0JmB6I

Search youtube for a host of other methods for getting line art and cell shaded rendering from zbrush and other packages, even DS and Poser. Black Sun Comics does a pretty nice job using DS and photoshop.

Should also be noted, Marvel and DC have been using 3D models in a number of their titles for years now.

It's the 'realism' renders you don't see a whole lot of in the comic world cause they just don't seem to be as appealing to a wide audience as the more traditional line art work. Except when it comes to the adult comics, then that's a bit different. But if it's done well, and it's not obvious you're using one of the stock figures in the work then it might gain traction. I just see a whole lot of poser-rendered amateur comics online where it's extremely obvious which figures are being used. A lot of them don't even bother morphing V4 or M4 to look like someone other than V4 or M4, even using their default textures. But when its done well, you often can't tell if the line art was drawn by hand or rendered from a 3D model.

AmbientShade posted at 8:45AM Sun, 15 October 2017 - #4315901

RorrKonn posted at 2:53PM Thu, 12 October 2017 - #4285078

You can't get computers to get a DC,Marvel,etc etc inked look ,So Don't bother trying. Just find some cool look with filters. don't worry about inked look at all.

ZBrush matcaps get pretty close, if not indistinguishable, from retro style comics to the more modern looks.

Some examples using a set of free comic shaders in zbrush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odajX0JmB6I

Search youtube for a host of other methods for getting line art and cell shaded rendering from zbrush and other packages, even DS and Poser. Black Sun Comics does a pretty nice job using DS and photoshop.

Should also be noted, Marvel and DC have been using 3D models in a number of their titles for years now.

It's the 'realism' renders you don't see a whole lot of in the comic world cause they just don't seem to be as appealing to a wide audience as the more traditional line art work. Except when it comes to the adult comics, then that's a bit different. But if it's done well, and it's not obvious you're using one of the stock figures in the work then it might gain traction. I just see a whole lot of poser-rendered amateur comics online where it's extremely obvious which figures are being used. A lot of them don't even bother morphing V4 or M4 to look like someone other than V4 or M4, even using their default textures. But when its done well, you often can't tell if the line art was drawn by hand or rendered from a 3D model.

There are several options in Poser. I used the Superfly render and layered it with the comic book shader in preview mode