Your First Panel:
Today we’ll talk a bit about setting up your first panel for a comic. While we will get into some specifics about how to get your comic started, these tutorials aren’t geared towards those who are looking for all of the ins and outs of running a web comic. There are already plenty of books and websites that cover that subject. These tutorials are going to give you some things that are unique to doing a webcomic in 3D. While 3D and 2D comics have many things in common, there are aspects that make it much easier than the traditional comic. On the flip side, you will also encounter some hurdles.
Example1
Let’s take a look at example one on the left. For a larger version, click here. If you click on the example image to the left, you’ll be able to download the Daz file for this scene. I’ll supply these with each example image from now on. When I look at this image, there are two things that stand out to me. One is the lack of shadowing. The other problem is that the 2nd Emotiguy looks to be nothing but a clone of the first. These two issues are shown here in a very basic way but they do point out some things that you will probably run into when you first start working with your 3D comic.
While there may be some occasions where you don’t want any sort of shadowing at all, most of the time it makes it look like your characters are just floating in space. You really loose a sense of object placement without them. It also just looks all together unnatural. Learning how to use basic lighting in Daz doesn’t take that much effort and for most scenes you can get away with sticking to the three point lighting system which you can see in Example2. For a larger version of Example2, click here. Lighting is an art form all on it’s own and it’ll take you some time to get the hang of it. It can set the mood of a particular scene which can be very important at times.
Example2
One of the easiest traps to fall into when working with program such as Daz Studio is that a lot of your characters may start looking the same. Start off by giving them subtle differences changing their color, adding accessories, changing hair styles and use different outfits. In the case with our second Emotiguy, we can change him to another color so that he’d be easier to differentiate from the first. You might also change the color of his gloves or his shoes. In the end, your readers will have an easier time figuring out who is who.
Next week we’ll talk more about getting things ready so that you can render a scene. Keep practicing with Daz and feel free to e-mail me if you have an specific questions on anything that I’ve talked about. I’ll do my best to help you out if I can.
