Thursday, August 31, 2023

Graveyard Shift 02 - Character Design Lauren Normal

 Rex's original story is brisk in its pacing and doesn't dwell a lot on detailed descriptions. That was perfect for my needs, as I wanted to have a lot of freedom in designing the characters and setting. One thing I did have to go on was the cover illustration he created for the story. As you can see below, it's kind of rough and he doesn't exactly follow his own descriptive text (illustration shows "Loren" as a blonde but the text says she has dark hair).

© 2023 Rex Munsee

Here's the text from the story:

“Evening, Loren,” he smiled at the tall woman, wrapped in a long coat and carrying a large handbag. “You’re right on time.”

“Hi, Victor.” He watched as she set her handbag down, shrugged out of her coat, and picked up her bag. She handed Victor the coat and he folded it over the back of his recliner. As she was smoothing out the wrinkles on her solid green scrubs, he gazed at her coal-black hair which contrasted with her pale skin, which his deceased mother would have said was a “peaches and cream complexion.”


Loren vs Lauren

If you read headlines, then you'll have noticed that I changed the spelling of the lady's name. Although "Loren" is an acceptable spelling of the name, in my experience that spelling is usually for males. "Lauren" is more often for females (and that includes the two to which I am relate). I discussed this with Rex and he was okay with the change.

So, spelling settled, I started work on the character sheet. I don't always do character sheets for my own work, but as I'm working with a collaborator, I decided it was something I should do this time around. As it turned out, it also provided me with space to make notes about the various assets and dial settings I used to refine her look.




As you can see, I'm still playing around with the hair color – I'm not sure how light or dark it will be. I'll need to test it with the dark backgrounds called for in the script before I will make that decision. After this, I have three more character designs to whip up.

As you can see in the notes, the main figure is Victoria 4. I've documented the various dial and prop settings on the sheet (I didn't share these with the writer, as this would only confuse him because he doesn't know anything about Poser or 3D art). My standard workflow is in play: I create 2-to-3 renders in Poser 13 and transfer them to Clip Studio Paint for compositing, setting the tones and clean-up.

◄ Back to Graveyard Shift main page

Monday, August 28, 2023

Graveyard Shift 01

 I've started work on adapting a short story into comic format. The exercise is really just so I can take a stab at doing something that I have not written myself. I also think it would be fun to go back and do some public domain horror stories and try to nail down the style of the old Warren Magazines like EERIE, CREEPY or VAMPIRELLA.

I am starting with a short story titled "Graveyard Shift" by Rex Munsee. He's a member of the Snicker Snack Amateur Press Association (APA), which is a type of fanzine. Rex wrote the story a few issues ago, I read it and decided it would be fun to adapt it. So I wrote to him and he agreed to let me do his story, and the results will be printed in Snicker Snack and the Collectors' Club Newsletter.

The story has simple modeling and set requirements, which is a major criteria for my selection process:

  • Few character designs (there are 4)
  • Limited locations / sets:
    • Exterior:
      • Country road a night with a small car driving on it
      • Country road leads to a nice house in the woods
      • Front of the house as she enters
    • Interior:
      • Living room
      • Bedroom
      • Possibly another part of the house, like a hallway or kitchen area
    • Props (key items):
      • Reclining chair (i.e. La-Z-Boy)
      • Lamp, side table, misc. items
      • Hospital-type bed
      • Hypodermic & medical equipment
      • Set dressings (pictures, furniture, etc.)
      • Video/security camera
      • Video monitor
      • Antique mirror
If you're familiar with my workflow, then you know I start out in Poser (a 3D app) and then render line art which is composited and cleaned up in Clip Studio Paint. This makes the first step is to collect the 3D assets I need, and fortunately I already had most of the items above. The exterior of the country road has proved to be the most problematic because I didn't have exactly the sort of hilly environment I imagined when I started to block out the story and make thumbnails.

As for the character design, we'll cover that next time!

Other Posts in this Series

Thursday, August 24, 2023

Captain America illustration selected by Renderosity

 Awesome news! Another illustration I created was selected by the Renderosity moderators to be included in their Poser Pulse Gallery for August. I think this may have replaced their "Staff picks of the Week" feature.

As you can see, this illustration uses my standard workflow of creating the base renders in Poser (in this case, Poser 13) and then combining them in Clip Studio Paint (in this case, version 3.0). In this case, I also added retro comic book colors with the True Grit comic book color tools.

© 2023 Mike Mitchell
Captain America and Red Skull are TM by Marvel Comics

A link to the image – and my notes on its creation – can be found on Renderosity.

A link to the Poser Pulse gallery can be found here.