Kitbashing a Space Ship 3

Next up, something that's a mix of the previous two:

• Keeps the stair steps of the main unit.
• Brings back the three engines to the rear, but smaller.

© Mike Mitchell

Similar problems continue. The proportions are off and it just doesn't look as cool as the first one.

I still have a few more to go, and these will be rather different from these first three.

Kitbashing a Space Ship 2

When I started kitbashing these spaceships, I spent about four hours one night just going through my Runtime and mixing and matching ships and pushing things together. The next night I reviewed my work and chose the one I thought would work best, and that is the one I posted on Wednesday.

Here's the second one I thought would be workable. The things I liked about it:

• The little "stair steps" behind the main module; I thought they would catch some cool shadows.
• I thought the square engines on the back would be more in style with the square engines on the front.

© 2020 Mike Mitchell

It's not bad, but not good enough to be the "hero ship" of my series. I think the main issues are that it's just too stubby and the stair steps don't really catch the shadows the way I thought they would. They're kind of weak.

Oh well, maybe it can appear as a background ship.

Kitbashing a Space Ship

I'm working on a comic book set in space (more on this soon), and so (naturally) I need a space ship. Unfortunately, I have not yet found a model at Renderosity or Daz3D that suits both my artistic and my story needs.

Specifically, I need a starship that can fulfill two needs:

• It needs to look cool when rendered in b&w (which means more angles and less curves).
• It is about the right size to fit 4-6 crewmen and some cargo.

© 2020 Mike Mitchell

Most ships are too big or too small (Enterprise vs X-Wing Fighter). So I got a bunch of stuff at Renderosity (50% off sales are verrrrry dangerous to my wallet) and decided to mix-and-match it. In modeling terms, this is known as "Kit Bashing" (or kitbashing). And by "modeling," I mean this terms goes back to the days when boys routinely spent a rainy afternoon working on plastic kits wherein they glued together replicas of airplanes, spaceships and cars. My older brother was really into that pastime around ages 10-14; right up until that time he "discovered girls" and then started obsessing about cars.

So, back to my ship. Poking around the stuff I bought from Renderosity, I really liked look of the HeavyLander by shawnaloroc, but its not big enough. So I decided to modify it to create a slightly larger/longer version of the ship by adding elements from Simon-3D's Space Ship Constructor Set 4 (which came with a pre-built ship called the C Hume).


I'm not sure this ship will make the cut, but I think I'm on the right track. A few more experiments (and mixing-and-matching parts) should yield something I can use, so stay tuned: more ships to come!

Workflow: Poser Pro 11 (Comic Book Preview) and Clip Studio Paint

Days Gone 22 - Cabin in the Woods (Blue)

One of the great things about being busy is that I've got a lot of great artwork to show for my past year. One of the not-so-great things is that I frequently neglect to post project updates.

So, yes, I've done a lot of work on Days Gone over the past year. Okay, not a lot, but some. And it's been pretty good. One thing that became apparent was that I needed to include more scenes with the dragon being wicked, so I started to create a scene showing the dragon attacking a village (or at least a farmhouse). And this is what I came up with – regarding the farmhouse in the woods, that is. As you can clearly see, the dragon is nowhere in sight.

At least not yet.

You see, as i created this scene, I kind liked how simple it was. No dragons, zombies or goblins. Just a cabin in the woods as a simple landscape. So, over the past two days, that's exactly what I created: this simple landscape in my signature blues and browns.

Fear not, fantasy fans, as I shall work on adding the dragon any day now.

© 2020 Mike Mitchell

Next Time: Another (long-overdue) update

CCN Captain Epistle Art

I'm working on a cover for the next issue of the Collectors' Club Newsletter and it features our old friend (and unofficial mascot) Captain Epistle. The previous time I illustrated him, I used the Genesis figure in Daz Studio. This time I wanted to do my work in Poser (so I could use the super cool Comic Book Preview, which generates quality line art), so naturally I went back to my old standby Michael 4 as the base figure.

Before working on the cover itself, I whipped up this simple character sketch in a classic Kirby-inspired pose. Very simple, and it did reveal a few things I need to work on:

• The logo needs to be moved up a bit higher on his chest.
• I'm not sure this is the right cape – it's nice, but it doesn't have some of the movement I would like (particularly at the bottom, which is why that curl to our left looks kind of straighter than it should).
• I think the jawline needs to be more square.

Nevertheless, not bad and these changes should help me make him look better when I move him into the cover illustration itself.

This has the usual workflow: Poser Pro 11 and Manga Studio EX5.

© 2019 Mike Mitchell

ULTRA™ Quick Illustraion

Sorry for taking so long between posts these days, folks. I've just been tied up creating art, and that leaves little time to write about it. Here's a quick illustration of my ULTRA™ character.

Ultra flies to the rescue!
© 2019 Mike Mitchell

The usual workflow applies here: Poser Pro 11 and Clip Studio Paint.

Days Gone 22 - Fitting Room to the Rescue (mostly)

Poser has a great feature called the Fitting Room. This is a place where you can do a sort-of cloth simulation in order to make adjustments to clothing props and make them fit the current morphs/pose of the selected figure.

I say it's sort of like the Cloth Room because it really doesn't seem to do full-cloth simulations (like where you can drape cloth from a pole or hang it on someone like a shroud. The Fitting Room is designed to be more limited in scope and just make clothing fit better on problematic or extreme poses.

So, as you saw last time, I was having more trouble with the straps of the chest harness the character wears:

Detail from Days Gone, page 5
© 2019 Mike Mitchell

Both the size and location were not consistent, plus the ring on the side should be under his arm, not forward, almost in line with his nipple. I messed around with this several times in Poser and just couldn't get what I wanted while the straps were conformed to his body. That's when I decided to give the Fitting Room a shot.

Now, I have used the Cloth Room in the past and had watched two quick videos about the Fitting Room, so it wasn't completely alien when I got there. I knew that I would need to define the soft object (the chest harness) and the target (M4 model) and then run a simulation.

Something I did not know was that this works best when all targets load at the 0,0,0 coordinates. When I was in the room I didn't see either top or M4. The viewports were empty. However, the Fitting Room Dialog box showed that the two meshes were available, so I ran the simulation anyway.

And guess what? It worked.

The top was reshaped to Mike's body. Of course, now I had to move the top across the cave and manually place it on his body, but it fit and looked pretty good. However, when it came time to render, I decided that i wanted more control, so I rendered his body and the strap in separate images and then combined them in Clip Studio Paint. I even used the Mesh Transform tool to reshape it just a little so I could get that ring away from his chest and just a little more under his armpit area.

Here are the results of my hard work (this time showing the entire four-panel sequence that spans both page 4 and 5):

Days Gone, pages 4 & 5
© 2019 Mike Mitchell

Needless to say, I'm much happier with the results. The detail on the stomach is more interesting and I think I did a better job on his hair this time around.

Next up: Selling Emotion Through Body Language

Days Gone 21 - Current Project Update

The good news is that I have not been sitting on my butt since my last blog post about this project (wow – 9 months or so?). I've been working on pages, figured out a new system for doing the hero's hair, and have been making progress. I also took some breaks to work on other things, such as Princess of the Trees 2 and a book cover for The Epic Anthology of Galaxy Prime. I will write (and share pics) about both in the future.

I'll play catch-up later and reveal some shots of the comic in progress so far. Here's a look at what I'm working on right now (and how I fixed the problem).

In order to "rough up" the hero a little and give us some visual cues that he had been in a rough fight with the dragon, I decided to add some cuts to the character. A few on his arm and one on his face. Now, the cuts on his arm are pretty easy to place – and if they move a little bit between panels I'm okay with that, as it enhances the hand-drawn look I'm going for.

But the cut on the left side of his face... That's turned out to be problematic.

I'll see if I can find a shot of the original attempt, but the short of it is that I couldn't draw it consistently from panel to panel, especially when his face was moving around. After a few failed attempts (and some discussion with other artists during a DigitalArtLive.com workshop, I decided that I just needed to go back and edit the texture map for the face.

Now, as you may recall (that is if I wrote about it, I can't remember), I have stripped almost all of the texture maps off of my main characters. This gives me crisper shadows and gets rid of the speckling that can be caused by bump and displacement maps.

Here's an example of a figure that still has those maps, and you can clearly see the small dotted effects on his face. Now, there's nothing wrong with this effect at all. in fact, I might keep it for The Princess of the Trees 2 book. But for this one it is an effect I don't want.

Arton Character Design (not used)
© 2019 Mike Mitchell

I do keep textures on some of the props and scenery, but for the main figures in this story I only have textures applied to:

• Hair
• Face (for eyebrows that I hand drew)
• Eyes
• Eyelashes (texture makes them 100% transparent)

So, in regards to the cut on his face I went back to the face map and drew the cut on in Photoshop. It took a few tries to get it placed correctly, but I am ultimately satisfied with the results.

Here's a look at the face map. When in use it is 100% white with only a few black items drawn on it; in this image I'm letting some of the UV guides show through so you can get an idea of where everything is placed.

M4 Face Texture Map
(click to blow it up so you can see the eyebrow details)

So, now that you've seen the underlying mesh and my Photoshop edits, here's how the map looks when applied to the figure across two panels of the comic.

Days Gone, page 5, panels 1 & 2
© 2019 Mike Mitchell

As you can see, him turning his head doesn't affect the placement of the cut on his face. This serves as a perfect guide for any edits I need to make to it during the touch-up phase (in the second panel I shortened it just a little because it looked too close to his mouth).

In the future, I will definitely be relying more on edited texture maps and less on hand-drawn post work to resolve these issues. Which will give me more time to focus on things like why, in the second panel, are the straps so much smaller looking and why has the bottom strap ridden up so much?

Next Time: A long overdue update

I made the "Poser Staff Pick of the Week" list again!

I got another virtual pat on the back yesterday!

Once again one of my illustrations was selected as a "Poser Staff Pick of the Week" at the Renderosity online community. Considering there are thousands of Poser-based illustrations posted there each week, this is a pretty big honor (and the second time it's happened, the first being in June 2017 with a Ms. Marvel illustration).

This time it happened for a simpler illustration that is a character design for the the up-coming comics project, "Princess of the Trees 2: Heart of the Forest." Read other posts for more about this project with writer Roger Keel.

Here's this week's pick: Arton + Bow 3

Arton + Bow 3
© 2018 Mike Mitchell

You can see the entire list of illustrations selected here:
https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2929461


You'll probably need a Renderosity log-in to see the whole list, but trust me, I'm in some pretty amazing company (in fact, if I'm being completely honest, although I think this is an interesting illustration with a good expression and some decent lighting, this isn't the best thing I've done lately).

And before anyone asks, no: there is not a prize or award. It's just an honor to be recognized by my peers.

Days Gone 20: Poser Tip – Cloth Room Settings

I'm doing some experimentation with a dynamic version of the hero's chest harness, and in doing so I came across these useful settings for the Poser Cloth Room:

I found this online at a discussion group. You can find it here:
https://community.hivewire3d.com/threads/pulling-back-the-drapes-the-cloth-room.368/page-2

My first attempt at using a dynamic harness.
Not bad, but it looks too thin to be leather.
Definitely needs some more work.

For those of you unfamiliar with this feature, Poser has the ability to simulate dynamic cloth. That is, it creates an animation wherein the cloth folds and flows across the body in an attempt to create realistic folds and flow with the body. It's a neat feature (and there is now a plug-in for Daz Studio that does the same thing), but it's very tricky to get it looking just right.

EDIT (05-20-2019): The Dynamic Harness was a dead-end. It just didn't lead anywhere useful. For the remainder of the project I will be using Prae's Epoch Top available from Renderosity.

NEXT TIME: Current update

Days Gone 19 - Panel Set-up, part 3 (Fitting the Frame)

Now that I've got my first render complete, it's time to see how it fits into the panel shape I have already defined in Manga Studio (Clip Studio Paint). As you can see, the slight oversize render makes it fit darned near perfectly in the frame.

Render pasted into the frame in Manga Studio 5 EX
(aka Clip Studio Paint Pro).

I'm more or less happy with the size and shape, but his neck looks a little weird at this angle and I think I need to make him either bigger or smaller. Or, I might start small and then progressively make him bigger in each of the four panels.

I'm going to have to play around with this a bit more to decide what I want it to do in terms of composition and emotional progression.

Next Up: More about panels

Days Gone 18 - Fight or Flight

I'm getting deeper into the page, particularly these four panels, and here I hit a problem that is one I frequently encounter with 3D-based artwork: one of the wardrobe pieces doesn't fit the way I want it to fit. In this case, it's the Epoch top (the leather chest harness he is wearing), and in this panel you can clearly see down at the bottom that the strap is folding over.

Red background and blue frame added in
Photoshop to make it easier to see the
render's dimensions.

Now, I don't care if this might be technically accurate in the way that leather straps hang (I don't think it is, but they do flow and fold based on the way your body is moving – and no, I will not tell you how I know that). In this case, it just looks weird.

As I've said, this is a comic book not a movie. I am not striving toward 100% realism. So, I'm faced with a problem that I call Fight or Flight.

Do I spend time in Poser fighting with it (I've already spent about half an hour with the built-in morphs and controls to get it as good as it looks now) with a magnet/deformer? I could easily set one up and try to twist it (I could also try some of the simpler adjustment tools).  Or do I just give up (flight) and fix it in Photoshop afterwards?

Now, if this were his hair or some part of his britches or armor, I probably would spend the time to fix it in Poser. But, honestly? This is a simple strap across his belly/lower chest. I can do a quick edit and resolve the problem.

A few quick lines are all it takes to fix this problem.
That makes it not worth the effort to fix the geometry in Poser.
(Potential edit shown in blue line)

So, rather than get hung up on something that could take me a full day to fix, it's time to move on and worry about lights and his position in the frame. 

Next Time: Panel Set-up, part 3 (Making it fit the frame)

Days Gone 17 - Panel Set-up, part 2 (Poser Render Settings)

As shown in the last post, I need to match my render size to the printed size. Since I'm working at 800 dpi, this means even slim panels have a lot of pixels. If you're familiar with my Noir Style Tutorial you will remember that having a lot of pixels is a very good thing because it gives Poser and Manga Studio (Clip Studio Paint) the pixels they need to show the detail that I want to work with.

So, in Manga Studio I used some rulers to measure the panels. Across two pages, I have four panels with the identical size. In this case, the dimensions are very close to:

• Horizontal: 2.65 in (2110 pixels)
• Vertical: 5.27 in (4220 pixels)

Overview

So I'm going to:

1. Open the Poser file for pages 2-3.
2. Use the hierarchy editor to hide all the items I don't want (in this case, everything but the hero).
3. Set up a new camera (focused on the hero).
4. Set the render dimensions to roughly match the numbers above.

When I say "roughly," I mean that I'm going to make the panel a little bigger so I have some extra "bleed" room to move the figure around a little bit. I also might bring back the ceiling of the cave, if I feel it adds to the image more than an abstract sketched background.

Click to expand image.
Open the Hierarchy Editor under the Window Menu (gold highlight).
Click on the eyeball icon for each item to make it invisible.

In the screenshot above, I'm about halfway finished hiding the items I don't want for the next panel. This makes the scene load faster and there is less strain on the memory, so everything responds faster. Also, since the item is hidden, I can't accidentally click on it. 

Keep in mind you will need to click on each piece and part. In this picture, you can see that I've successfully hidden the dragon but the cool back ridge scales are still visible. As I finished this, I have decided to keep only the hero, the rock he is sitting on, the ceiling visible. And as I get into working this scene, I may move those items around or hide them again. I won't know until I get deeper into it.

Camera Lock

The first step I'm going to describe is optional: you may not need to do this.

With the Hierarchy Editor open, and the "Cameras" checkbox ticked, I select the Main Camera, then I go to Objects > Lock and turn off the checkmark next to the word Lock. 

I always lock my main camera, so if you didn't do that in a previous step,
you can skip these instructions/advice.

In the past, I have lost work because I accidentally moved my camera between renders. Since this process is built around layering images, it is essential that the camera not move between renders. These days, once I have my camera where I want it, I always lock it. This simple step has saved me a lot of time and heartache.

Camera Settings

Now that I can manipulate the camera, I rotate it and frame my figure from an almost completely straight-on angle. Once I have the hero more or less framed in the window, it's time to set the render dimensions. The can be accessed under Render > Render Dimensions (or by pressing SHFT+CTRL+Y). That will open this window:

Enter the new dimensions. Make sure the "Render to Exact Resolution" option is selected.
Make sure the "Constrain aspect ratio" is NOT selected.

Note the settings above, including the two items that need to be checked/unchecked. After completing this, your active window dimensions will change shape. As always with Poser, the area behind the gray bands to the sides will not render. They are there so you can see what's out of camera, and they help you determine where unexpected shadows might be coming from.

I highlighted the active camera area in the image below.

With the render dimensions set, I now have
a tall, narrow camera view that is the same shape and size
as my final panel dimensions.

This is a tall, narrow space, and since I really to focus on his face (and possibly upper arm – I'm toying with the idea of adding some hand motions to the next four panels as a means of enhancing his emotions – we'll see how it goes). Even before I get into the finer details of posing him, I'm pretty sure his leg is too high from this angle, and it covers up too much of his chest and prevents me from using a lower camera angle. After I get the camera distance set (how close I am to the figure, and which focal length I plan to use for the camera) I will probably need to adjust both his arm and knee on his right side.

A few small adjustments to the camera position helped, but not enough. I also adjusted the focal length to 90mm. This is a variation of a standard portrait setting (typically, portraits are shot at 70mm or 100mm) that is designed to help flatten the nose a little and not widen the face (if you'd like to see a great example of how the lens settings can change the shape of a human head, check this out).

This is almost right, but his forearm and bracer are huge. There are also
problems with the line thicknesses. This means I have different values
for different body parts in the Materials Room.

Time for more adjustments. The forearm and bracer are HUGE, and those thick outlines (which helped in the long shot of the previous page) look outrageous here. So, I went to the Materials Room and set his shoulders and the bracer to a smaller value (Geometric_Edge = 0.003). Then I scaled down the bracer by 3% and tweaked a few other scale settings.

Click to see the scale adjustments I made for the bracer.
Also note the thinner outlines on his shoulders.

This is looking better. The arm isn't so exaggerated, the lines are tighter against his body. I do see the need to tweak his chest harness to his side, and possibly the angle of his neck. But all in all, this is getting close enough for me to do a test render and see if it fits in the comic panel the way I want it to.

Next Time: Mock-ups and using the Sketch Render as a proofing tool

Days Gone 16 - Panel Set-up, part 1 (using the Ruler Tool)

Recap: The script is written, I've sketched out the thumbnails and set up the "roughs" of the pages in Manga Studio 5 EX (also known as Clip Studio Paint – they are basically the same software). The roughs have the panels shaped and sized the way I want them and the lettering is roughly where I think it will go based on the thumbnails.

So, now it's time to go back to Poser and render the images that will serve as the basis of my artwork.

Now, the two previous "panels" I worked on were full-page illustrations (page 1 is a single page showing the mountain, pages 2-3 is a two-page spread showing the opening scene inside the cave). This made it very easy to work on them because I didn't have to worry much about frame borders or anything like that. And, because they were the first pages, whatever I did would look fine because it's the first thing you're going to see.

But, moving forward I have to worry about keeping my inking line thicknesses consistent. I can't have a character with really thick outlines on panel one and then thin outlines in panel two, then back to thick for panel three. It needs to be roughly consistent between panel to panel to panel (and throughout the story, really).

Even though they are called "roughs," these pages are 100%
size and resolution with all the frames drawn out and where I want
them. Text, balloons and that background shading is for placement
purposes and will be tweaked prior to publication.

Measuring the Panels
This brings me back to why I created the page "roughs" in Manga Studio (aka Clip Studio Paint). I need to know the approximate panel size so I can set up a matching camera in Poser Pro 11. But there's sort of a problem... I did this so long ago I don't recall what the panel sizes are, and if there's a way to click on a panel and see its dimensions, I haven't yet figured out how to do it. I could just print it out and use a physical ruler, but I'm a little concerned that the printer might shrink or grow the page a little to fit on the paper (even though I told it not to – and in the end, it turns out it did print correctly, but I didn't know that until I made the in-software measurements to confirm it).

So, I needed to use the Ruler Tool in Manga Studio.

Here are the steps I used to measure the panel and get the measurements I need to set up the render window and cameras in Poser:

I edited the rulers and provided the emphasis
to make this easier to read online.

Using the Ruler tool:

1. Select the Ruler icon from the tools, then select the type of ruler you want (I chose the Linear ruler).
2. Select the page, then select the frame (or whatever) you want to measure.
3. Create a new layer (not shown in screenshot)
4. Click and drag the ruler from where you want to start and stop. Release the button.
5. A ruler will appear on the new layer (if you need to change the units (pixels or inches), you can do so on the tool details – see pic below).
6. A ruler will appear and you can then zoom in and read the ruler.

Before you start drawing the ruler, select the desired units.

In my case, I wanted both pixels and inches, so I made two rulers for each direction: horizontal and vertical. Note, these rulers are very small and very light, so in the screenshot above, I edited them to make them easier to read. They are actually a very light turquoise/cyan.

In this case, the dimensions are approximately:

• Horizontal: 2.65 in (2110 pixels)
• Vertical: 5.27 in (4220 pixels)

I don't need these to be precise. I just need a good estimate (I'll explain why next time). Now that I have those numbers, I can go into Poser and use them to create the cameras for the next scene.

NEXT UP: Panel Set-up, part 2 (render dimensions)

Days Gone - Project Contents

Now that my work schedule has finally settled into something more of a routine, I'm finding time to actually get back to work on this "short" comic project that was supposed to be done about a year ago (as I write this). As I got back to work, I took a glance through my old blog posts (some of which may serve as supplemental material when I get around to publishing this as a comic), and I realized that I should finally collect the individual posts into a single list.

For this, I think I'm actually going to sort the articles by topic, rather than just include a numeric/chronological list. I'll try to keep this updated, but you can always click on the "Days Gone" link under the Topics (keywords) list to the right. And, by the way, if you want to read a chronological listing of the articles, you can use the topic heading listed above.

Days Gone Posts

Project Workflow & Creating a Comic
These are primarily about organizing the project. Ideas and observations about character design and about actually making the comic. This includes everything from sketching thumbnails to buying the 3D elements used in the scenes (wardrobe and sets) and using the software to put it all together.

• Days Gone 1 - Starting a "New" Comics Project, Part One
• Days Gone 2 - Starting a "New" Comics Project, Part Two
• Days Gone 3 - Changing My Workflow
• Days Gone 5 - Documenting My Workspace
• Days Gone 6 - Meet the Cast, pt 1
• Days Gone 7 - Meet the Cast, pt 2
• Days Gone 8 - Meet the Cast, pt 3
• Days Gone 9 - Location, Location, Location, pt 1
• Days Gone 10 - Location, Location, Location, pt 2
• Days Gone 11 - Location, Location, Location, pt 3
• Days Gone 12 - Location, Location, Location, pt 4
• Days Gone 14 - Building a Better Cave
• Days Gone 15 - Large Scene Management and the Poser Hierarchy Editor
• Days Gone 16 - Panel Set-up, part 1 (using the Ruler Tool)
• Days Gone 17 - Panel Set-up, part 2 (Poser Render Settings)
• Days Gone 18 - Fight or Flight
• Days Gone 19 - Panel Set-up, Part 3 (Making it Fit the Frame)
• Days Gone 20 - Tip: Cloth Room Settings
• Days Gone 21 - Current Progress Update
• Days Gone 22 - Cabin in the Woods (Blue)

Technical (Software Use: Poser, Manga Studio / Clip Studio Paint)
Day-to-day use of the software is discussed above. These posts are detailed, technical issues or problems focusing directly on the use of the software itself, as well as links to resources and tutorials that may not be directly flagged as "days gone" in the keywords, but were discovered as part of my process.

• Days Gone 15 - Large Scene Management and the Poser Hierarchy Editor
• Days Gone 4 - A Short Complaint About Manga Studio (Clip Studio Paint)
• CLIP STUDIO PAINT WEBINAR / Digital Inking Techniques with Brian Haberlin

Art Samples / Works In Progress
Art and character design, as well as illustrations used in other projects (and some work that I did before "officially" starting the Days Gone project).

• Sketchy Behavior, Part 4
• Sketchy Behavior, Part 5
• Sketchy Behavior, part 6
• Days Gone [Addendum] ( re-purposed picture of the dragon)
• Days Gone 13 - The Hero Makes a Cameo

Last update: 06-20-2019

Noir and then 1: Moon Wolf

Before getting back to my work on Days Gone, I did a "quickie" illustration to flex my artistic muscles a little; it's been a while since I've had time to work on my comics project, so I decided to whip up a little illustration just for the exercise.

As with my b&w workflow, this is rendered in Poser Pro 11 and cleaned/finished in Photoshop and Clip Studio Paint (aka Manga Studio 5 EX). The figure is Predatron's really cool Lorez Masked Hero, which has a really nice, old-school build that is perfect for this type or art.

Moon Wolf © 2018 Mike Mitchell
Just a quickie illustration to get back into the swing of things
before diving into the next two pages of Days Gone.

CLIP STUDIO PAINT WEBINAR / Digital Inking Techniques with Brian Haberlin

This afternoon I had the distinct pleasure of attending another Webinar by comic artist Brian Haberlin. The time, he provided a free one-hour session discussing digital inking with Clip Studio Paint (the program I use under its previous name (but same features) as Manga Studio 5 EX).

This was an amazing demonstration. It moved very fast, but covered some fantastic tools and techniques that are already working their way into my practices (they are that simple and that good).

The presenters (the software company that makes Clip Studio Paint) did a fantastic job of putting the recording up on YouTube about 12 hours after the Webinar ended. Amazing turnaround. You can view it here:

On my second viewing, I made some time code notations so I (and you as well, dear readers) can quickly find what you're looking for:

• Color Flatting
• 6 min - Make transparency based on brightness
• 8 min - Make Reference layer
• 8:30 - Close and Fill (Bucket Tool / Close and fill
• 11:30 - More pen properties (do not exceed line in reference layer)
• 13:20 - More about gaps
• 14:05 - Lasso Fill tool
• 15:00 - Finding the Lasso fill (it's under Direct Draw)

• Inking Example
• 15:20 - Inking example (he said its Conan, but it's Tarzan)
• 15:45 - Importance of resolution (400 - 800 dpi)
• 19:55 - Importance of not doing too much detail
• 20:45 - Use Lasso fill tool to fill in lots of blacks

• Use ANY tool as an eraser
• 23:20 - Use your pen as an eraser
• 23:45 - Paint with "transparent" pixels (erase)
• 24:20 - Use x key to swap between black and white colors
• 24:45 - Inking Style: Puller vs Thrower

• Adding Tones
• 28:15 - Adding tones intro
• 28:28 - Create new layer, select areas with lasso tool
• 28:55 - Drag over the halftone
• 29:10 - Change resolution (density) of a halftone
• 31:00 - Ink with a halftone pattern

• Creating a custom brush Part 1 (cloud effect)
• 32:15 - Create a custom brush
• 32:27 - You can make brushes you cannot make in Photoshop
• 33:00 - Select region with marquee (rectangle)
• 33:15 - Register Material (settings: Use Brush as tip shape)
• 33:40 - Adding keywords for search
• 34:10 - Pattern Brush example (note the curves)
• 34:38 - Copy an existing brush and apply your new tip (art)
• 35:30 - Cloud brush in action
• 
  
• Creating a custom brush Part 2 (other shapes)
• 37:56 - Intro to other shapes
• 38:30 - Tricks to making new brushes
• 38:48 - Use "Convert Layer" (right-click clayer panel) to gray
• 38:58 - IMPORTANT tip about color vs gray layers
• 39:28 - Walk through the brush creation phase again
• 40:30 - Using the brush examples

• File Objects (aka Instancing)
• 41:05 - File Objects intro
• 41:38 - Create shape on its own layer
• 41:47 - Make selection, and convert to file object
• 42:12 - Duplicate layer, move and scale, etc.
• 42:55 - Refine and "propogate" (e.g. copy/replace)
• 43:20 - Change shape into a tree
• 44:12 - Back to original image, see all the trees

• Q&A Session
• 44:47 - Start the Q&A session
• 45:19 - Canvas Sizes
• 46:23 - My Question! Where to find Lasso Fill tool 
• 46:58 - Show again how to switch from white paper to transparency
  (Edit > Brightness to transparency)
• 47:44 - Advice on switching form traditional to digital inking
• 48:20 - Show some distortion/transforming tools
• 48:35 - Advice: Don't ink too much detail!
• 49:55 - Recommends the G-Pen or Cel pen
• 50:28 - Do you think of digital inks differently than traditional inks?
• 51:22 - School vs practice vs Social Media? 
• 52:55 - More difficult? Drawing or idea?
• 54:05 - Equipment you use?
• 54:57 - Wrap up
• 55:28 - Links to resources

BTW: I also provided these in the comments of the video, and they actually converted to links. So if you go to the video you can click on the time code and it will jump you to the appropriate topic.

Days Gone 15 - Large Scene Management and the Poser Hierarchy Editor

This is one of the largest scenes I've created in a long while. There are LOTS of elements and lots of pieces to them. If you've ever used Poser with a large scene, you know that it can be difficult (and frustrating) to use the Hierarchy Editor to find a specific nested node (in lay speak, that means you have to look through a complicated list to find something, like the hair, that is buried deep in the list of an item's editable properties).

A rare color view of my scene (note the pink light on the hero:
This sort of trick makes it easy to spot which light is hitting which surface
(and since I work in b&w output, the light color doesn't matter as
far as the final render is concerned).

You can also see a little of the complicated Hierarchy Editor, which shows
a list of everything in the scene.

The way I navigate this long, complicated list is to put really long names with dashes (or other characters) in the item name property. So, instead of looking for Nirona, Michael 4 (Hero) and the Dragon, I'm looking for:

• V4 Nirona +++++++++++++++++ V4 Nirona
• Michael 4 = = = = = = = = = = = = =  Hero M4
• DAZ Dragon 3 - - - - - - - - - - - - DAZ Dragon 3

A compressed look at the items in the scene, as shown in the Hierarchy Editor.
Also notice that I mark one item with the words, HIDE, which is a very
useful note for later. I also used numbers (2 ----- 2, or 1 ----- 2) to
mark which items are near each other.

These long names really stand out in the list and (so far) do not seem to have any negative effect on application performance. Here's a screenshot of the Hierarchy Editor window, and although it's not highlighted, you can see that I also mark specific items of interest that are nested inside a figure. In this case, I've added a bunch of dashes to the M4 figure's hair, making it easy to find in case I need to make a quick fit adjustment.

Click to see it in more detail.

I know a few people who find this to be VERY weird. They like short names and don't want to clutter things up. I, on the other hand, find that this is a very useful method of finding what I want very quickly.

NEXT TIME: Moving on to the next steps

Days Gone 14 - Building a Better Cave

Whew! Sorry for the looooong delay between posts. I've just been busy with other stuff and have really fallen behind on both the comic book work and on posting updates.

As promised, here's a quick post about the "set design" for the interior scene. I put that phrase in quotes for a definite reason. You see (at least I hope you will), this is not a full set design as I would make for an animated film. I didn't worry about walls or even exact locations. I put stuff where I needed it so it would fall where I wanted it in the main camera (for those of you who are just now joining us, I'm working in Poser 11 Pro).

Here's the final picture, which shows everything where it is.

Here's a look at the basic scene that will take up pages 2 and 3.
I marked two landmarks in the scene: 1. Hero Rock and 2. Treasure Chest.

Here's a shot from another angle that gives you an idea of how I moved things around to fit them into the viewport.

This is an oblique view, looking down at the scene. In some cases, I have
scaled objects to increase their size so they would look better from a distance.
The ceiling is hidden in this view.

As you can see here, I'm being loosey-goosie with the location of objects; my goal was to fit them into the scene and frame the shot I wanted. As such, I had to play around with their scale. The gold coins in front are scaled down to 75%, but the coin piles in the rear are scaled up to 130%, and the treasure chest is a whopping 194%.

View from the side. You can see that I also played around with the y-axis.
By that, I mean there is no ground plane visible. I raised things up or lowered
them down as needed to get the framing I wanted.

The different scales were needed to get the sense of space that I was striving for in this scene. I fully expect that I will have to move things around again for other panels. If they were going to be walking around the set a lot, this approach would be problematic, but fortunately there are no other long shots that cover the rest of the cave. From this point on, I'll be working with medium and close-ups, so the fragmented construction of the set shouldn't be an issue.

Top-down shot. That big black blob near the Hero Rock is actually the cave ceiling.
I thought about having it cover the entire scene, but that just blocked all the lights
and made things a lot harder to work with. Having a small prop in front of the camera
worked out a lot better for multiple technical reasons (most having to do with lighting).

 I was inspired to try this approach from a variety of sources:

• I read an interview about the creation of the first Incredibles movie, wherein the director said they only built the parts of sets that would actually appear on camera (much the way most movie sets are built).
• A visit to the Houston Natural History museum several years ago: We saw an exhibit of the props from The Lord of the Rings movies, and there was a set recreation that showed how they used forced perspective to blend the actors together with the scenery so that the Hobbits could be farther away (and thus look smaller) and Gandalf would be closer to the camera to make him look bigger.
• My old college film classes where we saw how they used matte paintings (a sheet of glass with a painting on it to put in something that wasn't really there (this is why I chose to do the ceiling/cave roof the way I did).

Here's a few videos on Forced Perspective to give you an idea of what I saw at the museum.

Not a perfect example, but very good advice.

And here's another one, that shows how the masters did it in the LoTR movies.

This special feature shows the same table set that I saw at the museum.
It was a very cool display, as we could walk around and see it from multiple directions,
then move to the camera position and see it from that POV.

And, just one last thing. Yes, since I am working in 3D, I find just as much useful information from filmmakers and photographers as I do from comic book and traditional artists.

NEXT TIME: More on developing my establishing shot

Days Gone 13 - The Hero Makes a Cameo

Haven't had time to work on Days Gone for a while now, but the other day I needed an illustration for a mailing label for the Collectors' Club Newsletter, so I took an old illustration and colorized it.

© 2018 Mike Mitchell

Not a bad job for a quickie. To be honest, I had expected to make his trousers blue or brown, but I found that they looked nice when I matched them to the red arm bands. I don't think these are the definitive colors I'll use when I create cover art for the book, but it was still a fun exercise in digital coloring.