Welcome to 2020

Happy New Year to all!

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

Poser Superhero Freebie List

I'm working on another Superhero image and I was having trouble finding some of the items in my Runtime, so I went hunting for some new pieces. Since I'm working with Michael 4 as my base figure, I decided to go hunt down some Freebie Items.

And that's when i remembered this Fantastic List of FREE items:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/9443/the-ultimate-super-hero-freebie-list/p1

Capes, Gloves, Boots, and whole costumes can be found there.

Nite Flyte Cover selected Poser Staff Pick of the Week (10-14-2019)

Well, this was a pleasant surprise. Once more I've had an illustration selected as a "Poser Staff Pick of the Week" by the fine folks over at Renderosity. This time it was for the "rejected" cover I did for Nite Flyte #4.

© 2019 Mike Mitchell

And by "rejected" I mean just that, if I had sufficient time, I would have done it differently.
I guess this just goes to show that it pays never to toss anything out! After all, I was fairly happy with it, I just didn't love it.

If you have a Renderosity account, you can view the entire list of the nine illustrations here: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2938803

Happy Halloween from Bettie

Happy Halloween, one and all. It's time to get my scare on by decorating my house (as some of you know, that's a big deal for me and takes a few weeks to get it all up and running). In the meantime, here's a little illustration to get you in the mood.

As usual, I started in Poser Pro 11 and completed my work in Clip Studio Paint EX. I was originally creating this character for use on a fanzine cover, but I ran out of time (I've got to do a quick turnaround on a cover for another Galaxy Prime book).

Nevertheless, I had a lot of fun creating this concept illustration and decided to share it with y'all.

© 2019 Mike Mitchell

The base figure is good ole Victoria 4, but I have a Bettie Page morph loaded (it came with the Betty Hair model from Daz 3D).

Nite Flyte Cover 04

This is the cover I mentioned last week. It's for a fanzine that will appear inside the SNICKER SNACK APA. This is actually just my contribution to the issue, but I like to do a cover for each issue in which I contribute material.

I started work on a large illustration with a lot of cool stuff off to the side, but the more I looked at it the more I realized that the skull was more effective when seen up close. So, this illustration is what I came up with. I particularly enjoyed inking the background – and I even think I did a pretty good job with the candle glows. But when I finished it, I really didn't like it. There's just something about the creature that isn't interesting to me.

© 2019 Mike Mitchell

So, even though this design was 100% finished, I decided to create a sexy little "red hot chili imp" and I was going to place her on the skull in some sort of sexy pin-up pose. Take a look at the next post and let me know what you think!

But... alas, her turn at stardom 'twas not to be!

I just ran out of time. I'm behind schedule on creating a cover for a new Galaxy Prime book, so even though I have the imp character ready to go, I just don't have time to create a new illustration. So, I went with my original cover (mailed out today, in fact).

Oh well, that's just the way it goes. Perhaps I can find use of her in another project or illustration. Time will tell.

Ultra illo selected as a Poser Staff Pick of the week (16-Sep-2019)

Got another surprise today!
My latest illustration, which was a quickie, was selected by Renderosity as a "Staff Pick of the Week." 

Ultra™ made it to the big leagues this week,
being selected a "Staff Pick of the Week" by Renderosity

A total of seven illustrations were selected this week, and the entire list can be seen here: https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2937735&page_number=1#msg4362220

I think you need an account to see them, but I could be wrong.

This is the fourth time I've made the list, and once more I'm surprised because I really did this as a quickie. Which makes me wonder, maybe some of my other illustrations are overworked a bit and this quick ones contain more energy? Definitely something to think about!

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.

Poser Tip: Updated Posette figure available

Posette is the low-res, old fashioned figure that originally shipped with Poser 4. She was the first figure to allow for interchangeable clothing. Needless to say, she is woefully outdated when compared to modern figures.

So, imagine my surprise when I found out that someone had taken the time to update her rigging and provide her with a new lease on life under the name: Nea 3.1 aeonia

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/?item_id=78552&ca

Here's a list of the new features:

Nea’s features:
- Smoother look on head & body, new realistic eyes, lachrymals shaped on head and better shaped lashes
- Hundreds expression, head and body morphs
- Improved joint parameters and joint controlled correction bending morphs
- ERC controlled morphs for the hands/feet Scale
- Body Handles to control breasts individually
- New teeth body part
- Improved male full body morph and new male face shape
- Uses Victoria 1-2 and Judy (poser 5 woman) textures

Nea 3 includes various alternative geometry modes as switches on the Body:
- Posette skin
- Multi material Suit
- Animal feet & sock
- No thumb alternative hand geometry

I haven't tried this, yet, but I'm looking forward to testing it out.

Here's another link that may prove useful: Unzipping OBZ files: https://support.smithmicro.com/customer/en/portal/articles/1982171-poser-file-types?b_id=8847

Poser Tip: Bullet Physics and Cloth

Here is a GREAT video about using the Bullet Physics in Poser Pro.

It's about 20 minutes long and it is WELL worth watching all of it, as it shows how to set up a physics simulation. This has a lot of potential, especially because it has LIVE simulations.

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

Poser Resources: Victoria 4 Weight-Mapped

One of the coolest modifications to this level of 3D technology is the addition of Weight Mapping to figures. Here's the short version of what Weight Mapping is: It is a technology that helps create more realistic bends in 3D figures.

For example:

• Hold your arm out and bend your elbow; you should see that bending your elbow adds a small flex to you bicep. 
• This happens automatically because, in order to bend your elbow, the biceps muscles must contract and this makes them look bigger.
• The same thing happens to your calf muscles when you bend your knee or foot. 
• This happens to a lot of muscles and in a living creature it's automatic.
• This is NOT automatic in 3D figures because they're not alive and they don't have muscles; they're just mathematics and geometry inside a computer. 

Most high-end 3D software (Maya, Lightwave, Z-Brush) has supported weight mapping for a while, and even some of the consumer-end stuff (Daz Studio & Poser) has had limited support for it in the newer figure ranges, particularly Daz3D's Genesis 3 & 8.

Unfortunately, Poser (which is the backbone of my 3D illustration process) does not easily support the Genesis figures. This means that, essentially, I'm "stuck" with using Victoria 4 and Michael 4 (and earlier) figures in my work.

Now, although Victoria 4 and Michael 4 are fantastic figures that are still full of life (especially for my comics work that doesn't require animation or 100% photo realism), they do feel a bit "long in the tooth" when it comes to things like weight mapping. Instead of having smart rigs that know how to flex muscles automatically when bending leg or arm, you have to do those modifications manually.

Fortunately, some really smart people created the scripts and info needed to apply weight mapping to Victoria 4 (hopefully Michael 4 will be soon behind, but I doubt it as the guys just don't get the love that the women do).

The V4 WM resources can be downloaded at this location:

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/~cagepage/poserplace/poserplace.html

When the 'Big Brother' gets it so wrong but is still right (sort of)

I hope I can relate this amusing anecdote without "triggering" anyone to go on and on about online privacy and how they always use a TOR browser behind a VPN routed through the Netherlands. I am fully aware of how online privacy works and have a VPN and don't need or want any advice about improving my online security. I'm quite comfortable with my online presence and I found this so funny that I actually laughed out loud so hard my wife came over to find out what I found so amusing.

I am not a musical person. It's not that I couldn't learn to play an instrument (I played Cornet in junior high band and didn't suck more than anyone else did at that age), it's just that I would rather draw and write. So Saturday afternoon I was puzzled to see a bunch of ads from Amazon pop up in my Facebook feed for things like Guitar amps, mixing boards, custom guitar picks and a plethora of things like that. For the life of me, I couldn't figure out why I was seeing these things, and then it hit me.

It seems that the Great Data Analytics in the Cloud decided that I suddenly had developed an interest in learning guitar because of something I did on Friday night.

Friday night I started work on an illustration of Conan the Barbarian (I'll share it when I get it done). I didn't like the poses and props I had on hand, so I went to Renderosity and found several products that were on sale, so I bought about four or five sets for under $25. And yup, I bought a few guitars and multiple poses so I can show the Cimmerian shredding it on an "axe."

And that's when I started to laugh and laugh and laugh!

I just had to shake my head because all that technology got it so wrong while still getting it right (sort of).