Comic style 2d Art Question/Problem for the group

[Ron Harris]

Ok..what you see here is a pencil drawing that I scanned and then reprinted out then I took that and Inked the dark areas you see on the right. I then brought the whole think in as a texture and created an alpha from that and dragged out the 3 figures before you. Then on another layer I though I would paint with rgb only....that gave a very flat look but that was ok too....I then thought I would take and just paint Material on top of that paint to see what effect it would give....and that was working.....but as you see its very very messy and unuseable. (the head is a stock head start just to see what that would look like too)....

The question I have is how or what would be the best way to do what I am tryign to do ..which is create a comic painted from a scanned image like this..or should I be doing my work flow some other way for this type of a thing.

I want that comic look. I want the lines of the drawing to show up but color enhanced with ZB2's bells and whistles.

Any ideas on this subject of making comics with ZB2 from the group here would be deeply appreciated....

thnx in advance.

ron http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200406/user_image-1086412926tby.jpg

[aminuts]

Hi Ron,

I will suggest....um two materials that have been posted here.....one made renderings seem as ink drawings and another gave the impression of cartoons. Frenchy, (hahaha I have so much faith in him) will probably come up with links for them.....I believe either azteca or our lost but not forgotten friend...andre posted the ink material. I cannot remember who posted the cartoonish material but I surely downloaded both.

If you can't find em....let me know and I will search my junk (nothing is junk, just unused for the moment) pile for them for you.

this doesn't really answer your questions but you may find it easier to do 3d models then render to "cartoon" "2d". I am not sure but it seems like it would be fun and easier to have poseable zsphere models you could do this with. But I dream big I reckon hahaha. :rolleyes:

[Ron Harris]

thanx A....that was Fouad I think that posted one of the materials to give that cartoon outline of a model.

I am wanting to go for a comic book type look with my 2d work. I draw constantly when not at the computer....so I was in hopes of taking that 2d work further. I could probably scan the drawing and trace it in something like psp or ps...and that would get rid of artifacts that show up in the scans...and also those ugle pencil lines..I have tried since posting to paint the image and then took the outline alpha and made a stencil and repaint the black on it...but doign that I have to resize that stencil and it doesnt quite mate back up to the original. I may take and make the stencil to begin with ...paint the color again on another layer and then go back to layer one with the stencil still in place and pile the black lines on again with a few strokes of the simple brush...hmmmmmm.....lemme try that and I will repost the results....thanx for the input.....I will do this experiment and post and then call it a night...if anyone else has any other cool ideas that will be appreciated too....thnx again A :tu: :tu:

[Ron Harris]

ok...did what I described above..and inversed the stencil during the quick experiment....that is doing what I like...so I guess maybe just tracing the drawing with the computer rather than inking it by hand will be the way to go for a cleaner mask/stencil....any thoughts on the subject ya'll? I also had filled the 2nd layer with green and displaced the Z of that layer to take the color better without messing with layer 1 too badly.....the only thing is with the stencil I get a slight outline outside of the stencil when I use zadd with the rgb or with the material? Advice?

Thanx again.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200406/user_image-1086416307lnn.jpg

[aminuts]

Actually that sounds like a good way to go....but if you are going to photoshop anyways why not.....clean it up there so your lines are still visible...at the desired res......you can then layer how you want the colors by blacking out successive portions so they will appear transparent on each layer of zbrush and paint accordingly.....


edit: hahaha you posted while I was typing...durn it.
hahhaa did you just say that? sigh...too much sun and not enuf fun today. I hope your dreams (as all us addicts must dream in Z2vision) come up with a solution.

[aminuts]

Do a screen grab, inverse the alpha, apply it to that layer then do the coloring....should mean no outlines.....well hopefully......I have not been as successful as I would like with alphas from z2 but I think its more me than Z.

[Polaris30]

I use a few diffrent types of Toon shaders... some of the best I have found are for Truespacebut that is dealing with 3Dmodels.. I guess what you are after is 2Dcell shadeing.... but that is just a guess...

What I would do in Paint shop is use the magic wand masking tool and select all the white parts and flood fill them with the color I wanted, and then I would go back and hit it with the Dodge and Burn brush (same as Hilighter 2 brush)

you might be able to do this in Zbrush with the flat material, and the hilighter 2 brush...

I dunno, I think it is better time spent to just make a model from your concept art and then pose it any way you need and use toon shader for the cell shadeing... this way you only have to paint the colors once and the computer figures out all the cell shadeing stuff... and you can recycle model and use in other frames of comic book...

here is an aname toon shader, in truespace...

the more detailed the texture the better it looks... the mech warrior robot in back ground looks like comic book while the charictors look crappy...


wish I had a sure fire way to do it, but I realy am stumped on this one... I will keep thinking about it.. maby I can come up with something later...
http://s91842597.onlinehome.us/SHotgunDUDES.jpg

[wchamlet]

Bakc when Z2 first came out, I did a test using the zspheres and their posable features. I was wanting to make a comic too, so I did some testing to see how it would work. What I ended up doing was using two toon materials, one for large outlines, and one for smaller details. I painted simple colors as a texture, and later composited the work together in Photoshop.

Here was the result of the test.

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200404/user_image-1082853781mgo.jpg

It came out well I think. And the model is still posable, so you can easily do multiple panels to make your story.

Maybe this will help you out?

[Manfred]

If you have cinema4d you perhaps want to use it´s cartoon renderer (or the plugin "sketch and toon") to render your zBrush models in a comic style. Then you could import that rendering back into zBrush and work it out further more.

On my website you can see 2 pics rendered with the cartoonshader of cinema4d v7.3:
http://www.manfreds.cyber-comics.de/preiswert/Cinema4D/cinema4d.html

For adding balloons and textboxes I prefer Photoshop.

[Frenchy Pilou]

Hi Manfred
Have you seen this thread (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=014000)? (Fouad + Aurick material) ? (see all the thread)
And the amazing in Zbrush
When You have choose your "cartoon Style" :)
all that you make after (Modeling, modify, move rotate... etc)
all is in real time with the cartoon Style !!!
Pilou

[Polaris30]

Day 2 and I still havent a clue on how to do 2d cell shadeing look :(

But I did come up with a new toon shader...

Fouad's toon shader is still my favorite...

Here is what mine looks like:
http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200406/user_image-1086469894urj.jpg


Toon-cavity-1.zip (http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200407/user_file-1086469921icc.zip)

[Dickie]

Here's a neat charcoal effect I got from playing with 50's Kid's Sketchbook settings.
I then modified the diffuse a bit and it looked like charcoal...Actually, upon reflection, it's more of a colored pencil effect...

Dickie

http://www2.zbrushcentral.com/uploaded_from_zbc/200406/user_image-1086477523cdq.jpg

[Frenchy Pilou]

Yes the Sketchbook (http://www.pixolator.com/zbc-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=1&t=011602) of kid of 50 was one the first crazzy material for simulate graphic effect drawing :cool:
Pilou

[Manfred]

Hi Frenchy Pilou!
Thanks a lot for the link!!!