I Win, We All Lose

[Ruso]

-I wanted to share my latest comic “I Win, We All Lose” written by R. G. Llarena and with art by myself:

-It was published in Heavy Metal Magazine #278:

-Here is a preview of the first 3 pages:

-Here is a little teaser video preview:

[youtubehd]iyuhXOVpIRk[/youtubehd]

-And here is a little 3D preview of Heavy Metal #278:

[youtubehd]R8lBU9j2U18[/youtubehd]

-Almost all of the process was done in Zbrush. Most of the modeling, texturing and rendering was done in Zbrush using a combination of Toon Shaders and render passes. Post-processing done in Manga Studio to add hand-drawn details, compositing and lettering.

-Here are several images with the breakdown of the process I have followed for each panel:

Attachments

[Ruso]

-Some more breakdowns:

-Here is a little tutorial on how to create a comic lineart matcap in Zbrush in six super easy steps using Lightcap:

-And here you can download the matcap in case you don’t want to configure it yourself:

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/62098521/My%20Comic%20Matcap.ZMT

Attachments

[Ruso]

-Once you have your comic matcap ready it’s very easy to just choose the best camera angle in real time in the viewport in just a matter of seconds:

-Here is a video showing how easy it is to select the best camera view for the most dramatic effect in real time in the viewport using zbrush:

[youtubehd]G7ab5tkZams[/youtubehd]

-Zbrush is also a huge time saver for the colouring. You just have to asign some colours to the different subtools, render it without the comic matcap (no outilines) and it’s ready to be used as a color layer for the panel in your comic:

-After combining the colour pass and the different passes in Manga Studio and adding some hand-drawn details to the lineart:

Attachments

[Ruso]

-Panel loops is also great to define armature details in just a matter of minutes. Just paint the selection for each panel. Convert it to polygroup with [CTRL] + [W] and use the Panel Loops option:

-Here is another video showing some breakdowns on how to use Zbrush in your advantage when drawing comics:

[youtubehd]aLNKVvQjX6o[/youtubehd]

[Ylog]

WOW. This is absolutely amazing. Good use of zbrush. Such good work, keep up the good work. A small question tho.
Do you just modell your charecters in lets say a t- pose, and the pose them for different frames?

[Ruso]

Hey Ylog. Thank you for your kind words. I really appreciate it. I prefer modeling my characters in A-pose rather than in T-pose. But yeah, the idea is basically the same. I then do a quick rigging in Blender using the amazing addon rigify which is a very good automatic rigger that allows you to have a very good rig to start with and very fast too. Then, back in Zbrush i refine the pose using Transpose Master and the usual sculpting brushes.

[Ruso]

Here is another panel detail:

[artistfuture]

Beautiful Work very inspiring thanks for sharing. Your sculpts are AWESOME and the character layout really tells the story.small_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamondsmall_orange_diamond

[Ruso]

Thank you very much, artistfuture. I really appreciate it.

[ZedHead]

Loving the look of this comic (it’s really giving me the inspiration to do something similar) and I’m itching to leave work so I can try out the blender auto rig with a few of my character to see if I finally have an easy way of posing my characters (transpose and the other methods in ZBrush are not my favourites)

Really good work!!

[Ruso]

Hey, ZedHead.

Thank you very much. I really recommend you using the rigify plugin in Blender. It’s very easy to set and it gives you pretty good results out of the box with the “with automatic weights” option. It’s not perfect but it’s very easy to fix the problems in some of the joints back in Zbrush with the sculpt brushes. Or if you prefer to have more control you can weight paint your model in Blender. But as I said, the automatic rigging is more than good for quick posing.

All the best,

[TheArtMonkey]

… does your process allow you to produce finished art quicker than just drawing by hand?

In other words, after you do all the modeling, rigging, texturing, posing, rendering, and compositing, are you able to get any time savings compared to just drawing from scratch?

I ask because I’ve dabbled in using 3D to help me when I draw, and I find that mostly I use it as an aid with foreshortening and figuring out where shadows go.
Beyond that, I find I can draw faster than I can model, etc. so using 3D in that part of the process doesn’t help me very much.
Your art seems to rely more on clean lines and high detail, so I was wondering how helpful you find 3D when it comes to finished art.

Regardless, nice work! Some of the poses seem stiff, but I like the colors and designs of the characters and sets a lot.

[Ruso]

Thank you very much, The ArtMonkey.

I have been testing with a hybrid style that combines 3D “non-photorealistic renders” with hand drawings. Lately, I just make some “quick” 3D scenes with almost no textures and with one single source light. I feel pretty comfortable now with modeling and for me now it’s faster and more precise to do a 3D model for the backgrounds rather than drawing horizon lines and suffering with vanishing points when trying to draw complex perspectives. Of course, the point here is if the background in question is going to appear in several panels or not. If so, then it’s a huge time saver because once you have your scene modeled it’s just a question of positioning the camera to generate a new view for a new panel.

The same applies for the characters. You can have some general models (one male model, one female model for instance) that you can use as reference for your hand drawing. If it’s a main character that appears on a lot of panels then maybe it’s a good idea to invest some time modeling some of it’s props, weapons and so on,specially if the character has a lot of details.

Answering your question, I can’t say that 3D speeds up my work. I mean, 3D makes some of the tasks easier but you have to invest time in some other processes, like modeling, rigging or texturing. On the other hand, I can say that 3D really improves my images quality.

The whole combination of digital techniques is what speeds up my work. Working everything on the computer with the help of a graphic tablet has been a revolution in my way of working that really has improved my productiveness.

The point here is that I strongly believe that the computer and 3D graphics are just another tool that the artist can use as he uses his pencil or his brush. It depends on the artist to know when to use one tool or the other. If something is easier to just draw it then draw it and viceversa, if creating a 3D model can save you sometime by all means do it. The error here would be to try to do everything in 3D just because.