I am currently working on a one-shot comic book.
My goal was to take one panel from my comic; which I penciled and inked, and create the background in Blender.
The comic will be in black & white and is an Art Deco meets Noir meets Magical Horror feel.
The final scene render isn't meant for publication. It's really for a 3D reference.
Ideally I can move the background around to many angles without having to completely re-draft every time I move the POV.
Thus I didn't spend any time on textures.
1. I have completed some of the fundamental classes here on CG Cookie and decided to make this scene without using the image as a 2D template.
So I didn't import the image as a plane and went straight to creating the stair case.
2. Geometry Nodes - It was tough. But I realized that Geometry Nodes would be the best solution for the staircase and also the central chamber, walls, and lighting.
I knew I would have to tweak them a lot and so building them parametrically was the best solution.
This way I could dynamically change the number of steps the width of the staircase as well as height angle, etc.
The Cubicity course and the Assemble courses really helped with this part
3. Curve modifier - I found when building out the central, cylindrical chamber; that it was easier to just model single instances of all the parts, and then use Geometry Nodes, instance on points along a curve line and realized all the instances at the end of the node tree before the output.
Then it was just making a bunch of curve circles, and then putting all the instances onto the circles with the curve modifier
4. Glass - Creating a glass sliding wall was painful because I have a crap graphics card and so having to wait for Cycles to re-render in the view sucked.
But it was worth it.
5. Sculpting - I sculpted the head and torso of the statues using two subdivided cubes. It was fairly straight forward and knowing proportions and anatomy from drawing helped a lot
6. Subdivision Modeling - I realized that the statues were going to have a very stylized 1930s futurist/art deco look. Which meant streamlines and minimal details. 1930s artchitecture reliefs and statues had a "low poly" look to them.
So I modeled the arms, legs, lower torso, belt, and codpiece using subdivision modifiers and a buttload of loop cuts for manipulating.
Then just played with the material for the statue and turned down roughness, added changed the base color
7. Alt+D Saved my computer - Learned to used Alt+D instead of Shift+D to replicate the statues for final placement in the scenes.
8. Spent a whole day just lighting it from various angles. Learned I had to reduce the radius of my point lights to prevent weird light artifacts in the render
9. Final render done in cycles
Very cool!!
Beatiful work!!
Love the style and use of blender for your comic - just great!!
Thank you!
amazing work!
Thank you, so much!
Edit: I really love the stark black and white look, and the lighting/angle you chose does a good job of depicting what you wanted it to. This is a really high quality piece.
Thank you! I really appreciate it!
Well Kid, you did an awesome thing there, now I want to do something along those lines. The black and white style really makes it look artsy and stylish. And maybe who knows, if you're going to do that digital, you can also have a couple of frames slightly move with a little parallax. But also important parts are the writing and the story, hopefully you'll make it awesome in those domains as well 🤙🏼
Thanks! Well I am planning on going for a print release with this one shot.
But as I am getting better with Blender I may have to start looking at other ways including digital!