largento

Hey, just a head's up that I'm going to be posting a series of stories on The Wannabe Pirates blog about how I create the webcomic. The first one went up today and just answers the question "What 3D software do you use?" The answer to which, everybody here already knows. :-) I'm not sure how many posts it will take to cover the process, but I'm going to be putting them up every so often.

Boo, Paul, boo! :-)

Like Rob said, the $79 subscription is a great way to go. v15 also added fluids, the ability to bake materials and some other stuff I'm not remembering.

Thanks, Nancy, Ken & Jim! LOL, Ken, I don't recall Amidala having a fan (that wasn't attached to her head or her back.) :-)

Thanks, David & Gene! It's fun having a set to work with. For awhile now, I've been making use of some simple wall models.

I think that looks really great! Not having to place each one individually is awesome!

Thanks, Ken! The solution I came up with was to create a pose in an Action and then export a model from the Action. I then imported the model into the model of the bench and duplicated it until I had the bench full. This seemed like the quickest way to do it. You are right that the hand pose is a little stiff, but it seemed an unnecessary level of detail when you consider just how small they will appear in the online strip. I might do a close-up reaction shot, but that would be a situation where I would be creating new poses.

Another great looking character, Paul!

Thanks, Robert! Still working on the chapel set, but here's what it's looking like. I realized that having the Earth appear large in the windows would kind of suggest stained glass windows.

Flemm's wedding dress: I knew I wanted to do something goofy for the dress and first started just doing image searches for wedding gowns and then it occurred to me that this would be an opportunity to reference something from sci-fi and I immediately thought of the bizarre costumes Queen Amidala wore in the Phantom Menace. :-) I threw together some of the elements, plus a couple of similarly goofy bits. I've been stalling the story, because for some reason I had a mental block about modeling this, but I had fun once I actually started working on it. The chapel's going to be even more work. I'm intending that there be a couple of hundred aliens in attendance. We'll see how that works out. :-)

Nice job!

How close are you, Gene?

That's pretty awesome, dude! Has a wonderful stop-motion look to it that is completely appropriate!

Much appreciated, Gene!

Thanks, guys! Myron, that came out of trying to think of a way to ease the viewer into seeing them. I figured if I just started with what they looked like it would be too jarring. I think it was a combo of the size and the lighting that made their teeth invisible. It's kind of a bummer sometimes when you work on a panel and you get it to where you think it looks great and then when you shrink it down to strip size, the detail gets lost. I'm hoping some of that might make it through when it's printed in higher resolution, but the irony there is that it's going to have to be printed even smaller when it goes into book form!

Thanks, David! I hurriedly created the naked alien model yesterday. :-) It was a fairly simple model and he was very easy to rig. I'm hoping the design will be surprising to the readers.

Thanks, guys! Henrietta and Sneeze are disguised as aliens and are trying to free Greyhawk, so I can't have any aliens around, but hopefully the readers will get the gag. It's up on the front page today. I put in a line about a monkey and the last panel is meant to match the camera angle they used for those long shots in the movie. Now I gotta' figure out what today's gag is... [EDIT] Holmes, I do *not* have one of those in my room ...most of my stuff is in storage. :-)

Had some fun today building this! I needed Greyhawk to be bound somehow and originally, I was thinking some sort of energy chains or something "alien," but then it occurred to me I could do a King Kong gag with him being so much bigger than the aliens. I didn't go into huge detail recreating Kong's 8th Wonder of the World platform, but hopefully a few folks will catch it. :-)

Well, I hope whatever those reasons are they aren't bad ones ...and I hope he's able to get back to it someday. Some great work by all involved.

Thanks, guys! The 3D trick is pretty simple. Turn on Depth of Field on your camera and then adjust the layers. Here's the set up seen from the side: The middle one, the "focus distance" is the plane of your monitor. So, what's in front of it sticks out of your monitor and what's behind it is inside your monitor. That's really all there is to it!

Came across this again while searching through the forums. Anybody know what ever became of this project?

Thanks, Darkwing!

Thank you, Myron! It really does help my motivation to know there are people enjoying it!

Haven't updated in awhile! I'm really starting to feel the grind of doing the strip five days a week! This will be the real challenge in the end... fighting that urge to just skip a day because I don't feel like doing it. Luckily, I'm still getting a feeling of satisfaction from accomplishing each strip, so at least there's that reward. :-) I also feel like the experience I'm getting doing so many set ups and renders is going to be a big plus down the road when/if I get to do an animated version. It's funny, I do sort of have to be careful how far in advance I look up while I'm working. I need to be able to see far enough ahead to plan for things I'll need but not looks so far ahead that I get terrified about how much endless work awaits me! :-) Anyway, hopefully the readers are enjoying the strip and are blissfully unaware of how stressed out I get when it's crunch time and I haven't figured out a gag for that day's strip. :-) I'm really enjoying the sci-fi elements of the strip, but I'll confess I'm ready to get back to having fewer characters to pose and keep track of. :-)

Looking forward to it, Gene!