I was going to wrap this comic up bringing it to a conclusive end. But I decided against it at the last minute. I’m not sure when the second part will come out. I still need to finish part one of the chastity gang. And maybe create a new tab on this blog called abandoned projects, to post the things that almost made it, as requested by somebody who commented. Criticism, suggestions, compliments, and comments are always welcome.
This is fun, great work :)
ReplyDeleteThanks :)
DeleteYou got a lot finished up around the same time! Seems like a lot to juggle at once, but it came out well! Good job!
ReplyDeleteOnly tips I can think to suggest are nitpicks on the word bubbles. In the previous comic, you put quotes around the character's sentences as they talked, you don't need to do that when you're already using word bubbles. Which you didn't do that here, so maybe not necessary to point out on my part.
Otherwise, while the font you've chosen for your text isn't bad, I would say I'd find a different font more legible. What you've chosen is rather thick and blocky, good for signs and certain sound effects and captions, but for word balloon text, most comics use something a bit thinner and slightly more script-like. On Page 40, the font you use for "That's Amazing!" would be closer to what I commonly see (without the italics) used for comics dialogue. There are some fonts you can look up and download, like Anime Ace, which I've used myself, and are good for this sort of thing. Mind you, this is just an aesthetic thing, and if you prefer the font you already use, then don't worry about it.
I find that it’s more efficient to work on a couple of comics at a time. Daz 3d only allows you to run one instance of it. I found a way to get around that, which allowed me to pose assets and set scenes in one window, as I rendered another scene in the other window. It worked well for a while, then it corrupted a whole bunch of files which resulted in me having to reinstall Daz 3d and my whole asset library, which was no small task. Now I can see why the people who developed Daz 3d have tried to block people from running multiple instances of it on the same machine, at the same time.
ReplyDeleteSo now, while I’m waiting for things to render in Daz 3d on one comic. I’ll work on another comic, by doing the Photoshop stuff. But I’m glad they’re still turning out well.
I’ve tried a more comic-like font and I do like the look of it. But noticed the font lacks punctuation and is all in capitals. Quickly looking at Marvel comics, the all-caps thing seems to be the norm. But I’m not sure about the punctuation though. It’d be good to know your thoughts on this.
Thanks for the comment.
Yeah, with DAZ's rendering speeds, it is definitely more efficient to be working on a second thing while letting the first scene cook. Sucks you had to deal with a corruption error.
DeleteHmm... I'm not sure which font you were using, but its very odd that it would not come with punctuation. All-caps was the standard for mainstream comics for a very long time, and is still most common, but there are titles that have broken that trend, so it's hardly necessary to stick to that.
The website "dafont" has thousands of font types, good for lettering as well as sound effects. You can search for "comic" or "manga" fonts, and scroll through until you find one that suits your style. Alternatively, if you're using a PC and just want to use default fonts, I'd recommend something like Arial or Bahnschrift. But I'm sure you'll find something workable.
I think I corrupted some base files. Most of the expression dials caused the faces to cave in and expand, distorting their heads. And any saved file that I opened would display their faces in the same distorted way. It became completely unusable. I tried uninstalling and reinstalling certain packages, the program itself, and parts of the library. Nothing worked, in the end, I had to do a complete reinstall and start from scratch. Luckily Daz install manager kind of streamlines it and saves a copy of everything you’ve downloaded from them. But it caused me to lose how I organized the files. My custom library, so now it’s a pain to find anything.
DeleteI’ll check some other fonts out, worst case I’ll borrow the missing punctuation from another font to paste in between. But I doubt it’ll come to that. I got rid of the speech marks after noticing people don’t use them. You confirming it makes me feel confident it was the right move.
Apologies for trying to tempt you out of retirement here. But if you ever want to team up on a comic, say anywhere up to 100 pages long to post on your blog, where I do the renders and you write the story, let me know. It’d be nice to have some new content from you set in your sex-mage world.
I’ve collected quite a few settings where stories can take place, and with body morph and face dials, I’m pretty confident I can get the character descriptions right. I’ve also got some crazy assets I’ve not used. Like milking machine devices, things to turn people into living furniture and living art, bondage beds, cages, all types of gags and binds, futuristic science machines, portals, etc, stuff once I saw, I just had to get. I just haven’t had the opportunity to use it all yet.
If you have some settings in mind, or types of equipment and want to preview them. To help get the creative juices flowing. I can always render a quick snapshot of whatever it is and upload it here.
It’s an open offer without a deadline, for as long as I’m making this content anyway.
I'd had similar issues with DAZ screwing something up and it taking forever to figure out how to undo it. Sometimes its a basic toggle that is just super unintuitive to find, other times, it does take a whole reinstall effort. The DAZ forums are sometimes helpful, but just like with any tech help forum, half of the advice and tips are years out of date or don't get answers. Still, it's the best place to search, other than maybe reddit.
DeleteAs for a collab, I appreciate the offer, but I'm still out of the game, and don't plan to be back other than the occasional spontaneous relapse.
To be blunt, and I hope this isn't dissuading to you, I don't really like the look of DAZ as a whole. Despite all the advances of the program over the years, there's still an uncanny valley look to the models, and I find there is a razor-thin margin of error when it comes to giving the models expressions that don't crunch the faces up weirdly. This is not a knock on your own skills, its just a hard barrier I have with the model styles of DAZ.
I've never been good at getting them to look right, myself, other than to give the characters very bland expressions that rarely convey the emotion I'm actually trying to portray. This is kind of why, for all I find the overly cutesy anime style incredibly frustrating to be stuck with, I just kept falling back on Koikatsu, because the cartoon stylization of the anime models at least feels more workable to me for the comics medium, and even then, I found I could never actually set up shots in a satisfying way for most of the scenes I constructed.
In an ideal world, I would be a master-class artist myself and could just hand draw stuff.There really is no replicating the beauty of great hand drawn line work. But that's neither here nor there.
One creator I will point you to is the Omnipotence author/artist Jasmine Van Croft. She has a website with a HUGE series about all-powerful magical women going on various "escapades". She's pretty much mastered the use of DAZ and Photoshop to make some impressive content using those programs. There is a link to her site in my Recommendations page. (I'd link it here, but I'm assuming Blogspot flags links).