Work at the next level with 3D Reference

It was difficult for me to think of a topic for my first article. So I started thinking about what I have learned from trial and error that might help you with your own comics.

The first thing that came to mind was the difficulty I was having with the severe lighting I chose for the first scene in Pound of Flesh. I have a day job and have to work on my comics at night, so I don’t have time to labor over each panel for hours. Never the less, I found myself struggling to get the shadows right on each panel.

In my quest to find some reference to help I tried things like posing action figures but that required that I light them similarly to the look that I wanted in the panel. My desk is small & every second I spent struggling to light & pose my action figures was a second I wasn’t drawing.

Finally I hit on a solution that worked for me.

I use 3D studio Max in my work as a motion graphics artist so I quickly whipped up a very simple “figure” made out of cylinders & spheres. It looks similar to a wooden artist’s manikin. It only took me about 15 minutes to make my figure. I then posed & lit the manikin how I wanted & rendered a quick jpg. This allows me to quickly visualize roughly how shadows will fall. I just use this as a guide & take a lot of artistic license with it. Don’t be a slave to your reference.

I also tried a pre-rigged 3D human male model that was a lot more realistic but I found it very limiting. It was difficult avoid drawing the model if it is too realistic. Using a simple manikin means I can get a basic reference for how the shadows fall without my drawing looking like the model.

Once I had my manikins posed I found myself rotating the camera around looking at different angles & I realized that I could use this to quickly explore a variety of camera angles & also to get reference for difficult perspective & foreshortening too. As a result, the speed & quality of my work have increased. Any 3D software will work fine for this kind of simple reference or “previs”.

If you don’t want to spend money on 3D software I recommend a free, open source program called Blender. It is a fully functional 3D software absolutely for free. Check it out at http://www.blender.org/

I hope this was helpful. If so or if you have any tips to add, please leave a comment and if you haven’t already, read Pound of Flesh right here at R and R Comics.

-Jack Cottle, Artist on Pound of Flesh