Digital Comics Creative : Volume 2

WELCOME to the second of what we hope will become a cherished and unique multi-volume PDF guide to help you make digital comics.

In this second volume, we first briefly survey the range of tools available, and then focus substantially on DAZ Studio. Part of the focus here is also on automation and efficiency. Making comics can otherwise be a slow process, and of course it‟s also possible to forget how stuff worked after putting comics aside for a while. Automation helps you to get back into it.

Bonus! Volume 1 included!

Article List

1. The Toolkit

Here we survey various tools for creating digital comics, and briefly consider uses, advantages and disadvantages. We mostly focus here on rendering 3D models into convincing „hand-drawn‟ 2D, inc. line-art.

2. Storyboard Software

Here we focus on the early stages of a comic‟s development, and briefly survey the options for storyboarding for comics — planning the arrangement of your panels, page layouts, and doodling out your rough figure positioning and poses.

3. Comic Renders with DAZ Studio

A few starter tips on where to find features that most people have no idea exist in DAZ Studio. Render lineart of several types, and toon-style!

4. Comic Renders with DAZ Studio Part 2

Here we briefly survey some third party plugins also used for comics production in DAZ, some well-known and other very obscure.

5. Dynamic Cameras in Poser and DAZ

Need some Jack Kirby-style “POW!”? Here we take a quick look at how to find and set up a „foreshortening‟ camera for an impressive leaping or punching effect.

6. Begone, Ground and Wires!

How to remove all control wires and alignment elements of a DAZ scene, and just leave yourself with the figure(s)? It‟s an important thing to know how to do, if you need to take Viewport renders out to Photoshop.

7. How to Get a Quickie iRay Render

Here‟s how newcomers to DAZ can get a quick iRay render, a „what you see is what you get‟ .PNG from your realtime Viewport.

8. 3D bridge : DAZ to Photoshop

From Digital Art Live #70, an article on how to render direct from DAZ to into Photoshop. DAZ kindly offer us a free plugin to do just that. Here‟s how.

9. Old-School Linear Threshold

There‟s a simple way to get line-art from many types of DAZ render, even photoreal, using a quick Photoshop method.

10. Review : XP-Pen

We review the XP-Pen Artist 22 (2nd Gen), covering all the angles. We find the new monitor to be a worthy £500 choice for artists and freelance home studios.

Collect all Six Volumes of this Guide!

Volume One:

The Basics: Starting Approaches and Ideas

Volume Two:

Tools part one — general tools and DAZ Studio

Volume Three:

Tools part two — Poser 11 and other useful tools

Volume Four:

Advanced tools and filtering methods for line-art

Volume Five:

Putting it all together

Volume Six:

Distribution, selling, publishing

Volume 1 Included