Earlier this year, I received an email from BMW with an interesting request. The Mini Cooper was first designed 60 years ago, and to commemorate the occasion, BMW wanted to release a book in which people’s personal stories would be illustrated as comics.
They had found me via my Australian Cartoonist Association Artist page and requested a test strip to see if I could produce the style they were after. I produced this short, four panel comic based on the supplied text.
On the strength of that, I got the job, and produced 6 more which would go in the book.
The process was a huge learning curve for me. I am not a car guy. I barely know anything about them, save to drive my kids around in one. I began to learn the difference between specific models, and came up with a method of rendering 3D cars to insert to 2D drawings. At the time, I was developing a shader to do this task. I called it the Manga Shader, and through further development, I turned it into a commercial tool for other Blender artists wishing to create similar comic-style effects for themselves.
I’ve now wrapped on Homebased for 2017 – my webcomic about being a stay-at-home dad. In more than one occasion, I’ve relied on Blender to create some of the sets, or props in order to streamline my creative process and keep up with an on-going three-strips-per-week schedule. Over the years, I’ve refined the process, and to date, I have a pretty simple technique from modelling and lighting assets, to compositing.
I’d like to share some of the recent examples where using 3D backgrounds has helped create some quality results:
Blending them into the style has always been a challenge. I needed to model assets which would render good line-work and that can be composited to produce high contrast images to match the line drawing as closely as possible. Sometimes, I needed to tweak the compositor to brighten up the shadows:
In this example, I used a 3D model because the camera angles were going to change dramatically. I modeled the main set, as well as a modified version with cracks and damage, then rendered line-work which was later edited inside of Clip Studio Pro.
The bigger the asset library gets, the more I can draw from existing props, too, and this is a huge win for getting comics out faster. Assets like cars, buildings, floors, doors, etc all get reused, imported and appended to new set files, as do the compositing noodles which I set up to achieve certain looks.
In the months to come, I’ll be utilizing the Cycles renderer, which opens up some interesting possibilities for better effects, and the incorporation of lighting and shading effects and overlays that should produce some exciting new results.
A Kickstarter campaign for the Reverie Comics Anthology has just been launched. Reverie was one of Australia’s most wide reaching magazines to showcase our comic talent. It ran from 1983 to 1987, and helped launch such talent as Michal Dutkiewicz (DC Comics) and Fil Barlow (Real Ghostbusters) onto the international stage. I was lucky enough to be contacted by Gary Dellar, and he asked if I would like to contribute a Homebased strip to the anthology.
I couldn’t pass up such a unique opportunity, but at the time I had a lot on my plate. So I asked if he would accept an existing strip, but in colour, re-edited to fit his format. I chose this strip titled Super Train as it was fitting for the anthology, having a bit of fun with convention culture and cosplaying of beloved characters.
This colour version appears in this new anthology along with some amazing new work from some of Australia’s best comic talent including Darren Koziol (Decay), Ben Slabak (Exilium) and many more. If you’d like to know more, and maybe contribute so you can get a sweet print edition for yourself, go check out the Kickstarter page for Reverie now!
After months of planning, I’ve finally released a new project entitled Homebased. This comic is loosely based on my own experiences of being a stay-at-home parent, but has become more about the little absurd moments in a day-to-day home-based life.
Over the past few years, I’ve collected a few funny anecdotes about my kids, doing chores, things we argue over, and by sharing some of them on social media, I could see if these things resonated with others. Some did, some didn’t; so I picked some of the best, and turned them into short strips for this webcomic.
Keeping a lid on it was perhaps the hardest thing to do, since I’m so open about my process – and this has been almost a year in the making. So much had to come together for this to work correctly. I decided to go back to basics: keep it simple; be concise; maybe do it in black-and-white; write what I know. Artistically, I wanted it to be of a certain standard, so I did loads of concept sketches and practiced until I got a style I was comfortable with drawing, to the point where I really didn’t have to think about it. I also wanted a decent buffer of work ready to roll out before publishing, and I wanted it to be released on a few choice platforms that bring maximum traffic to the comic.
My overall goal was to see if there was an audience for this sort of thing. I know a few dads my age going through the same thing – not to mention mums. My generation is one that grew up with comics and pop-culture, and watched the internet give rise to the podcast, the web-comic, and most recently social media. So parents who are obsessed with phones, share stuff about their kids, and are trying to figure out how to be good at this gig – they’re my target.
Researching everything from which program to use (I’ve settled on Clip Studio Paint) to which platform to release it on (I’ve created a dedicated WordPress blog running Comic Easel, and Jetpack handles the mobile theme, sharing and feedback apps, and I will post updates on Facebook, Reddit and Instagram when appropriate. It’s been a monumental task, but once I got all my ducks in a row, I felt ready.
The response in this first week has been overwhelmingly positive considering I’ve only released a few strips, and already I’m hearing calls of “When will this be a book?” and “more please!” which is very flattering, but I don’t wish to put the cart before the horse just yet. I have a plan of sorts, and it all depends on a couple of things. Firstly, will this amass an audience that would potentially support the project financially? Secondly, will I generate enough content to create a solid enough book?
Currently, I have about 30 strips that I feel are solid ideas. In the coming weeks, as these comics are drip-fed to the internet, I’ll be collecting more notes for future strips, and should I hit about 100 good ones, I’ll be considering putting together a book of these.
It seems like ages since I submitted Dear Giang to Forward Comix for its Gwan Anthology it was putting together. I watched as it hit its Kickstarter goal in record time… then double its target.
Jerome Walford who runs Forward Comix did an amazing job of promoting the book, and getting it to out to the world in a big way. It is now available through Amazon as well as some major books retailers. Collecting stories and artwork from over 30 artists spanning more than 15 countries, the Gwan Anthology collects stories of the migrant experience in a spectrum of genres and art styles.
I received my copies recently and had a flick through. It was great to see Dear Giang in there, but I was blown away with much of the other art in there! It truly is an amazing book.
Over the past few months, I’ve been working on a short 8 page submission to an anthology all about the migrant experience. I asked my wife if I could adapt her family’s story about escaping Vietnam in 1981 for my comic. She enthusiastically said yes, and so after getting a few details, I created a sci-fi story about a family who boarded a space tug to escape their home asteroid in the hope of reaching asylum.
It was perhaps the most involved piece I have worked on. I used Blender to create the sets and props,and imported hand-drawn images into the 3D environments so that I could use the in-built compositor to create the unique look of the comic.
The overall process utilized sketches done on paper, digital inks, exported PNG files mapped on planes in Blender, then final renders re-imported into panels laid out in Photoshop.
I am pleased with the final results. If I have any regrets, it’s that I couldn’t create a larger story or about 16 pages to let some of the more intense moments breathe a little. As it is, 8 pages packs a daring escape from the asteroid, a bumpy ride through a rock storm, and a tussle with scrappers – it’s a lot to try and pack in, but ultimately I wanted to show that the heart of the story was this one family battling all odds to remain together.
I’ve been doing some small, local exhibitions of late. One like the Hungry for Art pop-up at Top Ryde shopping centre, for example. Thanks to Christophe of Hagen Cartoons for setting this up. Here’s a picture of my glorious table, plus a few marker sketches I was able ot churn out during the course of the day.
For artists in Sydney who would like to know more about how I create graphics in Blender for my illustration work, you can come along to a short talk on the 7th of June at Il Bolognese restaurant (150 Pittwater Road, Gladesville) hosted by the ACA. Details can be found here: http://www.hagencartoons.com/ACA_NSW_Function.html
