All of the work, and then … double it.

HELLO! As you may have noticed, I’ve been having a bit of a hiatus from blogging, as every person in my particular line of work formed an orderly queue and begged me to make wonderment flow from the very valves of Hell itself. That’s fine, that’s fine, we love it when our workload doubles, don’t we? Splendid.

Anyway I’ve wrestled myself away, and I thought I’d give a little update, and publish all of the unused renders from the last little comic, and answer a few questions while I’m here. Super!

So for fun, here’s the development of one particular scene for the recent comic. Firstly, initial character layout in position – I literally just throw the characters into position, with no refinement, to see if this is the sort of layout I probably want for the scene I have in mind:

… oh dear! His hand is going through her thigh, it’s absurdly wide-angle, and … yes there’s lots going on that needs attention. But you can see the general idea at least. Next, we sort the pose a little, and try changing the lighting so it’s not so completely rubbish and over-lit:

… bit better! Next, balance the lighting even more and reset Ernest’s crazy expression, and then sort the camera angle so we’re all ready for this sort of setup to be used in their sex scene:

… that’s it! Okay, so now I have the setting and I can see where we’re aiming (I can sort Ern’s expression later as we get to that stage of the conversation), I save that keyframe and then alter their pose a little, step them backwards through the sex scene progression so they start a little more innocent and can work their way towards … well, insertion. Which is how we end up with a picture that I really liked, and used as the cover:

Splendid! My 3D scenes don’t always take so much trial and error, it’s normally once the first one’s done then you can zoom about the place and change expressions here and there, race through them. Aaaaaanyway, nobody actually asked so let’s move on.

Someone did ask if there’s gonna be more Kinfolk comics, and someone asked the same of Skybloom ~ the answer to both is yes, they’re written and ready for the next comics, only question is will I get round to doing it, eh? With my current workload I’m likely to die of some sort of stomach ulcer or something so something’s gotta change in that direction. And really I want to finish Lithium and a few other rather nice things as well, so we’re all going to need to be a bit patient. Unless someone can talk to my boss and get me a few months off? That’d be great. Many thanks.

Aaaanyway, for funsees, here’s the rest of the rejected / unusable renders:

Ah yes Ernest, I think those arms look a little painful, old bean.

Can’t remember what was wrong with this one, probably wanted to light between their legs a bit more or something.

Errrrr … your body should ideally not look like a mismatched jigsaw puzzle. That looks painful, Ern old boy.

Aaargh! Mistmatched body parts all over, oh no … they have a disease …

Moonlight, check. Sunset, check. Waiiiit a minute … have the oil lamps blown out?! Wtf, oil lamps.

Looks good, except then you notice her left thigh is generating its own light. Oh Jilly, if your thighs are giving off light you either belong in a Marvel comic, or you’re traveling at extraordinary speed.

There’s not much wrong with this one, I just wanted to render it again.

… and again. Sliiiiightly different (shorts and subsurface settings).

Light wasn’t quite right. And maybe arm angle looks a bit forced. Render it again, why not eh?

“The oil lamp’s blown out again.”
“Bastard lamp.”

“I’m just going to …”
“Oil lamp?”
“Oil lamp.”

“The hell is going on with your shoulder joint, Ern?”

“My neck hurts as well”

“What’s going on with that canvas texture? Have you shit the bed?”
“Oh no”

“But every time I lift the top up, it slices neatly through my torso!”
“Ouch.”

Too bright.

Can’t remember what was wrong with this one. Oh, his cheek goes through the pants. Yep. And the lighting’s crap and cold.

This has the potential to be a good render, except from this angle the lighting is a bit boring, and her pants cut into her torso. I think instead of sorting the pants thing, I just spun the camera angle round to hide it. Lazy but fast.

“Why’s the sunset gone so bright and yellow?”
“Someone’s cocking around with the laws of physics.”
“What’s happened to your shorts?”
“Same issue.”

“You don’t look very happy about this.”
“Someone forgot to update my face.”

This was just a render test, but it’s worth repeating because boobies. In fact I think I repeated this render test quite a few times, it’s probably this one that convinced me to stop working on Lithium and start a whole new comic haha! Ahem. Oh dear.

“EeEEEeeAAaaAAAARGHHH!!!!”
“Ern, why are you screaming?”
“I’m being cross-sectioned!?!!! EEAaaAAAAAGHHH!!!!!”

The end. How’ve we all been then? Busy ol’ world, isn’t it?