Someone discovered my comics this week and bought a bunch of stuff on my wishlist – I love it when that happens, hehe. its so fun getting random messages like this:
“… I read it the whole night, I didn’t get any sleep before work, since I was so locked in by the story […] I wanted to give you money because it was so good, but I read that you don’t feel like you need it. So I will see if I can manage to buy you things on your wishlist”
I mean that’s cool as a story writer, when people get no sleep because they’re 100% locked in on your work. That’s always cool. And the random influx of stuff I get in the wishlist (which is now empty so I’ll have to see if there’s anything else I fancy playing with..!) is great fun. Thanks to everyone who has done this for me in the past – it’s always appreciated, and has contributed directly to both comics and [a trillion] concepts for years.
Pictured here is one of the characters I wanted to play with, she’s so unusual but a standalone sort of fantasy Dark Crystal vibe of a person ~ great work by the creator, someone called Nursoda. What’s interesting is what it looks like out-of-the-box vs after 20 minutes of tweaks by someone with my sort of experience – you can see what I’ve done with her (left is default, right is with my skin tweaking):
See what I mean? I’m always hoping to add a bit more life to characters – because otherwise what’s the point? It’s realness, it’s relatability, it’s ‘spark’ that makes stories believable, and as I’ve said many times, if these silly stories are believable then they’re hot AF.
Anyway, that’s my approach to texturing, whamming the subsurface scattering up to 11. Works for me, at least. Back in the day when I was building STFW [Artists Deniability Disclaimer: I officially have no idea who Project Nemesis is and am in no way affiliated to that amateurish internet random] … it was always subsurface skin that was a challenge; I’d always end up with renders like on the left, with flat-looking skin. So it was great moving to modern render engines and getting subsurface scattering working properly.
Anyway, let’s enjoy playing with the new character, let our minds wander a little …
… love those cute little shoes! Anyway the character has a few problems, but definitely some potential here. We can easily imagine either a medieval/domestic comic based on the couple shown above, or even a scifi in which some intrepid space adventurer gets trapped on a planet and/or in a spaceship alone with our new lil’ character and has to use … spermedicine? To …? Cure? Her …? Ailments? Now we’re into Madiy and Crash territory heheh. Ah, it’s boring being high-brow, we all need a little low-brow nonsense now and then.
Anyway, boobies.
( . )( . )
The enthusiastic new reader reminds me it’s been a while since I’ve done my own enthusiastic STFW read-thru. Time to get to it!
As for the character models: At first glance, InCase’s Alfie came to mind. The mind boggles when pondering what the full SAJ treatment of Alfie could be. So many -isms Alfie (and others) have to get through that invite much deeper exploration in the script.
About skin glow: In the long-before times, I was a semi-pro photographer, meaning I took gigs mainly when I wanted a new lens, or as a gift when folks couldn’t afford a better photographer. Did lots of weddings, and lots of portraits for beginner actor and model portfolios. My photos were plenty good, but when I tried to add more dramatic effect, I kept overexposing highlights in my attempts to find subtlety.
Until I started photographing darker skin. I could throw so much light onto those subjects, and the skin would take it all and return the most wonderful and subtle glow, along with a very rich range of highlights and shadows.
Not that I did at all bad with lighter skin. It was truly fine, and my clients were always pleased. It’s just that darker skin gave back so much more, given the tools, techniques and skills I had available.
My main limiting factor was I didn’t have my own permanent studio, so I seldom had total control over the lighting, meaning if I couldn’t work with it, I’d have to overwhelm it, typically with large flash units. Hence the original situation when trying to do more than “make do” with what was available.
Makes me wonder what kind of fun I could have with 3D rendering for skin effects. Who needs live subjects? My job would be to try to make them come alive.
<3
NO beauties! Argh!
Hi again Sindy,
I get the Alfie comparison BobC mentioned, but that was very basic 2D but fun to read all eighteen chapters. I thought your characters looked more like Harry Potter’s house elves in facial expressions but with more realistic little bodies.
By the look of the fourth from last pic, they have quite a sexy nature. Maybe a fantasy medieval hero on a search for a missing princess with some sexy magical elves to assist him and keep him warm at night could be worthy of a chapter or two.
As the reader in question *blush*, it’s so cool to already see that you have started creating something with the wishlist items. I was in fact very intrigued by that figure, and love what you have done with it already. The subsurface scattering does help a lot in making it more lively, as well as your other touches to the models. And by the way, the “let our minds wander a little” photo makes me realize that her “lower lips” being a bit bulbous would be very sexy as a trait of “their kind” or something(imho). I am excited to see what you will do with the models, but again, I am excited to see _anything_ you do really, as I am still very fascinated by the insane quality of what you give out!
I like your idea about the sci-fi / medieval crossover, makes me think of “cowboy-western” like Firefly was, which really worked, so I don’t see why something like sci-fi-medieval wouldn’t be a banger 😅
Anyways, thanks again for being awesome!