The Critter Camper!

Well, the poetry books have yet to land in my local library, so I’ll just take a second to reveal another project I’m working on. 🙂 I’ve always wanted to write a graphic novel, and by write one, I also mean do the artwork too. I’ve been playing around with the idea for a couple of years, and then, just a week or so ago, I had a bit of a breakthrough. I took some 3D images I’d done of Ukaliina and went a little deeper into the textures, adding some Greenland flags to her patches, and Ukaliina’s call sign to her helmet. Previously, I had superimposed the patches on top of the image in a new layer, and had to add fake shadow on top. This time I went into the texture layer, built the badges there, and then added the textures to the 3D model prior to rendering. This might be small potatoes for 3D artists, but it was earth shifting stuff for me!

Now, I’m no Frank Miller, but I do love his work, and his Batman particularly so. But I’m going to play around with this some more, and then, when I’ve got a finished comic, or part 1 of a graphic novel, or when I’ve got a finished ‘something’ then I’ll do something with it. 🙂

I’ve sketched a rough storyboard for the first couple of pages (might even post that at some point) and I’m working on the images in 3D, before making them more comic-like with filters in Photoshop. But this is all very new territory for me, and I’m loving it.

The story I’m starting with is one of my adventure stories with dinosaurs, but I think there’s scope here for a Maratse or Petra story. Just like the proof of concept I did with Ukaliina. The above images of the “critter camper” are the so-called ‘hero shots’ and I’ll be sure to make them more arty for the comic/graphic novel/something. For those of you who are curious to see the original 3D model I adapted, you can find it here. Repeat offenders might recognise some of my dinosaur art from other covers. 😉 Oh, and I need to remove the Iveco name before I put the comic together, but for the life of me I can’t find it in the texture folder. I guess I’ll be airbrushing that out soon.

Yep, it’s all still very much a work in progress. I have the story in my head, and I’m trying not to write it, meaning I want to work on the images first. However, spoiler alert, ShanuTek from my adventure series are definitely involved, as is a little slice of jungle in the fictive African country of Gazania, and at least one guy named Bob.

More soon!

Chris

P.S.

What really spurred this project onwards was when I was contacted by an AI comic company looking to use my stories to create comics. The comics could be produced, they claim on their website, within 48 hours. I’ve used a couple of weeks on my comic so far, a few hours here and there, maybe a long evening or two, and I’ve enjoyed every minute. Why on earth would I want to reduce that period of creative exploration to a couple of prompts and a click and let AI do the rest?

I still don’t get what the tech ‘guys’ don’t get… Why do they want to make creative work effortless and fast? Creating and taking the time needed for it, is where the fun is at! 🙂

As for the AI company… I said no, of course.