I’ve been tempted to bring the Moonbugs out of retirement lately. Last year, when I was drawing this science fiction comic strip and posting the humorous adventures of the strip’s characters to various blogs, I was working by sketching a strip in pencil, scanning it into the computer and adding shading or colour with Photoshop.
That technique was quite time consuming and fiddly, and I was never 100% satisfied with the results, but now I have discovered a plethora of new apps to potentially get the look of my comic strip where I want it to be.
I’ve also decided that the traditional three or four panel horizontal strip might not be the perfect format for an online, blog-based comic strip. It might be a better idea to add each panel to the post as a separate image and allow the reader to scroll downward through the illustrations with the scroll wheel on the mouse. Even Apple Mac has this feature these days.
So now I just have to decide if I want to make 3D computer generated characters and put them in a vector art Inkscape world, or the other way around, or perhaps I want sketchy graphics tablet and GIMP illustrations against a 3D background. I could even do a pure vector graphics, super professional looking strip. The options are endless. I’m starting with Inkscape, and the first thing I had to find out was how to cut a hole in one shape with another, so I could put a nice ring round a background planet.
As I’ve just downloaded the latest version of Blender, 2.5 – it’s still in alpha testing right now, and I’m currently playing with it. I’m going to be sculpting a mesh of Caz the Moonbug who gets the most screen time. I might even rig the mesh before I render it, so that I can repose it and use it over and over again. It’s time to bring the Moonbugs out of their sketchy four-colour past and propel them into a bright and shiny 3D future.
I might even animate them. Hmm… this is going to be fun.
» Prehistoric monster for Illustration Friday
