Poser comics..??

Rhenny · Post by **Rhenny** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:05 am

bearandkitten wrote:
DarknessFalls wrote:
bearandkitten wrote:Women making porn way different. Ladies like emotions and build up and romance. Women need their porn to last like 1.5 hours so they can spend an hour getting off and a half hour cuddling their throw pillows afterwards.

Men just want to watch people do things to each other for 3-5 minutes that their wife wont let them do.
Well, yes. But then you've never seen my porn and it's generally created for a male audience so it doesn't have the fluffy happy stuff women like in it most of the time.
I'm so desensitized to porn at this point. Like porno ADD. If it doesnt involve straight up marquis de sade debauchery to the nth degree theres just nothin doin.

That must have been quite the exposure to porn to be that desensitized.. oh wait were on the internet, nevermind =)

Kirb · Post by **Kirb** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 11:02 am

I guess this is a porn thread now...?

As to the original post...

Eh.

I don't really think of it as original art, no. Not unless the person completely did all of the 3D modeling and texture work, I dismiss it as somewhat pre-made. Kind of like a Megaman sprite comic, if you will.

I mean no offense, it's just my thoughts on the subject.

Noise Monkey · Post by **Noise Monkey** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:08 pm

Indeed.

Kasaii · Post by **Kasaii** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:15 pm

The only Poser comic that springs to mind is Sharper, which is quite well-done. Translates the characters into B&W in order to tone down the 'uncanny valley' effect.

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 12:27 pm

Black Sparrow wrote:Poser comics? What do you mean? There's Dominic Durgan, which takes art from Dominic Deegan for satirical purposes. There's also Venus Ascending, a fancomic of Venus Envy. Is that the sort of thing you mean?

Heh, that's how I took it too.

DarknessFalls · Post by **DarknessFalls** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:13 pm

Kirb wrote:I guess this is a porn thread now...?

As to the original post...

Eh.

I don't really think of it as original art, no. Not unless the person completely did all of the 3D modeling and texture work, I dismiss it as somewhat pre-made. Kind of like a Megaman sprite comic, if you will.

I mean no offense, it's just my thoughts on the subject.

No offense taken. It's a common thought by people. We aren't all lazy and talentless (yes, that's a common insult toward the genre, I don't think that's what you're saying). I'm internationally shown and published. I'm proud of what I do. My favorite line is "I don't have a 'make art' button on my computer."

I DO make some of my own textures but I do not create my own models. To be honest, creating models is a completely different talent and takes a completely different mindset.

Though I do dislike the idea of people being dismissive of the genre, I understand it. I've seen enough bad poser art to last me a lifetime. Then again, I've seen enough bad hand drawn art to last me two. I'm of the school of thought it's not the tools that make the artist but the art. I'm far from the best there is out there but I'm also far from the worst.

Also. Still jealous of people who CAN draw. I wish I could but it's never been my talent.

Tellurider · Post by **Tellurider** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 3:44 pm

This reminds me of a sort of, uh, fancomic. I guess.

Concerned is sort of based on Half Life 2, which I am given to understand is a video game. It's been completed but it uses some sort of thing where you can pose in the game environment.

I recommend reading it. I've never played the video game but I still enjoyed it.

In some ways I'd think it would be harder to use a computer program to try and make a comic because you'd have to wrestle with it to get things the way you wanted, and you couldn't do some exaggerations and other little tricks that you can do when drawing. However, with comics, I think that no matter how good the art is, if it doesn't have decent jokes or story I'm not going to read it. With poser, it's still going to be a comic that depends on the story/jokes for me, not on the CGI effects.

Joel Fagin · Post by **Joel Fagin** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 4:20 pm

It'd definitely a... Well, not necessarily an easy way out but certainly one that short circuits a great deal of the whole artistic side of it. With Poser, trial and error can get you a perfect scene.

My problem with it is the whole uncanny valley thing. Poser comics seem to be right in the middle of it and I think a lot of the people who do them skimp on the expressions which doesn't help.

- Joel Fagin

DarknessFalls · Post by **DarknessFalls** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 7:48 pm

Joel Fagin wrote:My problem with it is the whole uncanny valley thing. Poser comics seem to be right in the middle of it and I think a lot of the people who do them skimp on the expressions which doesn't help.

- Joel Fagin

Expressions and lights. Someone commented to me earlier in the week on my use of lighting because they'd seen too many comics created in Poser that relied on flat, global lighting. I try to play around with shadows and light, even if it's not 100% realistic. I also try to make my characters have SOME expression, life and personality.

Black Sparrow · Post by **Black Sparrow** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 8:16 pm

One thing that I've noticed about Poser comics, and it's true for yours too (so keep it in mind for later), is that the worlds are empty. Big city scenes have no people and minimal background clutter. This is what makes Poser so difficult to work with: it takes a large amount of work to account for tiny details that may have been a penstroke at most to someone who hand-draws.

DarknessFalls · Post by **DarknessFalls** » Fri Apr 20, 2007 9:49 pm

Black Sparrow wrote:One thing that I've noticed about Poser comics, and it's true for yours too (so keep it in mind for later), is that the worlds are empty. Big city scenes have no people and minimal background clutter. This is what makes Poser so difficult to work with: it takes a large amount of work to account for tiny details that may have been a penstroke at most to someone who hand-draws.

You have a very good point. It's actually something I've taken into consideration and am working into the world of my storyline that will become more evident later.

edited to add: I also think I may have found a way to work in some 'crowds' that is not too resource intensive (and I have a pretty decent machine) or does not require me to render in a thousand different layers to put all together. I'm going to keep experimenting with it because it really IS something obvious. Either way, in my storyline the streets will never be bustling but, I will be addressing it. I have a story arch in the queue and then I will be doing some world building for a bit before getting back to the meat of the story.

Robin Pierce · Post by **Robin Pierce** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 12:25 am

There's only one poser comic that I'm a fan of - and that's this one: http://www.davidcsimon.com/crimsondark/

why?

because it doesn't look like poser:
http://www.davidcsimon.com/crimsondark/ ... trip_id=88

He uses four different programs in order to make his pages, and that's when it breaks the line from 'sprite-ish' to 'art form' for me - the amount of work that goes into it.

DarknessFalls · Post by **DarknessFalls** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 12:34 am

It looks very nice. I can still tell it's Poser though. I really like the style he's using it's just not for me.

Thanks for sharing this too! Now I have a new comic to add to my reading list.

Joel Fagin · Post by **Joel Fagin** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 12:48 am

I'm with Robin. Differentiating your work and going above an beyond the competition is always a good thing.

- Joel Fagin

McDuffies · Post by **McDuffies** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 2:33 am

If you accept auteur theories of French new wave (they're the norm nowadays, I reckon) your work is as much art as you're able to make it reckognizable as your personal work. It's much easier with drawing, for instance, my drawing is a reflection of all influences I've gone through periods of learning and of my temperament, and it's bound to be more intimate reflection of myself than 3D models would. But like movie directors, 3D modellers also have means to make their work more personal, unique, reckognizable from other people who use the same tools. Creative use of lightning and specific way of working on backgrounds might be among the ways of making your comic distinguishable. Specific design of characters might be yet another way.

As far as amount of work and practice goes, I don't think that 3D modelling is much different from, say, playing with puppets in Illustrator. One of things specific for webcomics is that electronic tools and free distribution have given us many oportunities to cut corners and other ways to make comics than years of practice until we reach professional level. Intention of most of webcomickers is simply to be creative, right here and right now.
Even though I draw in old-fashioned way, you could say that I'm using benefits of new technology by lettering on computer, or by colouring with tablet. Even script-wise, you could say that comics based on DnD session are similar way of being creative without lots of complications of writing from scratch.
I guess it's results that count in the end. In this case, I too would reccomend working with your own models instead of templates, not only because it gives you more creative freedom, but also because, in the end, if many authors use the same models, readers aren't going to be very impressed.

CSchaefer · Post by **CSchaefer** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 4:04 am

My comic is done in Poser (well, Daz3d specifically), and I'm the first to admit that it would look way, way better if I had the artistic skill to hand-draw it. Like, epochs better. My goal has always been to tell an engaging story and hope that the writing is able to carry the visuals; that's where the "art" comes in.

Turnsky · Post by **Turnsky** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 9:43 am

it's not the tool, it's how it's used that matters.

like some folks who do poser comics sometimes have their characters way too inflexible and stale looking, like it's just a bunch of posed mannikins or somesuch. In reality, to use a 3d program like poser, just be sure one knows what they're doing before they go in headfirst.

Me, personally, i'm not a big fan of people using poser to do a comic in its entirety, it's nothing personal, i just see poser as somehow cheating, 'tis all. like i said before, it's my personal opinion, and not the objective one i stated before.

Phact0rri · Post by **Phact0rri** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 1:01 pm

I usually don't like Poser comiques, cause they lack emotional integrity. I have liked CGed comiques in the past but I've yet to see a poser comic that really captivated me (that one that robin linked did look mighty cool visually though).

ShineDog · Post by **ShineDog** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:34 pm

unfortunatley ive never seen anything with poser that didnt look ghastly, crimson dark an exception, for the reasons Robbo gives above.

Im strongly biased against it as a medium, because i think it vastly restricts the creativity of the author.

Now, Concerned on the other hand, thats great. But concerned works because its a well written parody. It uses the fact that its made with the HL2 engine to parody HL2 itself (affectionatley parody).

The fact that the HL2 engine is actually far more attractive than poser will ever be is a bonus.

(re poser, i have it, and i use it from time to time, but only to create a reference for something that is irritating me, youll never see poser assets in anything i create)

Vorticus · Post by **Vorticus** » Sat Apr 21, 2007 5:49 pm

I have to say the whole Uncanny Valley part is what keeps me from reading poser comics. The characters always seem so stilted in their poses. I did read all the way through concerned and it was hilarious, but I think it falls into a different category than plain poser comics.