Author notes

013 - Hi Freddy!

El Cid

on June 11, 2015

It certainly wasn't intentional, at least not at any conscious level, but it sure looks like I was channeling Baby Herman from Who Framed Roger Rabbit when I did the character design for Freddy.

 
Sorry, no cool animations or other such extras today. And I promised not to clobber you with another science blurb. So instead, here's a quick behind-the-scenes look at the steps I take to create a page of this comic.
 
First, I start off in Poser, which is a popular 3D content management program. All I do here is pose the characters. I find Poser's sort of a nightmare to render with. It does make nice renders, but it's slow and crashes often.

Next up, I need a set. Sometimes I will use pre-existing sets for a backdrop, but often I end up needing to build my own as well. For most of my modeling, I use a long-forgotten subdivision modeling program called Hexagon. It's decent for what I use it for, just super basic stuff mostly. I usually don't need to model the entire environment; just the parts that my storyboards show me will likely be on camera. In this case, all I need is a simple wall.

Now, I import my posed characters and scene props into Carrara, which is where I do the majority of the production work and rendering. In case you're wondering, no I don't recommend going out and buying Carrara if you're interested in doing 3D. I own a very old outdated version that's no longer available. It's awesome. But the newer versions are garbage.

In Carrara, I set up all the lights and fix all the textures. Since these are characters I've worked with before, I have all the texture files already saved (that's what all those splotches are down on the bottom of the screen), so retexturing is quick and easy.

Once everything's set up, I render it and open the image in Photoshop where I clean it up and… well, that's it! Easy as pie!

 
Check back next week. There may only be one update next week, depending on how much feet-dragging I do. We'll have to wait and see.
 
And also, we're just a little over a month away from the New Horizons probe's closest approach to Pluto, on July 14, 2015. Can't wait! (well okay, actually I can wait, and I guess I'll have to. What an odd expression that is!)