Author notes

- Character Art: Moushira Shadid

El Cid

on Feb. 4, 2019

It's been two months since I posted any updates here, and I'm pretty sure the site's supposed to hide your comic or something like that if you're inactive for much longer than that. So here's some character art for a supporting character who appears in the next mini chapter.

Btw, there's something very special about this artwork: It was done in a different rendering software than what I've been using up until now. I've been using Carrara 5 Pro as my rendering software for a very long time, but it's super antiquated at this point (released in 2005). I'm still generally happy with Carrara, but I find myself biting my nails every time I install a Windows update or get a new computer, because I'm worried this might finally be the day I try to fire up my software and the computer just says, “R U kidding me?!” and refuses to run it anymore. It's already happened with an older version of Poser I own.

So this image was rendered using Blender, which is a free 3d software you can download from Blender.org. It's actually a very powerful 3d suite, and one I've been wanting to get familiar with for a long time, but I've never had time to devote to getting past its very steep initial learning curve. Now that I've put some time into it, I find it's more than capable of doing what I need it to do, and produces some impressive results.



So, does this mean I'll be switching to Blender from now on? Maybe. As a test, I'll be doing the entire next chapter in Blender. It's a pretty short chapter, and by the time I've finished it, I should have a pretty good idea whether Blender is a viable option or not. It does have its quirks, but then so does Carrara. Overall, I really like it.

In other news, I've also been (very slowly) learning the ins and outs of the Unreal 4 gaming engine, with the interest of producing an interactive 3d game. It's super premature to be talking about it right now, but I just wanted to let you all know what I've been up to.

That's all for now. I'll start posting the new mini chapter when it's closer to being finished; no exact timetable on that just yet. And congratulations to any New England Patriots fans out there! (grumbles)

Bye.