I've been on the site for a good while now, by way of the first time I heard about the live action movie sometime in '06. One of my favorite spots has become the funnies board...I started out in the fan fiction board, but the visuals paired with the stories here in funnies won me over. I have actually wanted to start my own story for a while thanks to Cool Hand, Shane, and so many others. Warring at Play finally pushed me to do it (thanks Pol).

BUTTTT, I need LOTS of feed back on presentation so I am going to use this thread to sample visual ideas/concepts to see what flies and what bombs. I don't have a huge collection, but I am going to start adding here and there whenever the wallet allows. Pol, thanks again for the great advice.

This first piece is something I played with a little bit last night...Long Haul at the Lava Falls - let me know (honestly) what you all think.

 

I think that the lava flow looked good, but...the uhhh....'pool of lava(?)' looked a bit to much like water to me....But that's just me.  

 

Thanks for the feedback. lol, I went off on a tangent with the pool...I have this idea about a pool of sparks and electric, arcing plasma.

 

It looks good, but are you sure you need to make a topic for this?

 

I think it looks good, like lava running into water, like what they have at Hawaii.

I think, however, that you will find that complete background replacements and fabrications will quickly become so much work that you will burn out.

I haven't seen a comic that graphically intensive last more than a dozen updates. So, in a manner of thinking, you actually serve your readers better by giving a less polished result.

 

Thanks Chaos...when's the next update, by the way, lol. I probably will tone it down but I think the scenery will not be as time consuming if I build basic pieces in Photoshop and composite them into a "real" environment in After Effects...that way I have the ability to present a 360 degree line of sight by just changing the camera angle and character placement within the virtual set. (well, at least that is what I WANT to try to do, lol) I think it would make updates easier once each set piece is built because there would be no need to recreate a scene as action shifts. Again, it's all theory and whatnot but I've used the two programs in a similar way for other projects and it works...here's hoping I get equally successful results in building my story (otherwise, it might fizzle before it even takes off well, lol)

 

Hi Hype1! The background looks good actually, but since it's lava falls the "lake" there would look better as lava rather than saturated steam/water in a sense.

I agree with Chaos. Besides the fact that it is a unique way of doing comics, which I admire  , it's going to take a lot out of you to endure this all the way.. Even with normal comics, I get pretty strained sometimes @@ But if you have the willpower to keep going, then I won't stop you.  

 

Speaking of will power, lol...I sat at the computer for about an hour last night and had a total power outage, lol. Actually, I think it was more laziness and letting myself be distracted with other graphic stuff (pics from photo shoots, building gifs, playing that little robot game that comes with Vista) But, all that said, I did manage to eek out another sample.



This is a 3d space created in After Effects that could be used to drop characters into...just shoot the scene and then move the AE camera in the space to match the angle of the real camera and viola! Well, it is better to take the scene into PS because you have greater control of the characters there with cropping, shading, etc. One problem (from the laziness, lol) though...I didn't lock the layers in AE so when I went to reposition the cam for shooting another angle, the whole scene went nuts 

Nothing I can't easily fix, I just have to focus and stop doing a million other things while building these.

 

That's a nice way of creating Digital Sets. I've never heard of After Effects before. Very cool. 

I think Long Haul still looks very much like he's been cut and pasted into the scene. Prime less so. Its the lighting maybe, I'm not sure. I'm pretty clueless when it comes to fx and image compositing, hence the WYSIWYG approach to most of the stuff in my own strip.

Looks like a solid foundation to start telling a story. No sense rushing yourself though, especially with the script. A good beginning is vital to any book/comic/play/photostrip. Play with the effects, and write your script, and when you feel you have a good opening, let it loose upon us. 

 

Adobe After Effects is used more in video than still imaging (compositing, special effects, color keying, etc.) I like to use it with still images tho because you have 3 axises of control, which makes building a strip with 3 dimensional objects easier (in my opinion, anyway)

I got sloppy/sleepy with Long Haul on that one, lol...he actually was only there because I forgot to turn his layer off before saving the jpeg.
It has been a slowish day at work so I "borrowed" Ptitvite's Devy and played around with this:



Gotta go back and add the upper shadow on Dev to the wall/ceiling and tie the walls into the rocks tonight. Hope the rain I am hearing outside doesn't mean stormy weather cause I turn the PC O-F-F in heavy rain.

Agreed, I don't plan on rushing...I just wanna keep working on visual concepts for now and getting feedback. By the way, I would love to do some collabs with different storytellers here. I could build a set from scratch for characters to be placed in or even composite one over/under scenes you guys build. The second way would take a bit more time, but it's doable.

 

Urybody check back tomorrow (Friday) afternoon...got some great concepts I'm gonna post and feed back is a must!!!

Scratch that ^
I'll be back after the weekend, but hit me up anyway with comments about Optimus and Devy in the base (and yeah, I STILL have not fixed Dev's upper torso shadowing, lol)