The next phase for my first page roughs.

Notes:

• Hugh model posed in all frames.
• Basic posing of the hero Hunter creature done. 
• All background Hunters will need to be added.
• Visual FX not started (smoke, dirt, tire tracks etc.)
• Basic shading will be decided during rendering phase.

During the final render phase and polish in SketchUp (which will wait until the entire book is roughed), I’ll be determining shadow tones, dialogue placement, and any extra rendering elements.

What a day. I posed all the Hugh models for the first 2 pages of the scene I mocked up yesterday (see previous blog post). A total of 6 panels out of the 11 total for the spread (plus a super long shot for panel 1).

The posing in Maya was way fast to do. 6 panels took 3 hours. A few screen shots from Maya below:

Then I imported a panel into SketchUp and polished it up. The polishing phase in SketchUp is a little more time consuming – just 1 panel took about 2 hours. In SketchUp is where I focus on the line work and pop out all the details I want to emphasize, plus adding shadows. I’m starting to liken this part to the “inking” stage in comics.

In Maya.

Raw import into SketchUp.

The polished panel.

Okay, so this week is all about building a scene for Fuel & Fire. This will be the first scene I’ve created for the book. For starters I roughed out the pages needed for the scene using stand-in objects.

Notes:

• These represent 4 pages in the scene. The scene will encompass about 5 pages.
• Comic will be in landscape form. 
• The red shapes are the clipping mask showing through (being that the images are not cropped and sized to fill the frame). This will obviously be fixed in the final.
• The images will be shaded like the single frame in panel 2 on the first page.
• The purple is rough placement of sound FX.
• The white is rough placement of narration and dialogue.
• The red diagonal lines are some changes to the panel shapes and gutters to break them out of their plain box form.

The Tools:

• SketchUp – rough, and eventually final renders (though I might do this in Google Layout).
• Maya – character posing and deformation.
• Photoshop – for the roughs and final layout (though I might use Illustrator for the final).

The Assets:

• Hugh
• The Hunter Creature
• Mangled Hunter Creature
• FMC – XR311
• FMC -XR311 (gas peddle)
• Rocks
• Dust FX
• Map
• Water Bottles
• HAM Radio
• Clouds

Roughing the Page Process:
[PS] Photoshop
[SU] SketchUp

1. [PS] Load up my custom template (10 1/4″ x 6 5/8″ landscape)(facing pages).
2. [SU] Open up scene file in SketchUp.
3. [SU] Import basic assets, arrange, and set camera angle (save as scene).
4. [SU] Screen shot (alt+PrtScrn) the panel shot in SU.
5. [PS] Paste (ctrl+v) as separate layer in template file.
6. [PS] Crop out any extra items in screen shot.
7. [PS] Create panel in a separate layer (for use as a clipping mask). Arrange on page.
8. [PS] Arrange layers so that image is on top of clipping mask – right click on layer ans select, “create clipping mask”.
9. [PS] Fine tune image in mask.
10. Repeat steps 3-9 for each panel.

A quick post before I head off to the Hot Rod Reunion in Bakersfield.

Jimmy Chan’s truck:

Lots of work needs to be happen to finish this truck up.

• Finish up the Flat-Head.
• Complete the front end, grill, light rig, suspension, and brakes.
• Interior shell and dash.
• Gas tank.
• Tow platform and platform mechanism.
• Rear end suspension.
• Rear lights, bumper, tow package and wheelie bar.

Here’s also another car I’m working on. The first issue of the comic will focus on the driver of this car.