Time to Wake Up!

Get your day started! At 6 am. With strange ghosts and demon fur babies.

I really like exploring Kamiko through her surroundings. As you can see, she's a bit... untidy.

More 3D Backdrops

Again, to help me, I looked to 3D to help me create her environment -- this time her bedroom.

Here's a screenshot from Blender:

I drew over some parts such as the blue dress (you might recognize where that comes from) and items on the dresser.

It was fun making the modern Ikea looking furniture, lamps, and jewelry boxes.

I wanted to make it look untidy. So all the drawers are open as if she rummaged through them but didn't bother to shut them properly -- who has time for that nonsense anyway?

Some of the 3D elements I left as is and simply gradient mapped them to be the yellow-blue scale I'm using for all of the artwork.

Oh, and I do want to call out the painting. I took a little time to create an abstract piece of art that lives there. It's meant to depict nine birds in abstract:

They're a motif you can find sometimes in the Rabbit and the Moon comic I did years ago. Sometimes also just the number 9.

The painting in the comic is only shades of blue. I debated over whether I should have it appear red, but I didn't want to have it pop out against the background and call attention to it. I can do that in the blog post though.

The Apartment Interior

I didn't really delve into this last time, but I mentioned I modeled her entire apartment. It's based on an actual floorplan I found. I would post the actual floorplan, but I'm certain an architectural firm owns that and it's not really my right to post it.

My 3D mock-up of it though I feel is fair game since I made it based on an interpretation of that floorplan, which I'm probably not interpreting correctly, because I'm the furthest thing from an architect. I don't have the plans and designs for the actual walls and overhangs, etc. I looked at some of the apartment reference images on the site I found and tried to mimic those elements when I re-created it in Blender. So I will show you my rendition which probably doesn't look as luxurious as the real deal.

I modeled it so I could return to it as a set piece and do more stories in it. That means I can use Blender and set up a camera and help me create establishing shots.

As you can see, some rooms are empty because I haven't put anything in there. I have some plans for the other rooms and I'm looking forward to developing them down the road.

Modeling the apartment was also quite time consuming, but I enjoyed it.

To do so I began with an image of the 2D floorplan and began to draw out rectangles and traced the wall outlines. From there I extruded. I realized without any 3D information about how the rooms should be constructed, I'm not able to fully recreate it in Blender. Hence, this being an approximate.

And it's not meant to be an accurate representation. I'm going to use it to draw over parts or place cameras to setup backgrounds, and yes, straight up use the renders in my final comics because I'm lazy like that.

The furniture is a combination of things I found or items made by me. Most of Natsumi's bedroom is made by me. The living room uses free models from online 3D repositories.

Some things don't quite work well... such as doors. They don't quite fit right, because you know, I'm not an architect or a construct foreman so I don't really know about these things. So, when I set up a shot for a room I'll fudge things. There's no actual window panes. I mean, why would I need them? I'm not trying to do strictly rendered architectural shots.

A lot of this is based on the premise of "good enough."

And again, we'll see if my time investment into these 3D projects pays off, but since making the comic and, by extension, doing art is meant to be a learning experience, a practical experience, to me, I feel like the time invested is worthwhile to develop my skills.

That's all for this week!

I hope you're having a good weekend. Stay safe and have a good one!