A wild endersaka appears (with too many projects) 😉

[endersaka]

Hello to everyone,

first of all, I want to thank the admins/mods for quickly approving me to this forum. I discovered you with a (old school) search on Google, and this forum among a handful of few others is one of the last survivors of the message boards era. And I was purposely looking for something like this, since I was thinking exactly to the problem of the disappearing of this kind of communities because of the centralized platforms arrived with the Social Network era.

Speaking of me, I am a nearly 50 years old artist (and not only) from north-east Italy, specifically, Trieste, with a true passion for comics, ink (to be rigorously placed on paper with dip pens, quills and brushes), pencils (black and white and colored) and watercolors.

Recently, I tried also a bit of alcohol markers, and, over the years, I am very slowly trying to familiarize with digital painting, using Krita (a very good open source software) and a XP-Pen Artist Pro 16TP Pen Display.

While traditional art has been always my first vocation, I also love to work with computer graphics software, either for photography postproduction or digital rendering. I have used many softwares and attended to a number of courses, though, now I mainly use GIMP, Blender, Daz Studio and Digital Photo Professional 4 by Canon for my DLSR camera.

Sometimes I mix some of these techniques (traditional and digital) together. For example, I have a scifi comic book project for which I plan to model all the backgrounds and sets in 3D with Blender, while hand painting all the characters. The challenge is to render non photorealistic images with Blender and find a way to match (as close as possible) Blender renderings to my personal style.
My main work is software engineering, so, when needed, I can code scripts and tools.

Among the others, I also have a project to adapt to comic book "The Shadow over Innsmouth" by Lovecraft, a humorous witch and witchcraft series and another scifi project going with the title of "The Importance of Being Alien" with a strong polarization on diversity themes (including gender, neuro-divergent people and race discrimination... Well, the word "Alien" is self-explanatory, I believe) put in an adventurous, mystery, and scifi story.

All of these things, are made very slowly, in my spare time. There could be periods when things go faster and periods when they go very, very slow.

Thanks for reading
endersaka

(Raimond Scarf study - main character from "The Importance of being Alien")

 

[TK H-H]

Welcome! I hope you enjoy the site!

Are your comic book adaptations to be published in the future? Or are they more of a personal project?

I actually just recently was looking at trying out Krita. Been looking for something to use to play with color ideas to later apply to my oil and acrylic paintings. I used to use Photoshop CS3 a long time ago... Never found a substitute that I liked after that.

 

[Terri]

Welcome to Creative Spark! We're glad you decided to join us. I agree with you that community forums will always be superior to social media platforms - enjoy the forum!

 

[Enyaw]

Such a vast array of knowledge in one head. Your drawings are beautiful. Welcome. Enjoy.

 

[endersaka]

Welcome! I hope you enjoy the site!

Are your comic book adaptations to be published in the future? Or are they more of a personal project?

I actually just recently was looking at trying out Krita. Been looking for something to use to play with color ideas to later apply to my oil and acrylic paintings. I used to use Photoshop CS3 a long time ago... Never found a substitute that I liked after that.

My plan, hopefully, is to publish them as independent Web Comics as soon as possible.

Some will be free, some will be even open source (including all the original production assets), some will be paid (I was thinking anywhere between $ 2 to 6 per issue).

The "where" and the modality are yet to be determined (and a not an easy decisions).

To manage monetization platforms and social networks is complicated and time consuming. Given the manipulative business model, they all have, and the everyday stronger restrictions (because of events like Cambridge Analytica scandal), over time it became nearly impossible to cross-post. And yet, to effectively do web marketing you are required to be virtually everywhere.

Though, I found an App (PostyBirb) that does it, to some degree, even if it is not very well designed.

About Krita, I warmly advise you keep trying. It is not Photoshop or Painter (or any commercial digital painting software), though it is good enough to get a professional result. David Revoy, the author of Pepper and Carrot, use it since many years.

I did this painting, years ago, with Krita. I was one of my first serious attempts. It is a portrait from a photo of a friend of mine. Yet to be finished, as you can see... I wanted to create a scifi background using Blender and NPR rendering techniques.

 

[PaintBoss]

Welcome Endersaka. We are glad you have found this site. We all like the traditional message boards much better for learning and sharing. We have a lot of lurkers, so we are happy when people want to engage.
We encourage newcomers to familiarize themselves with Creative Spark’s rules.

About

Read about Creative Spark and our guidelines.

creativespark.art

 

[Hermes2020]

Welcome, Endersaka. Glad to have another artist who is interested in using software as a creative tool. In my case, I use 3D modelling software almost exclusively in my work flow, so I am sure we can have interesting interchanges on digital matters.

 

[endersaka]

Welcome, Endersaka. Glad to have another artist who is interested in using software as a creative tool. In my case, I use 3D modelling software almost exclusively in my work flow, so I am sure we can have interesting interchanges on digital matters.

Hei, @Hermes2020, I will check your profile, and I just saw you have been featured here, recently, I will check it too.

Speaking of using 3D applications (like Blender, Maya, Houdini, Cinema 4D, Daz Studio, etc.) in artistic workflow, I have no shame, actually.

The reasons are multiple:

1. I consider computer graphics (with respect to this topic, the disciplines involved in the production of 3D assets and renderings) a different form of art, but still, a form of art.
2. The extent that you use 3D software in your workflow is entirely up to you. For example, I use Blender and Daz Studio (plus a pletora of plugins and ancillary softwares) in very different ways: I sometime use them only for posing and reference (when it comes to drawing humans) and there are times that I produce an entire artwork from the models (sculpting included, if needed) to the final render.
3. Most of the 3D workflow, involves techniques borrowed from photo editing, 2D computer graphics editing, video editing, etc. I consider photo editing, graphics editing and video editing, arts too (in the worst-case crafts).
4. Textures for 3D modeling can be created in several ways, one of which has its own name: Texture Painting, which is essentially Digital Painting lent to texturing.
5. Characters models (human, animals, monsters, etc.) and not only, are frequently sculpted in 3D (like digital painting but in 3D) and then re-topologized to fit ti animation requirements.
6. Even modeling a character, or any other asset, with non-sculpting techniques, is an art. They keep trying to replace the human work, but after 30 years (Toy Story, 1996), there is still no tool capable to do it correctly as trained a human does, neither AI, even if it is getting close.

 

[Hermes2020]

Thank you for your response. The nature of my sculptural work necessitates precise parametric specifications, unlike a more expressive, direct sculptural technique. For that reason, I find that Rhino 3D is the ideal software for me in the Windows environment, since it allows me to enter precise parametric dimensions at 1mm accuracy, which is quite good enough for my sculptures that are executed in concrete.

I have looked at Blender, but my impression is that its user interface is quite clunky compared to Rhino. I am not denying that Blender is fantastic for freeware, but I simply do not have the inclination, not time, to master its command-driven workflow. I have played a bit with ZBrush, but it is more suitable for the type of direct clay application that is quite the opposite of my own interests.

I am not much of a painter and never do any digital painting or drawing, but I occasionally enjoy fiddling around with the watercolour effects that are possible in Rebelle. Rebelle's simulation of dynamic running water and drips is quite remarkable.

 

[Terri]

Hi Endersaka - just wanted to make you aware of the Digital Art forum here at Creative Spark. It was designed for exactly the kind of work you're doing!

Before this "Welcome" thread turns into too much more of your art displays, please follow the link over there for continued discussion, and of course please post all your digital work for us to see.

Thanks!