Using 3D assistance for comics your opinion

[Iris-Grimoire]

Tools are tools, they're not drawing for you. In a comic creation world, you're not going to show off your skills every panel and expect to be done in the same decade; 3D models help speed up, and to look the best you won't trace them anyway, it's to have guidelines to draw the final picture with more finesse and efficiency.

[Jophiel]

I'm intending to use 3d programs for environments and I think some web toon artists use it as well. Use what you have and use what you can to make your workflow much easier. To say it's cheating is making it sound like a sin o.o So as long as you create them yourself and not claim other's work on your own, that should be fine. Drawing the same environments or models from different angles can be challenging and those programs are handy for turnarounds.

[IndigoShirtProd]

The only thing that bothers me with 3D assistance is when the backgrounds are entirely in 3D and the foreground characters are drawn in 2D. Like @darthmongoose and @Maps implied, the assets tend to have a hard time blending well with the drawn parts of the comic. It can be very distracting and jarring for the reader. Nothing against anyone who does it, I think it would be too bothersome in my eyes.

[inkycharland]

I think there is a balance on this. I wouldn't say "not" to. Use the tools at your disposal. Please. More people need to embrace using tools.

HOWEVER, you need to practice developing the skills on your own. Not only will that help your speed in the future, but it allows you to think more critically about the work you are doing. Taking too much from a source can paint you into a box

I believe you can build art skills by mimicking/tracing >> adapting/focused practice >> creating something wholly original. Don't feel like you need to rush yourself on this process though. It takes years of focused work to really master an element of your craft.

[darthmongoose]

Yeah, I'd never just plonk in a 3D model as a background. I rather use them to draw over pretty much as a perspective guide. It's really hard to blend otherwise, especially if you're working with lineart characters like I do. It's possible to source more anime kind of style 3D models with lines or that take to outlining in programs like Clip Studio well, but doing so, you tend to get stuck with the limited scope of what's available, so unless your setting is modern day Japan, it's hard to find what you need.

[sakebento]

I recently learned that the Disney animation crew for 101 Dalmatians did this very thing:

Cruella's Car

There's an entire separate discussion concerning who is building the models, use of presets, and who has the rights. And I'd very much hope that the artist would blend the 3D and 2D to make a consistent-looking final image. But any tool that helps an artist seems like a good thing to me.

[CodeMonkeyArts]

Yup, this is Rotoscoping (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping), which was used quite often in the animated movies of the 1970s, notably Ralph Bakshi's Lord of the Rings movie. Though I do agree that when in a non-animated format (comic, graphic novels) it can look jarring, but there are plenty of techniques to mitigate the appearance of 3D backgrounds against 2D characters and props.

I give serious side-eye to people who claim that any use of 3D is cheating because these are techniques that have been in animation and comics since...well the beginning of the medium to be honest. Digital Art already gets a lot of crap from people simply due to the medium. These are tools to be utilized and with 3D models, if you use Design Doll or Maya or (insert another tool here), you're pretty much CREATING your character and props anyways. So...yeah.

[elyss]

I build my own and draw over them personally. The only reason ever dislike them is if the assets don't mesh well with the drawing style or if they contradict the environment. I reag a comic that used them and it was medieval setting but the bookshelves had Japanese library content on them (ew).

[vothnthorvaldson]

I put "other".

I think it can be a good tool, however, I see that so often misused that I understand the hate against it.

So many comics use the same programs, don't trace over, apparently use the default colour (? I suppose?) etc., so much that once I even thought 2 comics were set in the same universe, and in fact it was two different authors... I can't take any more of these real estate cheap ads, salmony-pink, hospital-looking buildings

Used better, why not? I would say as a general rule that I really prefer if it's only used as a base and at least partially redrawn.

[sekabead]

I actually tried to model some things in 3d for my comics (specifically for background and even characters when I was way too lazy to learn to draw human figures), but... gosh it's actually SLOWER than to draw them by hand! Except if multiple scene contains the same million things that is.

Edit: in my case it's slower because I had to do all by myself

[darthmongoose]

@sekabead raises a really good point which is that with 3D, the old saying "short cuts lead to long delays" can really come into play.

Sometimes there can be so much setup involved in getting a 3D model or environment to look good that it's actually way more time and effort than just like... drawing the scenery or pose.
For example, there's a room in this pair of pages: https://tapas.io/episode/1526228
That took me two hours to build up. And that's for something that looks like this:

Obviously it then took a lot of drawing and colouring to use that to create the scenes in the comic. If this room only appeared in one establishing shot, I might not have bothered, but since it's used for several shots in this scene and will turn up later, I bit the bullet and sank time into it.

For poses... I personally can't be bothered, and that's because drawing people is an area where I've invested so much time that I feel like I almost certainly will get a better result and do it way faster if I just eyeball it. It would take me ages of fiddling with a 3D model to get the pose juuust right, and I'd rather fiddle with my pencils. It's all about saving time in the end and feeling happy with the result you get.

[Resilo]

Thanks for all the feed back everyone! my favorite author Hiroya oku(Gantz, inuyashiki etc) uses 3d software to assist with his works. I have been setting up scenes and using them like an inital sketch. to go over.I Have skills in drawing and in 3D

I realize however i am a rather slow artist and if i spend over an hour simply setting up every pose i will never finish a single comic. So to compensate for my lack of speed with art i substitute it with my 3d modeling skills

I've heard this refer to as talent stacking before

I agree with the general consensus that 3d used for assisting drawing is good.

On the flip side unless your whole comic is a straight up fully 3d rendered one. I don't think you should ever just be straight up using a 3d render. I believe 3d should be used as an ultimate reference so one day your brain already knows all the information needed to draw the scene and hopefully helps me one day become a much faster artist.

[rajillustration]

3d programs are wonderful, and everyone should learn them, but a lot of people don't quite get what's going on with the camera--it makes some really distorted looking renders.

When people do it right it looks great--super great--but for me it's way faster to just draw with ruler. I mean mostly I'm just drawing buildings.

[JRHoch]

I recently starting playing with 3d models for figures and ultimately decided to use it only as reference for poses but not to trace over. Something about the tracing creates very stiff figures and the gesture, while perhaps accurate, lacks life. And the 3D backgrounds people use, really do feel dropped in and unrelated to the characters.

In the end, we are all trying to find ways to work faster. The thing is, it's easy to notice bad use of 3D models, while the goods ones go unnoticed.

[Coati]

3D for comics = Love

I dedicate a lot of my time to learn about it and how to use it to improve my comics. So fight me :v

[antimekii]

Using 3D assets actually helped me with creating my comic. So far I've used 3D character models for wide shots where character placements and spatial difference are important and made 3D models for backgrounds using Sketch-Up. I tbh avoided using textures in 3D backgrounds because it usually breaks the illusion of a drawn/2D comic.

[Coati]

That's true. I try to avoid using textures, making a paintover is the best way to keep all the elements working together

[IdiotWithPencil]

I chooses other because I think the 3d assistance should be used to augment your art while not replacing it.
use it as the grid or sketch so to speak, but don't trace it or follow it to the letter.

plus if you leave 3d as it it really is jarring and soo obvious you are using it, it makes the whole comic feel artificial or clip arty

[CarolRiverArt]

Well. I think working in 3D in comics is wonderful. Sometimes you want to create a world from zero and do a shading/ colors balance with the style of your comic. I prefer to model myself based on my drawing style!. Texturing is great if you use the same art of your comic. ( not photo textures) . I don't think is cheating, in fact it helps a lots to understand perspective, camera angles, shading etc.

Also Making your own 3d models doesn't make you faster with backgrounds. Modeling takes time and you could also be looking for a Assistant too xD.

[Donny]

3D is a huge time-saver, but now I'm starting to feel like I'd rather just draw things on my own.

Though, a lot of professional mangaka use 3D, so don't sweat it. And clip studio has a lot of nice features to make the 3D look more integrated into the comic.

In this page, almost everything is 3D, except the figures. (gun, background, building)

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