I prefer 2D comics with 3D assets over 3D comics.
Also the 3D in those banners look awful, I've seen GMOD posters that looked better than that.
I personally don't care for 3D comics, I just don't really enjoy the aesthetic. But I love the fact that the 3D medium is available for people who want to create comics but lack the drawing skills necessary to do illustrate one the traditional way. I think anyone who wants to make comics should make comics by whatever way they can! And if that means using 3D models or taking photographs of action figures or doing sprite art or collage or whatever, then that is awesome and they should do it!
I have always loved and enjoyed 2D anything much more than 3D. I like 3D movies, but I just find myself going back to 2D ^^ And in terms of 3D comics, I've never read one and, at least for the ones you've shown us, I don't see myself checking them out ^^' The art style reminds me of video games for the PlayStation 2 which aren't my preference but it's not bad. It just looks a bit uncanny? It makes me feel uncomfortable. 3D takes a lot of hard work so I commend these creators for them taking on this challenge, but it's not something I personally like. I think creators who use 3D backgrounds and elements can merge 2D and 3D pretty well. And even if they do not, they have their reasons to make the backgrounds and objects 3D and I don't blame them ^^ 3D spaces and objects look really cool to me, but the 3D people just make me feel uneasy xD So an entirely 3D comic is not something I'd be interested in personally.
On a more positive note. I want to share with you guys a pretty cool comic made in 3D.
The author has a background as a film director and in animation, so the quality it's pretty good overall.
Even if you dislike the art style, I would still recommend it immensely as it's a very well-put-together horror story and thriller.
My personal opinion is that if the core story is good, then the art it's just the icing on the cake.
Depends on the 3d. There's 3d illustrators who do incredible stylistic renderings that are really cool. But, you need to have a good understanding of lighting and camera and rendering to really get your work to that illustrative quality. To do it for every scene in a comic would take ages to set up, actually.
So I see a lot of potential in 3d comics--do I think they're all doing it? No...
I feel like it's very, very difficult to do 3d uniquely and to do it well. We tend to treat it like it's simple, and it is if you're just opening up a free poser app and moving around objects--but making models from scratch, planning your styles, your colors, setting up renders, rendering in layers, often messing with those layers in photoshop
--yo that takes a long time. I'll just draw.
I agree with the statement that they're probably cheating the votes. Top Webcomics is pretty easy to cheat if you have multiple accounts and multiple connections to the internet. Most everyone I've talked to about that common style of 3d comics hasn't liked it.
I don't particularly agree that making 3d comics is harder than 2d, or more expensive. You just have to know how to take advantage of the many many many free addons and assets out there (especially for Blender). I did seriously consider doing a 3d comic for awhile, and it would have been faster than what I'm doing now, and 100% free. I chose not to do it in the end though because I still do prefer my drawn style. But it is completely doable to get a fully 2d attractive look with 3d based on how knowledgeable you are about the software and your skills.
I can't see it working well in any other way than trying to pass off the 3D art as 2D tbh even if it was expertly crafted, the way that comics are presented with panels and speech bubbles would make it hard to immerse myself in the story. It's hard to elaborate on what it is that causes a disconnect but.. Yeah.
I do remember though, there was this one artist here a while ago, and they seemed to make it work as a few black and white comic pages using only 3D elements. I couldn't even tell it was 3D until it was mentioned. I forget the name of the topic, but I really wanna link it here as an example of something I would read just based on the art
That's because a realistic digital human is THE hardest thing to do and it's something we can't achieve even with millions of dollars in Hollywood films.
3d environments for stylized comics are actually quite simple. I do them all the time:
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It is very embarassing when I get comments that praise my "perspective skills".
Though they pay off only for locations that are going to show up for more than one page. I've been thinking on trying to do some tests with 3d characters, but round shapes act so unpredictably in my render of choosing (Regarding on where the lineart is generated and how thick it becomes) that I've scrapped that idea, since it was looking too blatantly three-dimensional, post-effected to look kinda like 2d, and that wasn't satisfactory to me. Gotta stick with the photoshop for now, it seems. =D
Okay, so this is amazing xD Yeah, I should specify that the realistic human look is uncanny to me but the cartoony or more stylized characters in 3D are better, but with anything, there can be instances where even cartoony 3D characters can look a bit wonky and not really executed well? I'm thinking of that show "Butt Ugly Martians" I mean their designs weren't exactly my favorite regardless if they were 2D or 3D but I think they would have been more tolerable in 2D? Maybe that's just me xD But there are 3D comics I'd probably get into if the art was executed pretty well (doesn't have to be perfect).
My opinion? Overwhelmingly they're bad.
Not because I find them lazy or low-effort, but because they take away the need for any stylization.
Part of the joy and the appeal of webcomics is the style they're drawn in. Are the lines sharp? Are they gritty? Are there no lines? How is the lighting done? What are the colors like? Are they muted? Bright? Are they in black and white? Halftoned? How are the characters proportioned? How do they move? Are they bendy and cartoonish without clear joints, or are they super staunchly realistic, or are they somewhere in between? Are the expressions realistic, or are they exaggerated with a lot of squash and stretch?
Part of visual storytelling is inherently style. You CAN NOT tell a story in a graphic novel format WITHOUT style. You lose over half of the story elements, between the loss of anatomical style, ability to exaggerate expressions, and the freedom of color and shading.
These 3D webcomics use realistic prefab models that have been slightly edited, and have extremely restrictive rigs that can't be edited without breaking the whole damn thing. The shaders are usually extremely restrictive as well, unless the artist has a lot of experience with making and applying unique shaders to create a style (like with the above comic, Elena). They CAN'T exaggerate lighting, lines, styles, textures, and expressions. Since they are locked into hyperrealism (often with limited rigging, too, so even then characters look dead-faced and fish-eyed), these comics can only tell you half of a visual story.
I'm a 3D artist whose kinda tired of 3D comics trying to either trick you into thinking its 2D or tries realistic rendering but ends up looking like a PS1 cutscene. David OReilly's work seems to be one of the few artists that can balance both a 2D/3D visual style without it looking like trash.
I've read it, and unless there's some article that talks about BTS (and somebody really should share the link then!), the comic made the impression that it was a 3d model but outlined by hand. The lines are too organic to be generated from geometry, and some facial expressions were possibly hand-drawn as well.
I kinda like stylized 3D (think World of Warcraft) over hyperrealistic because the latter tends to look uncanny to me. But I respect the effort that goes into both styles and setting up the character models and environments.
The art in the banners reminds me of Sims 3 for some reason.
I think 3d comics can be done well, but I definitely think they look better with a different approach. I have trouble reading them laid out like a traditional comic page, but I don't mind them done in board/single panel style. Sims 4 creators have gotten pretty good at staging their comics, [example]35 [example]18
I even wanted to try making a Sims 4 story a while back, and they're definitely an interesting challenge getting the shots to come out right. Specifically having to mod-in poses and having the game lighting and weather changing regularly, or messing with the nightmare that ReShade is.
At the same time though, I agree with you that the comics that use programs like poser/daz are a little hard to read. On one hand, you can obviously put together a lot of content fast and the authors have that advantage, but the program they use seems incredibly limited with how aesthetically pleasing you can make them and it really hinders the experience imo.
5 months later
Going by the type of 3D that you are talking about in the OP.
YES. why do they exist.
Like. Why make a comic? There's other forms of story telling, if you have no visual creative skills, then maybe a visually creative medium is not for you.
Sounds Gate keepy, but I'm talking solely about those 3d ready made asset horrors.
There's more to a comic than to have images.. The story telling itself is through visuals. How are you going to do visual story telling if you're bound by those assets. Ahhhh.
Even a. Good story, won't be a good comic like that.
My only experience with 3d comics was looking at some listed on the bad webcomic wiki. So they were all awful.
I think most common in sites like webtoons or duch, is 2D characters, with 3D backgrounds.
I love daz and poser, they're super cool when you need a reference... for a 2D comic. I haven't yet seen any good-looking or well-written 3D comics done in them, though. I wonder why.
I think it's pretty telling that the example I was going to bring up of the only decent looking 3D comic I'm familiar with being The Dreamland Chronicles...
....years later since when I used to read it has been remade as a non-3D comic with more traditional illustration.
It used to look like this:
Which at the time was pretty good! ....But now it looks worse than the realtime graphics in a videogame, which is pretty sad considering how much work it used to take the creators to make all these custom models, light all the scenes and render out all the shaders.
I do think it's possible to make a good looking 3D webcomic, but honestly the only likely scenario in which I'd ever consider it is if I lost my right hand and couldn't draw any more, but was still able to use my background as a games artist and knowledge of 3d modelling, texturing, lighting and shaders. Unfortunately the way to get the nicest results most easily, drop everything into Unreal Engine (It has fantastic default lighting and PBR shaders), would probably run into licensing issues down the line, so I'd probably use something like Blender or Unity, set up scenes, light them etc. Overall though, the problem with 3D is while it's probably doing to get a better looking result than drawing for a person who can't draw at all, to match the quality of somebody who can draw decently or well the amount of work you need to put in and the level of expertise required to make the assets just explodes, and you have to ask yourself "wouldn't it be better to use these assets for animation or games?"