One tool that webcomic artists can take advantage of, to help save time and sanity, is 3D models. Whether tracing directly or using them for reference, they can help you visualize complex places, objects, or poses from different angles. So let’s talk about them!

In This Episode:

How have you used 3D models in your work?

Where do you get/make 3D models to use? What kinds of issues can happen when you use them?

What is your advice to someone looking to use 3D models in their work and integrate them smoothly?

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Episode Release Date: April 9, 2025

Episode Credits:

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Rae Baade (@overlordrae) - they/them, empyreancomic.com

Star Prichard (@starfishface) - she/her, thestarfishface.com castoff-comic.com

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The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:00.16

Screen Tones

Hello, ah hello and welcome to ScreenTones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today, we're going to be talking about 3D models. I'm Verathane, I use she-they pronouns, and I make the comics Cherault and Witchwood.

00:17.41

Rae

And I am Rae. I use they them pronouns and I make the webcomics On Empyrean High and Overlord of Ravenfell.

00:27.01

Star

And I'm Star, my pronouns are she, her, and I make the webcomic Castoff.

00:32.42

Screen Tones

All right. ah One tool that webcomic artists can take advantage of to help save time and sanity um is 3D models. Whether you're tracing them directly or using them for reference, they can help you to visualize very complex places, objects, or character poses from different angles in your comic art. ah So we're going to talk about them. First question, how have you used 3D models in your work?

01:01.15

Screen Tones

I'm going to pass the baton to Ray.

01:04.86

Rae

I personally use them for things that I want to save time on. um Probably my first instance of using 3D models it was when I was having a lot of trouble making a airship for my comic and I went on Sketchfab and just downloaded a junk ship and then added wings to it when I was drawing it and then I was like oh hey this is kind of cool so I started looking for some of the assets

01:42.49

Rae

um that could be relevant to me, but this is also very dangerous because it's kind of like fonts. You can download a lot of them and not actually use them, but if you stick to the ones that are only relevant to you, they can be very useful.

02:04.08

Screen Tones

I have that problem with brushes as well, like custom, custom brushes in any digital software.

02:06.62

Star

Oof.

02:10.47

Screen Tones

At one point, I think I had like 300 of them and I used probably two.

02:12.30

Star

Oh my god.

02:15.69

Rae

mood sometimes you go but what if i happen to need this urban cityscape despite only doing fantasy comics

02:27.11

Screen Tones

Yes. What if I need chain link? Chain, just chain links, just a whole bunch of chains.

02:33.15

Star

Just so many of them.

02:34.75

Screen Tones

and, you know, just like that. ah How about you, Star?

02:36.84

Star

and ah So for me, I actually didn't use 3D models in Castoff for a majority of it. um I would occasionally, like if there was a weird pose that I couldn't get a good reference for, like it was an action pose or something, I would occasionally go in and like pose a 3D model and help me with that.

02:58.07

Star

But that's, I usually didn't bother until I got to this one chapter where most of it took place in ah like one indoor room and there were a lot of shelves with little things on the shelves. And I was just like, I don't, this is going to be a pain to keep consistent between panels. What if I just made a little sketch up model of it?

03:23.62

Star

And so I started using an app called RoomSketcher and I would like I build my sets and then I would take screenshots of those different sets. um And I would just kind of put them in my background and I would trace over them. I never use them like straight from the software. I would use I always trace over them just because I think it makes it look a little bit more integrated.

03:44.43

Star

um And then once I did that, I realized how much more creative, how much easier it was to get creative with like weird camera angles if you didn't have to worry about like doing all the perspective from scratch.

04:00.34

Star

And so I'm like, oh ho, this has unlocked something in me. And so now basically any interior where there's a lot of, um, like perspective that I have to work with, or there's a lot of stuff like the current chapter that I'm working on, basically the entire chapter takes place in the same room from a bajillion different angles. And I'm like, okay, so here's the bed and here's where these books are. And here's where these little bottles are and all this stuff. And it just,

04:26.72

Star

saves literal hours of having to sketch all my backgrounds and make sure that everything's in the exact same place and make sure that I'm remembering exactly how many books are on each shelf. Stuff that like probably wouldn't get noticed by readers, but if people are like checking, it's important for consistency, uh, in a lot of cases, which is why I focus on it more. Um, and I do still occasionally, like if I'm really struggling with a pose, I'll bust out like my little 3d model poser, but for the most part, it's just me and blender and my weird dumping ground of like little blocky pieces of furniture that I have made against the world.

05:09.16

Screen Tones

And I love the idea of like that ah the the room-sketcher one especially. I feel like it's a similar kind of idea to some folks that I know who have made like rooms in The Sims. which just It's so clever.

05:19.57

Star

Mm-hmm.

05:21.47

Screen Tones

like Man, why did I do that when I played The Sims?

05:21.77

Star

So, yeah, room sketches.

05:24.41

Rae

Yeah, i see if some people I see some people go in Final Fantasy and build rooms in there and then go, okay, I'm gonna just trace this and this is the interior for my latest illustration.

05:25.73

Star

Oh, sorry. I was.

05:30.47

Star

Ooh.

05:37.66

Star

Yeah, I was going to say I don't actually recommend RoomSketcher. It was kind of a pain because it wasn't like in other 3D programs where you could just like pan around the model and then export exactly what you're looking at. You have to like type in what angle the camera is at and like you have to you you pose the um the camera on a 2D plane.

06:02.62

Star

And then you say, okay, what angle is the camera at? Like your up and down axis. And I'm just like, can't you just show me what my, and like trying to put stuff on a shelf, forget about it. um So there are better options. I just use that one for a while because I was too scared to go figure out Blender. And then I figured out Blender and it wasn't actually that hard. And I'm just like, I'm never going back actually.

06:28.71

Screen Tones

That is fair. there' There's something to be said for something that's like easy and convenient to get started using, but usually that that comes with a compromise of less customizability and like less options.

06:35.44

Star

Oh, ah very much.

06:41.69

Screen Tones

um I had come at the 3D thing from, I guess, a bit of ah a different angle because I work professionally in 3D animation for a long time, um but that was kind of kept very separate from my work in comics for the most part, at least for the first few years. ah i was doing I did textures for ah cartoons um and I was trained in the whole 3D modeling process as well as like some of the subsequent steps like modeling and rigging. um

07:14.00

Screen Tones

and like the animation part, compositing, lighting, ah camera moving, all that sort of thing. um But because I was doing that all day long, I would just kind of walk away and be like, that's cool stuff. It has nothing to do with the stuff that I'm drawing, though. um It took until... Well, I guess part of it is that the comic that I was working on for a long time in that in those early days was Teralt, which was 100% traditional.

07:40.77

Screen Tones

So anything that I referenced into those pages would be in the sense of I'm looking at it on another monitor and then looking down at my page to draw it kind of like an eyeballing sort of thing. um And I didn't start really doing comics digitally until I finished Cheryl and I was doing some short stories and then which would and that was kind of the point when I was working on a comic page.

08:04.60

Screen Tones

on the computer screen that I was like hang on hang on a minute I've got these like complex rooms it's a sci-fi comic so it's got like ships and like fancy technology and weird weird things in it. And I'm like, what if I could like just make this layout a tiny bit easier for myself? I've decided to make this set be like a lab that's in a room shaped like ah the inside of a dodecahedron. There's got to be a way that I can combine these two skill sets that I have. um And I didn't have a ton of time for the modeling. One thing that working in 3D definitely kind of taught me is that

08:41.95

Screen Tones

It takes a lot of time. um And to get a model looking really nice, you do really have to sit down with it. um And it i I feel like it also made me hesitant to download models. It just gave me this general sense of like, how about I really should make it. like I should make it myself, um which was part of what, I guess, prevented me from like really using a ton of it.

09:05.46

Screen Tones

um So I would do very, very simplistic models in Maya because that's the program that I'm trained in. ah where I would just take like basically a ah primitive 3D shape like a cube or a sphere or whatever and just kind of move it into like the position that I wanted, like manipulate the vertexes into something like the shape that I was after, and then I would grab like a few screenshots of kind of the angle that was closest to what I needed and store those away in a little folder for later.

09:35.89

Screen Tones

um A little later, when i started ah I started using Photoshop and then I switched to Clip Studio, um I started occasionally digging into the 3D models that that program has kind of saved into it. um If anyone ah listening is familiar with Clip Studio, or if you're not, um it has a pretty robust collection of 3D poses as well as poseable character models. ah Not characters, really. they're just like Mannequins basically like the digital equivalent of those three the the wooden like artists models things that they have and like art stores um but you can manipulate all of their limbs move them around into different poses they have like ah a male and female ish variant with like a slight variation in body type um and you can like move them around and move the camera around

10:28.41

Screen Tones

in within Clip Studio and then turn down the layer opacity and kind of use that as a guide to draw over. um And I've found those to be pretty handy. I think you can also download more ah like customized models as well into the program. And there's a bunch of other stuff that it has saved, like cars and guns and complex things like that that I have not really touched yet. ah For the most part, I try to stick to pretty pretty simple things.

10:58.88

Rae

You can actually also import um models from other programs into CSP, not just Blender and Maya, but even things like Vroid Studio.

11:12.70

Rae

I think you can actually download the models into CSP and use your little 3D Vtuber as your character model in there.

11:20.58

Star

Gasp!

11:25.15

Rae

um But yeah, it's it's very robust. It might slow down your computer the more you download things, though, because 3D models are really big files.

11:38.72

Screen Tones

that do be true

11:40.79

Star

Yeah, I also think that in more recent versions of Clip Studio, I haven't played around with this because I don't really use the 3D tools in Clip Studio.

11:41.07

Screen Tones

ah

11:49.02

Star

um I should, but I haven't yet. um You it's i I'm pretty sure I've heard that you can actually make like custom proportioned models in Clip Studio if you're using one of the newer editions.

12:02.48

Screen Tones

that do be true.

12:03.82

Rae

You can.

12:05.29

Star

Yeah. And so you can fix it to um match your characters exactly if that's something that you're interested in.

12:12.38

Rae

Yeah, they also actually added um special, you can create special head proportions, like just the head. And um you can fiddle around with the facial features and stuff. It's very robust to the point where you can even like make aliens and stuff really weird looking things like that.

12:34.45

Star

or anime girls with them big old peepers.

12:37.82

Screen Tones

ah The classic.

12:38.58

Rae

Oh, definitely anime girls.

12:41.09

Screen Tones

um This is actually, we've already kind of gotten started on this subject, but this leads into my second question, which is how do you get or make 3D models to use and what kind of issues can come up as you use them?

12:58.15

Rae

Well, for me, I primarily use Clip Studio. I'll um try to get with the basic things. They actually added something called primitives, which are just like essentially planes and very basic shapes that you can also use. um i've seen I've seen people use it use them to make glasses.

13:20.58

Rae

a lot easier for them, for instance.

13:23.27

Star

Oh, I need that for me.

13:24.60

Rae

But if i if I need something very specific like my junk ship, I'll usually go onto a website like Sketchfab. A lot of the things aren't free there, but they're usually at least decently cheap.

13:39.95

Rae

So there you do have a lot of options since um you can essentially import straight into the program. I do say that the main problem I have had with things like Sketchfab is CSP often won't import the textures of the items and that hasn't really been a problem for me since I usually just trace over the item using it as like a sketch ah reference, but I can see that being an issue for someone that wants to just use the asset straight out.

14:22.80

Star

Yeah, as far as me, um, I, like I said, I used to use pre-made stuff a lot more. Now I basically just make it all myself, which sounds intimidating. However, um, because I'm tracing over them anyway, I just make the derpiest blockiest, like little 3d models of just like, this is a chair.

14:45.29

Star

Cube, make it flat, give it legs, give it a back, it's a chair. And I'll usually just, you know, like add a little bit of extra detail when I'm in the process of tracing over it.

14:56.58

Star

Bookshelf, it's a rectangle with other rectangles on it. Fantastic. Oh, here's a door in an archway. Whoa! It's a couple of cubes stuck together.

15:10.02

Star

So it's like,

15:10.03

Screen Tones

Sometimes that's all you need.

15:11.68

Star

sometimes it's all uni and like really I wouldn't want anything more detailed than that because it's just like i'm they just have to look approximately like the right object because I'm gonna be tracing over them anyway um if my 3D modeling professor from college saw some of the stuff I was building ah he would have a conniption and take my diploma back um but again since I am just tracing on top of them and not using them for anything ah Other than that, it's fine! Don't come at me, Professor! Please, please don't take my diploma away! My bad edge flow!

15:50.65

Screen Tones

Oh putting the phone down. ah

15:53.22

Star

No! No, don't rat me out! He doesn't even teach there anymore, I don't think.

15:59.51

Screen Tones

Oh. But yeah, i'm I'm basically in the same camp. ah When it comes to the 3D models that I use within my comic, I'm not really using them in the comic.

16:12.26

Screen Tones

I use them as reference for the comic. I know there are there are creators out there who directly use the models um within the page. um I think it's one of the things that is almost a standard in some webtoons and things like that.

16:26.88

Star

Oh, very much. You can, on some webtoons, you can see it's, have you ever like been reading a comic and you see, ah, yes, the alias straight line in the background and you're just like 3d model.

16:28.02

Screen Tones

um

16:36.14

Screen Tones

Yeah.

16:39.46

Screen Tones

oh yeah when When the backgrounds are like so like artificial and clearly 3D, especially juxtaposed with like the style that the characters are drawn in, you're like Okay, I see what you're doing.

16:48.96

Star

and

16:50.71

Screen Tones

Sometimes you can even tell the characters themselves are 3D.

16:54.31

Star

Mmhmm.

16:54.35

Screen Tones

That's just been rendered with like a tune shader kind of approach.

16:57.76

Star

Yeah.

16:57.97

Screen Tones

um And it tends to look very stiff.

17:01.11

Star

Yeah.

17:01.18

Screen Tones

ah So I think that's honestly the biggest real issue. ah there's There's other things that can come up like for sure if you're downloading models. um Depending on how you plan to use them you can run into like copyright related issues um so you want to be careful with kind of where you source things depending on how.

17:24.32

Screen Tones

how they're being incorporated. If you're making your own, then that part is not an issue itself. It's just a matter of making the renders look appealing. Part of how this was kind of explained to me all the way way back, redacted amount of years ago when I was in animation school, the professor was telling us at the very beginning about like basically 3D is not intended to be a still medium like at its core. um it depends It depends on how it's rendered now that there's a lot of tune shaders out there, but there's something like about the nature of a 3D render that is basically tricking our brain into thinking we're looking at something real.

18:08.17

Screen Tones

And then it it it also has this little bit of a jarring, like but it's not moving. If it's real, it should be moving. ah So a lot of 3D, even some really like very well-known and huge 3D animated properties, ah theyre the core appeal is in the animation itself. And a lot of the promotional imagery, ah you have to do a lot of work to make it look as appealing in and of itself. um Definitely the industry has gotten really good at that sort of thing. There's like a bunch of standard kind of treatments that make everything look super colorful and flashy. It usually involves including a lot of 2D effects um on the ah like incorporated into the promotional art.

18:51.99

Screen Tones

um But it's something that like if you're using 3D directly in a 2D medium such as comics, um you've definitely got to put a lot of extra work in to make it look appealing and not just like a kind of stiff ah I don't know, flat. there's ah It's hard to describe. it's like It's kind of a variant of uncanny valley. You can just sort of tell. um So I would say that is something to watch for. But if you are just kind of doing like that approach of like, I just need something

19:27.41

Screen Tones

to inform me about how the perspective of this space or this object or this complicated prop would look, um then so long as as you're drawing it over, like you're matching it to the style of the rest of your art and it feels unified and it feels like a whole thing, ah then that should be okay.

19:47.05

Screen Tones

Um, I have, uh, I, I mentioned before that I try to make my own models with the exception of occasionally using the clip studio poseables to kind of tweak a character into place. If they're, if I'm doing some kind of crazy overhead angle and I'm like, I don't know, this is a headache to figure out. I need a reference and I can't find anything appropriate, like in a photograph. So, uh, time for the 3d. Um, I've also built, um,

20:14.70

Screen Tones

i i Most of the models that I build are so basic. It's basically like, here's some cubes and spheres. I could share some of my screenshots eventually. They're hilarious. um But I did build a space, I call it a spaceship. That's the most, it'll probably make people picture the right thing.

20:33.95

Screen Tones

They don't go to space in my comic. But anyway, I built the ship ah because it was going to repeat a lot. I was going to have to draw a whole bunch of this thing and it was going to be a complex form. And I was like, I'm just going to make it like upfront before it appears for the first time so that I can use this model to basically trace over um and repeat when I need to draw it in the hangar base or flying around or whatever. I drew that thing like a hundred times and the model was so helpful.

21:01.65

Star

Mm.

21:04.32

Screen Tones

Um, so I guess you could go into the third question. Uh, and I mean, all of, all of these questions, I feel like we're kind of covering like bits and pieces of them through each other. Um, but the final query is what is your advice to someone who is looking to use 3d models in their work and ah integrate them smoothly?

21:27.65

Rae

Okay, when I use 3D models, I use them kind of as like the base sketch layer of whatever I'm working on rather than using them as, you know, through straight 3D model type thing. So I'll put i sometimes just blur them so I don't try to go straight against the sharp edges of the model and I'll just treat it, essentially treat it as a sketch. I don't need to be completely faithful to it because that's honestly where a lot of stiffness comes from. You'll often see that with people who trace from photos and um particularly for figures.

22:13.99

Rae

And I would actually also say if you use the figures for CSP, it really does help to have a solid foundation in life drawing before you do so.

22:30.39

Rae

Because that should help you a lot with the mistakes in the weights and how the muscles are laying then ah just looking straight at the model and trying to copy that faithfully. um Because I'll see a lot of things and I'll go that's that was made from a.

22:52.71

Rae

CSP model because it just kind of makes no sense in how it's posed or because the creator was trying to be way too faithful for faithful to it. um So honestly you just need to take it as a starting point rather than as an end point.

23:14.06

Star

Yeah, that's a really good point because one of the things that, um, so like I make a lot of videos talking and I've talked about this in videos before where it's like, yeah, you can use 3d models to make things easier. And I then see some folks who are like, you know, maybe less experienced artists being like, Oh, well then why do I need to learn perspective? If I can just do the 3d model and just use that. Well, the thing is.

23:37.64

Star

3d models cannot ultimately replace a knowledge of how perspective and backgrounds work, I would argue because a lot of times when I'm using my 3d models, I don't trace direct like okay I'm tracing on top of them.

23:52.67

Star

But a lot of the times I do go in and change things where it's like, okay, the 3D model says that the bed is over here, but I think that the bed would look a little better if I scootched it over this way. But the act of scooching it is going to change the angle of it slightly. And so I need to change the angle of it slightly using my knowledge of perspective that I've learned and harnessed through multiple years of drawing boxes on 3D planes. Um,

24:20.91

Rae

Yeah, I do think that the main benefit of using 3D models is it can actually push you to be a lot braver in the angles and perspectives that you will you might not feel confident enough to use otherwise.

24:33.10

Star

Mm-hmm.

24:39.00

Star

One hundred percent, yeah.

24:39.15

Rae

But yeah, definitely scooch that bed over though.

24:42.90

Star

Scootch that bit!

24:44.56

Screen Tones

it's definitely not a replacement for like knowledge of perspective. And I think part of that is that ah some of what people say is like knowing perspective is also like the rules of composition um and just knowing how to structure a scene and recognizing that like when you're posing your characters in a long hallway and like it has very strong diagonal lines, like you can use where those lines are pointing to like

24:56.78

Star

Mm-hmm.

25:12.58

Screen Tones

guide the viewer's eye and stuff like that. There's a lot of like things that are very interconnected with each other. And even if you do use 3D, understanding like what makes a certain perspective work fundamentally um and what will make things look right versus what will make things look subtly off to the viewer is like it's so useful.

25:33.45

Star

and Yeah, for me, my process in general is I will go in and I thumbnail all my pages for a scene first and then like, you know, decide on the compositions and the camera angles and everything. And then only after I'm satisfied with that will I then go in and get all of that footage or all those screenshots from that specific angle. And then if I need to tweak anything at that point, I will.

25:59.25

Star

But the composition always comes first, and knowing how to set up a composition feeds back into, you gotta know your perspective before before you start using the fancy tools. It's like giving a blowtorch to somebody who doesn't know how to light a candle, and it's like, yes, this is very helpful, but you really should learn ABC first.

26:21.11

Screen Tones

Yeah, not to mention if you are working from multiple models, like say you have your characters in a space that is like in any way customized, which I hope it is if it's part of a story.

26:32.23

Screen Tones

um And ah you have like a 3D model of like the room and then a 3D model of like a piece of furniture and then a 3D model of something else, like making sure that they're all like in the same

26:32.26

Star

Mhm.

26:44.63

Screen Tones

plane and they have matching perspective if they're on separate layers or like being assembled together in any way, like just knowing how to integrate things like that is going to be useful.

26:48.53

Star

Yeah.

26:57.41

Star

hundred percent yeah because usually so i do all of my 3d models in blender um but if i ever use a character model which i usually don't it's very funny though i can send you guys pictures of what this looks like because it is ridiculous one of the things that i give ah my patreon supporters is i will give them like the high res file of the page but then also um work in progress shots of like oh bumped the mic. um I'll give them work in progress shots of every step of making the comic, which is like thumbnails and then the 3D models with the sketches and all this stuff. um And there's kind of a running joke that my 3D models are slightly cursed and a little haunted.

27:43.11

Star

Because I don't pose 3D human models in Blender ah just because I haven't found a three ah free 3D model that will let me do that and I wouldn't usually do it anyway. But I found just like a model of a human, just like a ah naked human,

28:02.14

Star

like, you know, Ken doll situation. Um, and I make them, I put one in for each character that's like approximately their height and I make it, I change the color of the model to like be the the character's color so I can tell who's who. And I just kind of like scootched them around the room so that I can see how all the characters are supposed to be in relevant, um,

28:25.36

Star

in comparison to the backgrounds. But what that gets you is that sometimes you can still see them and they're just kind of like haunting over the characters.

28:37.60

Screen Tones

So it's the T-Pose multicolored Ken conference.

28:40.36

Star

it's It's more of a Y pose, but yes, i'm I'm going to dig out a picture for you guys.

28:40.64

Rae

T-posing for dominance.

28:44.55

Screen Tones

I desperately want to see this now.

28:45.76

Star

um I will find these for you. Just give me a few minutes. Somebody else talk for a few minutes while I dig up my cursed Ken doll images.

28:54.20

Screen Tones

we can We can see about sharing it with the episode once it goes up, so don't worry too much.

28:57.93

Star

yeah yeah

28:58.76

Screen Tones

but um Yeah, I think probably the biggest thing for me is definitely about like making sure that it matches with the style ah of the of the whole piece.

29:11.84

Screen Tones

um If you're putting something in like the background, if you if you have like a flowy style that has a lot of like you know thick and thin lines and like gestural, like really energetic, like very stylized, and then like the the model is all like

29:22.33

Star

Yeah, yeah.

29:28.50

Screen Tones

really uniform like a precisely two pixels straight lines or something like that. It can start to look a bit out of place. um This is actually why I stopped using the perspective tool in Clip Studio. um I kind of started to, but it was making all of my lines a little too straight. And I was like, so technically this is more accurate.

29:51.10

Screen Tones

But it just doesn't look right like subtly like I'm looking at it and it feels out of place. It doesn't feel like my style anymore. Like it's not the same world. So it's definitely something you've got to keep an eye out for with ah with 3D models as well. um I find that whole thing about like models that have textures.

30:10.71

Screen Tones

um is something that I had like not even thought about as being like a downside. Even though i was that was my job, I was the texture artist.

30:21.61

Screen Tones

It was something that like when it came to reference stuff that I want for my comics, those would just be like a distraction. I just need the shape because that's really what I'm looking for.

30:28.60

Star

Yeah.

30:29.32

Rae

No, i yeah I agree with that, but I do know that there's probably a few people who want to bring everything over so they know every single detail of the model they're working with. because you know like For instance, the airship had like originally a wood grain texture, and I can see some people going, I have to draw every single line on this texture to make it look realistic, but I'm just like, nah, I don't need that stuff.

30:57.65

Star

and

31:00.07

Rae

I just need to be able to place it, maybe have a little bit of moving lighting, but i even that's not always necessary for me. I just need a reference, a space sketch, and then I can go to town.

31:17.51

Star

I have dropped some of my haunted thumbnails in the discord chat if anyone would like to look at those.

31:22.76

Screen Tones

Oh my God.

31:23.27

Star

um So it's like a grid of six. ah The top middle you will be able to see ah the purple and green haunted stick figures. I can't move their legs so whenever I need to draw them sitting on something I'll just like lower the body so that the hips are approximately the right height to sit in the chair.

31:43.64

Screen Tones

Incredible. Well, now we need to share these with the episode.

31:47.64

Star

I- I will.

31:47.81

Screen Tones

We can't not.

31:48.64

Star

I- I will. It's fine. I'll- We can just- They can just live here. But yeah, these are my haunted stick figures.

31:54.58

Screen Tones

Oh, amazing.

31:54.64

Star

By strange, haunted, Y-posing men. That are always there.

32:00.54

Screen Tones

Yeah, I mean, honestly, when it comes to like placing a character in the scene, like the things that I am really looking for when it when it comes to reference of like ah the characters

32:11.74

Star

Yeah.

32:12.10

Screen Tones

is basically just like how big are they in the shot? Like what is the proportion of their head to their torso, to their legs?

32:16.31

Star

yeah

32:20.26

Screen Tones

um And if I'm doing a wacky camera angle, like how much of their shoulders are being overlapped by their head. From from there, I can basically take the rest on my on my own. So I don't really need like the full pose or the hair or the jacket or like the other details.

32:36.04

Screen Tones

Cause that's the stuff that like, but but that's just the frills. I put those there myself.

32:43.09

Screen Tones

um When it comes to 3D models, I guess for as far as advice goes, um I don't think I would necessarily recommend like that people who want models for their comics would go out and learn Maya.

32:57.61

Screen Tones

um If you do, A, Maya is expensive. It is hacking expensive.

33:01.15

Star

yeah

33:02.15

Screen Tones

um So if you do want to pick up like a 3D software that will let you do actual modeling um probably blender would be the way to go but it is a very even blender is still it's a huge program it is very complicated you're gonna be like spending a lot of time like learning those tools and tweaking vertexes and stuff like that.

33:11.34

Star

Yeah.

33:22.90

Screen Tones

um So if it comes down to it, like there there is no shame in using like prefab stuff um within within your comics unless you get very passionate about the idea of modeling and you want to do it for kind of your own reasons. There's a lot of other solutions out there. If you use Clip Studio, do check out the 3D tab because it's pretty cool how you can move them around on the page itself and pose them right there inside your comic page. It's great.

33:52.06

Screen Tones

um

33:52.24

Rae

Well yeah also making the 3D primitives if if your goal is just to have a bunch of squares and triangles and spheres in like as placeholders for buildings and such the primitive should actually just cover most of your needs right there because that's pretty much all they are.

34:12.31

Screen Tones

I think the first model that I ever made um intending to kind of bring into a comic was basically just ah a whole bunch of rectangles that I assembled in Maya and just exported. ah if you If you do end up working with like ah models that you're downloading or creating yourself, OBJ is the file format that you're probably going to want to look for. um It's sort of the universal 3D model file format that'll work just about anywhere that you plop it.

34:43.97

Screen Tones

And I just exported it and I brought it in. You can actually bring 3D models into Photoshop too, but it's very jank.

34:51.26

Star

Mm hmm.

34:52.17

Screen Tones

But that was what I had at the time. So I plopped it into Photoshop and just rotated it and I was like, this is a cityscape. I'm going to draw it over now.

35:02.54

Star

Yeah, I know one other thing that we haven't really talked about, but that I have heard some people do is um using 3D models for props. um Things like I've seen people use them for like weapons or staffs or things of that nature, things that are just like you got to draw the same thing from a bajillion different angles, depending on how the character is holding it.

35:22.87

Star

And it's like a rigid object. It's not like a backpack where it's going to shift and change depending on the shape of the character's body. If it's always the same shape, 3D model is fantastic for that. And usually if it's something that's in the real world, you can probably download a model for it. And if it's something more custom, like a magical girl wand or something, a 3D model for that would not be too, too difficult to put something primitive together.

35:46.01

Star

um One thing I do want to say though, is that while it does seem very intimidating, like if you open up Blender for the first time, and you don't know what to expect, it's a very scary looking program. But the thing is with Blender, using it for this purpose,

36:04.64

Star

You don't really have to know what most of those buttons do. ah You can find some very easy to follow blender tutorials for just about anything. I remember there was one scene where I had to draw a spiral scar staircase from a very specific angle and I couldn't find one that was perfect for what I wanted to do. So I just went on to YouTube and searched um how to make a 3D model of a spiral staircase in Blender.

36:30.83

Star

And I found a tutorial that was like five minutes and just walked you through all the steps. I'm like, okay, cool. So now I can make it exactly how I want it. And that took me exactly five minutes. And so, you know, just don't be afraid to like research stuff, follow some tutorials, get just like a basic grasp of the basics of the program.

36:46.09

Star

And that's really all you need. Don't let it intimidate you.

36:48.49

Screen Tones

Yeah, absolutely. I think when it you can get a really you can get a lot of mileage out of just learning ah how to move the camera around, um how to ah select things, ah and the general basics of like

37:00.44

Star

know

37:07.31

Screen Tones

How do you move, rotate, and scale the thing?

37:08.92

Star

Mmhmm.

37:11.40

Screen Tones

um And you start with like a cube.

37:12.34

Star

Mmhmm.

37:14.74

Screen Tones

You can turn that into a rectangle. You can turn it into a weird trapezoid. You can put another one there. um

37:20.67

Star

Honestly, you learn how to use like bevel and extrude and how to create like a new cube or something. And that's literally all I use on a day to day, basically.

37:32.25

Star

It's like three functions of the program.

37:32.38

Screen Tones

Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

37:34.91

Star

Go forth.

37:36.61

Screen Tones

In Maya, it's a lot of like, okay, here's the difference between selecting vertex, edge, and face. um

37:42.08

Star

Oh, Blender's the same.

37:42.70

Screen Tones

and

37:43.06

Star

Like, we were talking about this before we started recording. Blender and Maya are extremely similar programs. If you learn one, you basically know the other. I trained in...

37:50.88

Screen Tones

ah

37:52.35

Star

I do use both.

37:52.74

Screen Tones

ah

37:55.50

Star

um For this purpose, they are remarkably similar.

37:56.27

Screen Tones

Fair.

37:59.07

Star

um Because I learned Maya first.

37:59.05

Screen Tones

Yeah, that's true.

38:03.23

Star

And then when I was out of school and did not want to afford a blender or a Maya license, I was like, let's look at blender and the modeling took programs or the modeling, the very, very basics of the 3D modeling set up in blender is very similar to Maya.

38:18.92

Screen Tones

I suppose.

38:19.03

Star

I was like.

38:19.92

Screen Tones

I haven't given it a fair shot, because when I tried it out, I found the camera moved in ah a way that I didn't like. So I was like, I'm going back to Maya.

38:26.70

Star

Hmm.

38:28.88

Screen Tones

have ah I have an educator copy, so.

38:31.50

Star

Hmm.

38:31.62

Screen Tones

ah hair

38:33.40

Star

That's cheating.

38:35.09

Rae

I will say, I will say if you um go look at the CSP assets for like the pre-made castles and stuff like that, you're never going to be able to unsee the same castle that all these manhwa use for.

38:35.37

Star

Than, have you considered that that's cheating?

38:35.37

Screen Tones

Well.

38:56.42

Star

is

38:57.64

Screen Tones

Oh, that's true. There are popular models that you can start to recognize.

39:01.20

Rae

There really are, which is another reason why it's good to make to at least make the basics, to be able to make what your vision is.

39:02.16

Screen Tones

it's

39:02.65

Star

I've seen seen people on people on Twitter have a

39:12.95

Rae

Because once you see it, you cannot unsee it.

39:13.13

Screen Tones

Yeah.

39:17.41

Screen Tones

Within Clip Studio, the the they also have a bunch of like preset poses for those character models um that you can snap them into.

39:25.03

Rae

Those are actually super useful.

39:27.32

Screen Tones

like they're They're neat. It's a good idea. um A lot of them are like very anime. So if you use them, I would recommend still putting in a little bit of work to like tweak and customize the pose afterwards, just to make sure it's like it fits your character's body language and don't just go with whatever is kind of the default.

39:44.61

Rae

one of One of the interesting things about it too is that they will fit um pretty much any body type for the thing for the um for for the CSP models. So you can have like your muscle bound guy doing the cute anime girl pose, but you might have to still ingest it because clipping will happen. So it's still useful to actually know the tools and how to manipulate the mannequins.

40:22.67

Star

So I guess maybe one thing that, um, I'm interested in hearing you guys's take on before we kind of wrap it up here is, uh, I've gotten a lot of comments from folks whenever I talk about, Hey, use 3d models. They're handy. They're not a substitute for knowledge of perspective and stuff, but they can be really useful. I do occasionally get people saying it's like, well, well, isn't that cheating that that, that feels like it's cheating because you're not actually drawing that thing. You're just, you're just tracing it. So that's cheating. What do you guys think about that?

40:53.81

Rae

I mean, I personally think that as long as you're mindful of how you're using assets and that you read the licensing on it, that's also important, um that it's just another tool. I mean, I've seen people go using digital as cheating or using, you know, the undo button is cheating. And it's like, why are you making things harder on yourself?

41:20.46

Screen Tones

I've heard people say that using references at all is cheating, and I could not disagree with that statement harder.

41:23.75

Star

I know, it's wild.

41:23.89

Rae

Oh gosh.

41:24.73

Star

old

41:27.61

Screen Tones

Like, that's how you...

41:30.86

Star

Just keep your eyes closed your entire life then.

41:31.08

Screen Tones

We're we're drawing things!

41:33.79

Rae

Your entire memory is using your entire memory is cheating.

41:34.35

Screen Tones

yeah

41:34.54

Star

Looking at things is reference.

41:38.38

Screen Tones

and Part of the whole joy of it is like taking these things that like are like real, either in the real world or real to us in our imagination and like putting them down on the page and like anything that will help that kind of stay true to your vision. i think is like ah Not that all of it is fair game because there's definitely a certain border where it can turn into, like if you once you get into the zone of like plagiarism and using ah photography or models that like you don't have like the rights to use, um or there's also just being lazy.

42:14.02

Screen Tones

um and taking these things and just pasting them in straight up without attempting to like convert them into the style or just use them as a reference for the part of the thing.

42:24.67

Rae

Yeah, like.

42:24.64

Screen Tones

um But like the if I need to draw somebody who's like you know walking briskly ah from a vantage point of somebody standing on a balcony like three floors above them, ah If I just invent that on the page, I'm just gonna have like a blob.

42:40.97

Screen Tones

but It's not gonna look very good.

42:42.42

Rae

Yeah, I will say, I will say definitely what if you're, if you're building things in The Sims or Final Fantasy or any of those other like.

42:42.48

Star

and

42:43.19

Screen Tones

You need reference for some things.

42:54.76

Star

Minecraft.

42:55.53

Rae

Yeah, Minecraft.

42:55.89

Star

I've seen people say they use Minecraft and it boggles the mind.

42:57.16

Rae

Well, yeah, but if you're building things in Sims and stuff that have like prefabricated designs and such already, do not follow those too closely because you do not have permission to use those specific designs. And that could possibly be a bit too close to plagiarism for a lot of people's comfort. So it's usually best to take inspiration from things and, you know, use it as a tool, but don't follow things too closely unless you have actually licensed the assets.

43:40.67

Star

Very much, yeah.

43:42.48

Screen Tones

Definitely. ah So I believe that is a wrap for today. ah Thank you all so much for listening. I've been your host, Farrah Thane, and you can check out my work at whichwouldcomic.com or cheralt.7smith.net.

44:00.95

Rae

And I'm Rae, and you can find my work at imperiancomic.com or Ravenfell on Webtoon.

44:10.97

Star

And I've been Star. You can find my comic cast-off at castoff-comic.com.

44:19.39

Star

Woo! o

44:22.33

Screen Tones

All right.