I’ve seen a lot of CG based artwork in comics recently and to be honest, I’m not totally surprised by this development.
3D rendering is quick and easy way to visualise a scene and if you are good you can get good results in a much shorter time than a traditional artist can produce a panel of artwork. The good advantage of it is that you can keep reusing models to suit your purposes and if you make a mistake you can quickly correct it in a short space of time by making the adjustments and re-rendering the image.
But don’t be fooled into thinking that it doesn’t require the same amount of talent as traditional comic artwork, that is simply not the case.
It is a different set of skills being used to produce these pieces. Modelling takes time, patience and a lot of spatial awareness to get right, and then it can be let down if you are no good at rendering a scene.
Rendering a scene takes skills visualising a scene and how the characters and environments will fit together. A knowledge of how the lights will play in the scene if positioned in the specific places, what effects to apply, how not to overdo it. In essence, rendering a scene and rendering it well requires a skill set that is closer to take of a film director than that of a traditional comic artist.
I’ve seen people on forums sneer at comics produced using CG, but this shouldn’t happen. Because of its flexibility and speed, it provides a way for an artist deficient writer to visualise his ideas in a way which has clarity and, if done right, is not without its beauty. If the alternative is for those ideas to never see the light of day, I’d opt for CG artwork every time.
The Dreamland Chronicles
Publisher: Astonish Comics Writer: Scott Christian Sava Issue looked at: #1
In a nutshell:
College student Alex finds a way to return to his boyhood dream world, only to find things have changed…
Story:
As I went through the first few pages, I was thinking that the comic seems aimed at kiddies, but then it all fell into place and I realised that what is was, in fact, reading was an engaging, charismatic and intelligent piece of work.
It’s total fantasy, but has a several really interesting aspects, such as the suspicion that the dream world is not as imaginary as first thought, and the idea of the main character dealing with this world now he is grown up. It was ideas coming through in the work like this that really intrigued me and made me want to keep reading.
Furthermore, the dialogue ranges from very good to excellent and the whole piece is just oozing ideas left, right and centre.
Artwork:
The artwork is entirely computer rendered and it looks to me that all of modelling was done specifically for this comic.
The character modelling is superb throughout and it is done deliberately in a very cartoony sort of style, yet is very detailed and very charismatic. Apart from the dragon – the dragon is fucking awful.
I had a few issues with some of the background modelling, though, and felt that the modelling and overall visualisation of this dreamworld left something to be desired. In some places, it feels like it is letting down the quality of the character modelling, about halfway through the book it dramatically improves in terms of quality, style and imagination. In a way the backgrounds of the first half of the comic sit very unhappily with the quality of the second half, which is more detailed and better conceived.
The rendering is good, although I felt that in some places the lighting was not used to its full potential, some times the lighting seems understated and not as dramatic as it could be had they placed the lights elsewhere in the scene.
At other times the use of lighting is superb. It struck me that the lighting in the real world scenes were much better than those in the dreamworld. Perhaps, it is that in the real world they are trying to imitate natural light, whereas in the dreamworld they are trying to do something more dramatic and failing.
Also, the rendering artists have missed a couple of tricks. In places, I felt that they should have been using depth of field effects to blur the landscape as it got further and further into the distance, also fogging the far distance into blue – for a aerial perspective sort of effect might have given slightly more shine to the overall impact of this comic.
Summing up:
The appeal of this comic should be very broad, and I think that this comic will appeal to younger readers, for the lively, interesting CG artwork and funny characters, and older readers for the good quality writing and interesting themes and writing.
I really don’t want to overstate my issues with the artwork (which most readers won’t even notice) as overall I felt that this is a virtually perfect comic and I recommend it to one and all. Unmissable.
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