The Far Reaches Webcomic

Here’s a little teaser image of the scene I’ve been working on all week. I know it’s really itsy bitsy, but I don’t want to ruin it. I still have to draw the little character and ink him and there’s another shot to composite for panel one. So I still have several hours left on this page, but I’m pretty happy with how it’s turning out. I’m not going to do stuff like this too often. It messes up the schedule too much. But I hope you’ll all like it when it’s done. I’ll also be making it into a wallpaper because I’d like it for myself anyway. Besides, that way you’ll see it a little more detailed than what will be on the web.

One problem with 3d is that rendering for a large comic panel takes a long time. This image is ten inches wide at 300 dpi. The final file is almost 300 megs with a dozen or so layers. It took a day to model most of the buildings, a day to do the texturing, and probably nine or ten hours to render all the different components. Then it took several hours to composite everything and make it look like I wanted it. (Oh, yeah. And it took two and a half to three days to do the ship.)

This reminds me of when I did the ice cityscape on page 122. That took several weeks and required learning whole new ways of doing things. Rendering it was a pain too, if I recall. But I’m so happy I took the time to do it and learn those techniques. Doing page 158 has taken ages, and has been a lot of hard work. There’s still some work left on it. But now that I can see the final result of this panel, I’m pretty happy I tried to challenge myself. For you budding artists or 3d enthusiasts out there, don’t settle with only doing what you’re comfortable with. Challenge yourself and you’ll be glad you did.