A good friend and I are working on a comic book that is a long-held dream of his.
However, my scripting (three issues so far, in a long story arc) is waaaaaaaaaay ahead of his drawing.
Is there software that will let him scan in or draw a character, and then it will extrapolate different poses for that character thereafter? So he basically only has to draw it once?
Because if I have to wait for him to hand-draw everything, it will never happen.
No. At the moment, at least, that is technology of the type only to be found on cheesy police procedurals.
You and he may have an unrealistic idea of how long it takes to create a comic. Most comic books involve four artists: penciller, inker, colorist and letterer. And that’s with all of them and the writer working full-time hours to create one issue a month.
Doug K.: Wow, no shit?! He wants to hand-paint each panel. In acrylic, on butcher paper. So far, I have scripted three comic-length books, and he has just about finished the first panel. I mean, it’s magnificent, but I don’t really see where he should be worrying about me falling behind.
One way to do this involves creating 3d models of everything in something like Blender then rendering it in a flat toon like style.
This has the advantage of allowing easy reuse of characters, vehicles and sets. But you’ll still want to draw some things directly since it isn’t worth modelling an object for a single panel.
Of course doing this involves learning 3d modelling and rendering but it does allow for the kind of workflow you are looking for.
If you want to go super cheesy, there’s always Stripcreator. It lets you add dialogue and captions to canned characters and backgrounds.
Perhaps this is not so much in line with your friend’s vision. But if you’re like me and can’t draw to save your life, it is quite a bit better than nothing. And the results can occasionally be pretty amusing, despite the limitations.
This might help: https://smartmonkeyfitness1.clickfunnels.com/order111786377?pp=0
Also there are millions of comic poses guidebooks online.
CGI is a lot of work. Besides creating the models in the first place, getting the lighting and poses to look right takes a lot of trial and error, and probably doesn’t take any less time than drawing the images by hand if you have the skill to do that.
And nothing screams low-talent, low-rent hack more than using Poser.
Not to threadshit… but… do you guys know what you’re doing?
Has he done sequential art before? Have you written comics before?
This sounds like a pretty intense undertaking (hand painting individual panels on butcher paper).