Creating Comics in Blender | is it as awesome as 3D?

Creating comics in Blender sounds like a crazy idea? comics have been changing and growing over the years, because now you can use 3D software such as Blender to do this type of work. In this article, we are going to talk about how Blender can help you as a comics artist. Especially to save time and energy by working faster and smarter using its fantastic tools.

The advantage of creating comics in Blender

Blender is a 3D package that can do a lot of things and it is especially good for 3D modeling, which is why a lot of comics artists use it. In addition to being free, which is great for those who work for themselves or work on a tight budget.
Other than 3D modeling, Blender has a fantastic drawing tool known as the Grease Pencil that can help a lot. And of course, the freestyle rendering that can bring more of a comic book look to environment designs, vehicles and so on.

Not only that, because Blender is also amazing with adding specific materials, shaders, and special effects. Combining everything together to do what you want when creating comics in Blender.

Modeling in Blender for Comics

When it comes to using 3D characters for comics work using Blender, it can be done and it is sometimes a good thing. Because it can help with anatomy, or posing, but it can’t help that much when it comes to expressing character’s emotions and feelings correctly. In other words, 3D is kind of limited and not as good compared to what you can do using 2D mediums. Especially if you want to make something that really looks like comics characters.

There are a lot of people who use 3D characters especially those who use software such as Daz studio, but often their characters kind fall into the uncanny valley. If you don’t know what this uncanny valley is: it is a concept that suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness and revulsion in observers.

Generally speaking, comics artists prefer to draw their characters, but creating comics in Blender is becoming an important 3D tool for Comic artists. Because it allows them to create things that are very hard to do manually every time they want to draw something. For example, environments are one of the most time consuming and repetitive things that you have to work on for your comics. However, if you model quick environments that you need often using Blender you will be saving yourself a lot of time and effort.

Also, another important thing that you would choose creating comics in Blender for is complex machines and vehicles. Because usually you need to draw them from different angles and you don’t want to spend 10 hours every time you want to draw aspaceship, car, tractor, or any complicated engines. Instead, you can choose the angle you are looking for in space and then draw over it. As a result, you will work much faster and with less effort. Not to mention that there are plenty of amazing Blender addons for vehicles to help you out. We made a selection including the best of them in a previous post if you’re interested.

The grease pencil in Comics

The Grease Pencil is a particular type of Blender objects that allows you to draw in the 3D space. It can be used to make traditional 2D animation, cut-out animation, motion graphics or use it as a tool to create comics.

Using the grease pencil, creating comics in Blender is now possible from start to finish. Because it allows you to draw and sketch in the 3D viewport as you want. You can use it to draw characters on top of other layers that you make whether it be 2D or 3D. And you can also use it to draw over 3D models, especially complex ones like vehicles and machines. All that to take it from the 3D look to a 2D comic style type of look.

In addition to that, the grease pencil is a fantastic tool for creating motion comics. Because a motion comic is a form of animation combining elements of print comic books and animation. Individual panels are expanded into a full shot while sound effects, voice acting, and animation are added to the original artwork. Text boxes and sound effect bubbles are typically removed to feature more of the original artwork being animated. And the grease pencil in Blender is great for this type of work.

Freestyle for Comics

Freestyle is an edge/line-based non-photorealistic rendering engine. It’s sometimes the obvious idea that comes to mind when thinking about creating comics in Blender. It relies on mesh data and Z-depth information to draw lines on selected edge types. Various line styles can be added to produce artistic hand-drawn, painted or technical hardline looks.

There are a lot of things you can do using Freestyle if you want to get a certain specific result. But for the most part, it is going to help you transform your 3D environments that obviously look 3D into an environment that looks like it was hand-drawn to a certain extent.

Also, you can use modifiers and nodes to control how your work looks like. It might take time and some experience using Freestyle to get to the final result you are looking for, but it is going to be worth it in the end. So it is a process of trial and error but the good thing is that rendering in freestyle is not going to take a long time to test different results. Especially if you are using the real-time render engine Eevee.

Lighting and Rendering

Rendering comics in Blender is different from rendering realistic scenes. And one of the most important differences is the speed at which the process will be done. While creating comics in Blender you can use many different tools that the software offers. For example, you can use both Cycles and Eevee to get high-quality final results. But before that, you can use special shaders that can help you capture the right mood or environment to have greater control and to create exactly what you want.

Blender vs Other 3D software in creating comics

When creating comics using 3D software there are a lot of options to choose from, some of them are quick and relatively easy to use. Because you don’t have to put in the effort from the ground up. On the other hand, others give you the freedom but they also require a lot of work to get to the results you have in mind. Usually, when people make 3D comics or webcomics they use Daz, Poser, Blender or even other 3D packages such as Sketchup, 3ds max or Maya.

If you don’t mind your comics looking obviously 3D. There are tons of low-quality, poorly-made Daz and Poser comics out there, some of them are good. But a lot of them can be considered bad from a comic artist perspective.

Usually, there are a lot of recognizable characters in comics made using Daz studio because it comes with a bunch of pre-set stuff. And unless you’re willing to put in a lot of work, you’re locked into that particular aesthetic. Above all, if you want to create something specifically for your comic, it is going to be hard.

Creating comics in Blender, you can do everything from the ground up. Because it is a complete 3D modeling and animation package that can be used for all sorts of different projects not only creating comics and 2D stuff.

In addition to that, it will be letting you have everything exactly the way you want. When using Blender, you can start out with a vision for what you want a character to look like, and then go and make that character.

When using Daz, you can start out with a vision of the character, then look for resources that are close to what you want. After that, adjust the way you envisioned the final result to work with the constraints set by that program. And this is one of the main reasons why many comic artists prefer creating comics in Blender. Because many of them don’t want to be limited by the available resources. You can buy new models that can come close to what you want, but it is not even close to creating your own stuff that you see in your mind.

Artists usually are creative people who don’t want to be limited by the tools and they want things to look the way they want them to look. A creative artist can only live with a limit or constraint. That is solely because of his or her own talent (or lack therefore) rather than some external factor. Due to the fact that this is something they have control over if they work harder to improve their skills

Using Blender, if you don’t have the skill to pull something off, you can always get better. But using other software such as Daz studio, if they’re locked off with presets and the need to adjust and tweak them, there’s very little you can do to get around that.

This difference of freedom of control and creativity becomes very apparent when working on something that is not very common, like working on a fantasy or sci-fi comics. You will definitely need to have robots, creatures aliens, strange environments and so on. And there’s pretty much little chance of finding a Daz resource that matches what you envision. However, if you working with Blender, you can always just make that creature or a specific environment from the ground up. You can build those fantasy or sci-fi environments how you want them, rather than having to use existing things and tweaking them to look similar to what you want.

---

Is it cheating to create comics using 3D

For some, this is a really good question because this is a topic that surfaces from time to time within the comic art community.

Drawing is one of the most difficult skills to hone. Especially drawing for Comic Books. It takes years of constant dedication, learning, and practice to even get a handle on the fundamentals.

Most artists are in it for the long haul though. And thier unrelenting passion to create gives them the motivation to stick with it, and in turn, get better at drawing.

But we all know, time is money. And when you step out into the Comic Book industry you quickly realize that you’re torn between delivering quality or quantity.

But you cut massive chunks of your workflow out of the entire drawing process so that you can skip further ahead in less time. That might mean using references, that might mean tracing, and it might also mean building the underlying structure of the art work using 3D models first.

I think that as long as you are still being a creative artist who produces art that is true to his principles and to the field he or she is working in, it does not hurt to adopt new tools and new techonology that help you make things easier, faster and generate even better results.

If you find Blender to be a useful asset for your projects, by all means, use it and save time and energy to work on even more amazing projects.