When I saw the ads for the first Poser software package, I was thrilled. Here was a program that produced posable 3d human figures. I bought the first version when it came out. In those days, the human figures it generated were fairly primitive. Those first versions were really meant to generate reference drawings rather than finished art. Below is a picture of the control panel. Notice how the figure looks like one of those muscle charts used to teach anatomy. I did learn to take the picture files that wrapped around the figures and paint superhero costumes on them. I used it to create a picture of Wolverine (from the X-Men) even though I had to paint the projecting ears onto the costume after I posed the figure and rendered the picture.
The first Poser figures were pretty primitive. With each new version, though, the figures got more and more lifelike and the company included more props. This is art from a version of the Intrepid Force graphic novel I started using Poser 3 figures. It shows Wendy in the arena doing a martial arts and acrobatics routine. After the show, she sits down and tells about the accident that led to her bionic reconstruction. The figures in the picture were rendered in Poser and retouched in Painter.
To design the cover of the first Intrepid Force novel, I used a mixture of objects created in Strata Studio Pro and Poser figures. Somewhere around that time, I bought Lightwave and was able to create props I could import into Poser. With some other software, I was also able to texture (add color to) the objects I created that would transfer between programs.
I loved StudioPro and still think it had a great rendering engine, but it was never really designed to do 3D characters, so I started shopping for a program that would make that easier. Two leading software packages at that time were Lightwave and Maya. Since Maya wasn’t available for the Mac at that time, I went with Lightwave and started learning it.
I continued to use Poser for many of my human figure needs, and found a third party supplier of Poser models called DAZ (See www.daz3d.com) Their human figures were textured and and rigged and they had morph targets. That means they already had the colors on them, they had “bones” inside of them that made them easy to pose, and their features and expressions could be changed with dials on the screen. That was a lot easier than having to re-sculpt the figure by moving the vertices around every time the character changed position. I’d been through that with my Strata figures, and it was terribly laborious.
Even though I put graphic novels on hold when I started publishing novels, I still went back to them from time to time. Computers were slow and I was learning as I went, so the process dragged on for years. I did get some good art out of it though. This panel from the Expo scene was inspired by the cover of an X-Men comic.
I also assembled a 30-page draft of the Intrepid Force graphic novel to take to the Gideon Film Festival/Blue Ridge Christian Writer’s Conference in North Carolina. Some of it looked pretty good (if I do say so myself) but it still looked rough in spots.
The project has more or less been on the back burner for the past few years, though I still work on it from time to time. I did pull it all together into a comprehensive rough draft last year, and hope to start back on it soon. My concern, though, is that I could probably finish three written novels in the time it takes to do one sixty-page comic. I keep hoping faster computers, better software, and/or the time and money to hire and train assistants will speed up the process enough that I’ll be able to put out a comic in about the same time it takes to do a written book.