Have you ever noticed that in some comics, the artist will never show the characters below the waist. This is probability why. About centaurs, they look so awkward, I must admit. I’ve always wondered why there is a ‘taur’ in centaur because a traditional centaur is half horse, half man. Not half bull, half man.
This comic is brought to you in SKETCHOVISION TM. Cruz and I haven’t been able get together to make more comics. So I decided to sketch a comic this week. This really happened, the words are verbatim. Cruz claims he did this because he was holding the phone with his neck. I think it’s because he’s loosing his mind 😛 NOT ENOUGH COFFEE JD!!!
Sorry for not posting last week. Both Cruz and I got really sick. We where unable to work on the comic. We usually have a backlog but we used up our backlog when we went out of town – Alex the Dragon
I got a new tablet. Yay. Now I can watch Team Fortress 2 machinima in the coffee shop and annoy everyone. – Alex the Dragon
Update: forgot to add a question mark. Fixed
This is my first attempt a lip-syncing a character to the dialog by manually keyframing and tweening. It took a couple hours to match the vocals to the mouth movement. The voice is from a sample from The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.
A real conversation, I swear 😛 – Alex the dragon
The new 3d model of Alex . Still a WIP, but good enough to start doing tests and comics with. He is closer to the original design I did over a year ago http://maugryph.com/2013/02/18/dean-the-dragon-finished-3d-model-scene-lighting-and-animation-test/. I returned his skin color to a yellowish orange, and added the red fills that I was to lazy to do with the last model. I shortened his snout to make his expressions easier to read. I did a short talking animation test. I will upload that shortly. Cruz is also ready, I will upload screenshots of the new model as well.
I haven’t used the animal versions in a while. We thought it would be fun to blow off the dust and a comic with them. -Alex the Dragon
I am currently in the process of creating new models for Alex and Cruz. I did this painting to see where I could push the character. I painted over a render of the older model. The original model I had created was difficult to animate. I had a load of trouble with getting expressions on the face to read accurately. Alex’s white skin made it difficult to stand out in many scenes. It was also very boring color for a dragon. I changed it to yellow. I love frills on a dragon, so I finally put them on Alex’s model, something I wanted to do in the first place. The face is more blunt and pointed, this is done so his expressions a more readable. I removed the horns on the artwork but added them back on the model. I thought little wings would be cool, but then realized how dorky they look. So I didn’t add them.
I didn’t make concept art for Cruz. JD was at my house the other day, he basically watched me for 3 hours creating the model’s face, giving me input on what he wanted (A very bad way to design I must admit, its better to do concept art and sketches first)
The new WIP versions of Alex and Cruz are good enough to began using in the comic. Also I will be uploading my first lip sync animation that was animated by hand.
As I mentioned, Alex and Cruz is a big project and is constantly evolving.
Hello everyone, we made it to over 1000 followers! We want to thank our followers for your comments, encouragement, and support. 🙂 – Alex
One of my favorite games is ‘Shadow of the Colossus’ even though your forced to ride the ‘glitchy horse from Satan’s bosom’ TM to get from one colossus to the other. The boss fights are epic in that game, in fact.. the boss fights arte the only creatures in the game. Play the PS3 version unless your a fan of slowdown. -Alex the Pale Germanic Drake From the Desert.
