Computer Graphics World

More than 126,000 people fl ocked to downtown San Diego for the 40 th annual Comic-Con International convention in late July. While Hollywood and video game publishers have stolen much of the spotlight from the original focus of the show—comics—new technol- ogy is helping comic-book publishers lure the connected consumer back to the classic art form. And, they're do- ing it in a variety of ways, from mo- tion comic books that can play on iPhones to traditional graphic nov- els that were created using the same 3D technology that powers fi lm and video games. Seattle-based Zombie Studios has been a video game de- veloper for decades, but in recent years, the company has started creating original worlds that can expand beyond the console. e studio currently has two comic series in production. Shrapnel is an epic solar war trilogy, pub- lished by Radical Comics, that Mark Long, president of Zombie Studios, calls a kind of "Joan of Arc in space." Blacklight, which focuses on an elite covert ops team that is hunting an American colonel who has gone rogue, is like " e Heart of Darkness crossed with Blade Runner." Both these properties will be heading to the big screen and video game screens, and in doing so, has opened up a new way of thinking in terms of the creation of 2D comics. "Traditionally, concepts start with storyboards or rough pencils," explains Long. "You lay out the landscape and composition, drawing and painting in [Adobe's] Photoshop with a Wacom tablet. But now we're building the landscape in 3D fi rst, sometimes with simple primitives, like blocks and cylinders, other times with more detailed models that we have in our database. After we have an environment laid out, we can rapidly move the camera around, experimenting with placement, fi eld of view, and so on, until we have the composition that achieves the focus we're seeking. en we render the composition using a high-resolution radiosity lighting model that produces detailed ambient occlusion (shadows)." is untextured (noncolored) base render provides the fi rst layer for the artist to paint over. e major advantages of utilizing this process, according to Long, is that it provides a correct perspective and lighting. " e remainder of the process is traditional, or at least tradi- tional in the sense that the concept artists 'paint' over the render, but they paint digitally," explains Long. "Concept artists are still trained using paper and ink/paint. But they rarely work that way professionally, except to sketch ideas." Zombie Studios uses Epic's Unreal 3 game engine and Autodesk's 3ds Max modeling/animation software for the work. Typically, a single production designer supervises the production of a team of about seven at the facility, while two or more modelers lay out and render the scenes. en, depending on the production schedule, three or more others will paint over the renders. Lettering is also done digitally, for the most part, usually by one artist who special- izes in this area. "Our process is actually very new," explains Long. "I'm only aware of a few concept artists or concept studios that are building 3D 3D 3D 3D September 2009 31 Trends & Technologies ■ ■ ■ ■

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