Combining 2D and 3D

I have done several pictures over the past few years combining 2D drawings with 3D objects.  Two of them have involved drawing characters, scanning them and then importing the drawings into Bryce to give the appearance of a toon character against a realistic backdrop.  Another two have involved putting a 2D character into a frame with 3D-shaded objects.  The results have been variable.  The Bryce imports do not work so well as the shading of the 2D characters is flat, where it really needs to have shadows and highlights (in Roger Rabbit rather than Cool World style).  Over the weekend I got my Wacom tablet out of storage, having decided to have another go with it.  I have never really got on with the tablet as it feels hard to control compared to the smoother process of drawing on paper.  (There are probably much better tablets out there but I have always been unwilling to take a leap into a higher price bracket until I've had a go with the product first.)

At present I am working on a picture that illustrates the Bible verse "if I ascend into Heaven You are there".  The picture is of my armadillo character looking down on the Earth from space while tethered to a space shuttle.  I used my tablet to give the armadillo a bit of shading, and the results are (so far) promising.  I have imported the character into Bryce and am in the process of adding Planet Earth and the space shuttle into the frame.

The high water mark for this sort of thing is the work of Jay Piscopo, a very talented artist (and really nice guy) who posted a series of pictures on Renderosity a while ago.  He had set up pictures using Poser figures imported into Bryce with props and scenery of his own making, and had then drawn over the Poser figures using Flash to produce a style of picture reminiscent of Hanna Barbera cartoons.  He made the combination of 2D and 3D work very well.

Last post about the tortoise

My tortoise model is finished at last!  The shell was particularly fiddly to texture, but now it's done, so he looks properly clothed.

Sharing

Over the last few years I have found a number of different places to share my pictures with folks on the internet, and it has come to my attention recently that I may be spreading myself a little bit thin.  I have recently taken stock of the sites and galleries that I have posted pictures on, and they include:

• My Wix site (which badly needs updating): http://simonfaiers.wix.com/simonsbrain
• Behance: https://www.behance.net/SimonFaiers/
• Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/123743381@N05/
• My Facebook page (recently set up):https: //www.facebook.com/siscreativestuff/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevefriars
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/simonf1972/
• Tumblr:

With Instagram, Tumblr and Twitter it is as easy as posting on Instagram and then ticking the boxes to also post on Tumblr and Twitter.  The complication is that I've got Twitter set up to share my posts on Facebook, but because I now have a Facebook page for my pictures, I don't want to post the same pics on there via Instagram.

Over the Summer I did a lot of drawing, having progressed from mainly figurative work to doing pictures of buildings.  The 3D work has fallen by the wayside, as has the writing, although now that the new term's started I'm going to have to pick up the story again or face a lot of very boring train journeys.

Update

Okay, so what's going on at the moment?  I'm juggling several things - it is now possible to link your Instagram page to your Wix site, so I'm currently in the process of fiddling around with that as a fair amount of my creative output is making its' way onto Instagram - photos, pencil drawings and 3d work.

• Razorback - the story has fallen by the wayside a bit.  I'm still adding bits on the journey to work every day, but it's slow going when the writing is done one-handed on a phone.
• Blender - my monkey character is now in Blender and textured, although the process has been complicated.  I unwrapped the model in Blender and then discovered - hooray! - that the program doesn't map everything symmetrically.  According to the folks in Internetland it is a known issue.  Unfortunately, it was the monkey's face that was unsymmetrical.  The workaround was to import the model and UV map into Wings, and then re-unfold the face, which Wings did beautifully.
• Cartooning - I'm currently working on an inked and coloured in version of a doodle that I did in pencil a few weeks ago.
  
  

Continuing with Blender

I've left my penguin model for the time being as his body is throwing up some niggly rigging problems. I don't even know how to make his head rotate when he doesn't have a proper neck.
I've resumed work on my duck character, who I'd previously used Rigify to provide with a skeleton. So far I've learned how to unlock the IK so his arms and legs can move more easily, set up the lights, change the background colour and now I'm in the process of setting up his eyes so they can both follow a target.

Back to Blender

I am making yet another attempt to scale the huge, slippery mountain that is Blender.  So far I have textured and rigged my penguin model (having decided to start with a simple figure without any fiddly bits like fingers).  It is going surprisingly easily, despite having to rummage around in the various toolbars and menus in order to find the functions that I want.
Blender is a great program that can do some really amazing things. You just have to be really patient with it.

Yet another post about the tortoise

After a lot of blood, sweat and tears, modelling on the tortoise's shell is just about finished.  I wish I'd made his body more of a round shape now, as it would have saved a lot of trouble, but never mind.
He needs texturing, of course.  I've previously been using UVMapper to unwrap my characters, but have just started playing around with Blender again, and have decided to have a go at using it to unwrap and texture my models, starting with something simple.  My penguin character is the simplest model, so he's going to be the first to get Blendered.