Covering Early Ditko

Oops.

We forgot a post, even though i mentioned it while we were indulging in Ditko this week. Previously i said we'd get a collection of Ditko covers from Amazing Adult Fantasy and the earlier titles which we were perusing, so here they are - 23 covers from Steve Ditko's rising days in the mid-50s and early-60s...

Okay...   Now we'll move along from Ditko for a while.

Tomorrow i believe we'll visit with Stanley & Edwin!(?) See you then.

cover art by Steve Ditko from the books for which they're covers (1954, 1956, 1961, 1962)

Friday. Kelly Friday

Some folks may be wondering how Kelly Friday's doing. (I'm assuming they're extremely bored)

She's training hard...

(Those floors are an impact absorbent polymer with a shiny surface. The cross is incentive.)

...and testing hard...

...so she's working on her dream of being a superhero.

Meanwhile, i've been testing, too. 

What we've seen so far has simply been casting 'actors' and basic costuming. Now that it's getting to the point where we might need usable renders, it was time to dig into the big changes in the software switch/update to Daz Studio 4.11 from my ancient Poser 7. While there have been at least a few new versions of Poser, as of P8 they decided they were primarily a content marketing tool and required both IEvil and a live net connection to run. Either one would be a deal breaker. Daz Studio works with much of the same models, but Poser served my needs fine for a long time. Much of the enhanced details of newer software was lost or wasted for my purposes since the renders were merely serving as source images for my paintings.

I knew i'd eventually upgrade, and so i'd been picking up models for years even though i couldn't use them yet. And even though a lot have been outdated by a new generation of models (Genesis 8), the older Gen7 stuff still works fine. That's due, in no small part, to the most notable new feature, our hero - dForce.

No, that's not another comic book team. 

dForce is Dynamic Force, used for things like cloth. You might note in the image above how smoothly the semi-transparent skirt pieces lay along her thigh.

Let's look closer. Here's a basic pose that lets you see how the clothing bends...

A bit like a hard plastic shell, eh? 
Now, that's not a major problem for me since what we've been seeing isn't game art. I paint from photographs, so i take pics of things that don't exist before i start painting. That kind of unnatural stiffness can be fixed while painting.

But, that's not necessary now. Take a look at what our hero, dForce, does when it applies little touches like collision detection and gravity...

Much, much better, eh? After giving the outfit a proper texture, it would be good with virtually no alterations to the clothing.

This takes what would previously been an fairly unusable outfit, except in very limited poses, like this one...

...and makes it work quite nicely...

Oh, and it gets better. You see - to use the dForce simulation engine well, you need to set a simple animation. Just the basic default pose and the pose you want to use, nothing fancy or nice looking. You just want to let the fabric flow into place. This also means the the fabric will follow motion, like when Moon spins around...

Obviously, that's a very nice thing for capes on those bold or stupid enough to wear them.

Here, what would have been a very unnatural looking hostage/hero-bait situation...

(Her hair is hidden because it's also dForce and using it here would have Greatly increased the calculation time quite unnecessarily for this fabric test)

...after dForce is applied looks as it should...

No magic Byrne skirts here.

Now, as i said, much of the uglies can be fixed after the render, either in the photo-manipulation stage or the painting stage. But some things would take just ridiculous amounts of work involving multiple renders and working with the source textures. If not simply outright impossible - like using Kelly's nightgown for anything but standing...

It just doesn't bend, and doesn't have the joints to try.

But, who needs to bend when dForce brings the gravity -

Okay, true - that's not quite natural since there's no ground and the gown just falls into empty space. But that brings up another point i mentioned - Collision Detection.

So if she sits on this convenient model's prop...

...the gown falls not just over her, but over the other objects as well...

And now you can easily see why we're working with semi-transparent fabrics - so that we can see how the under layer drapes beneath the visible surface.

Now, as i said, one needs to set a simple animation to make this work well. For instance, in the shot above i needed to make certain that Kelly started far enough away from the seat to prevent her gown from intersecting with it. Collision detection works by reading the surface of an object. So if the gown was already inside, it would stay there instead of flowing over the outer layer.

Since she is moving, that means you might want to give it an extra second to let the gown settle, as it is above. When she first drops into position, the gown is still in motion... 

This can allow a bit of extra choice when selecting which frame to render, as well as be taken advantage of to capture motion like we did with Moon above.

As i said, none of what we've seen is what i'd consider game-ready art. But now we're getting to the point where i might have some to show before too long. It's been a struggle to bend the painting software to my will again (which is to say, i done forgot all my old preferences, brush flexibilities, bristle densities, etc.,.) but i've actually finished the first painting in a few years.

Who'da thunk it?

stuff by -3- (2020)

Departing Ditko Days

We've got just enough room left in the week for one more visit with Steve Ditko. Let's start where we left off, with some stories from the mid-50s...

This is The Voice Of ODD!, so let us take a hard turn into Odd territory for some completely different Ditko -

He even brought us the cover to that issue...

...and it was hardly his only trip into weird comedy...

This one was rarely seen, originally slated for Plop! and published in the Amazing World Of DC Comics, we get Steve Ditko working with Steve Skeates and Wally Wood -

And now we seem to have looped back around to where we started...

...so i guess it's time to move along...

page art by Steve Ditko (and Wally Wood) from Spellbound #29, Mystery Tales #s 40, 45, & 47, From Here To Insanity #s 10 & 1 (v.3), Amazing World Of DC Comics #13, and Amazing Spider-Man Annual #1 (1955, 1956, 1964, 1975)