New Project: Honey, I...

[EJDII]

Hello all, long-time lurker, first time poster. I’ve been registered here as MTLabs2005 for a long while now, but for the sake of continuity, I re-registered as EJDII short for Erik J. Durwood II.

Anyhoo, the purpose of this post is to start a reputation here on this forum which seems to be a beacon for original creative content and activity with my up-and-coming artistic endeavors. The first of which is a 3D comic series I’ve started and have mentioned on the GiantessCity forum called “Honey, I…”

Here’s my latest blurb on the project copied from over there:

I've had a lot of things happen in my life in the last two months but things are beginning to settle down and I am getting back to work on my "Honey I..." project. I have the first two chapters scripted and semi-story boarded and the gags written.

I sat and thought for a while about what it means to make what is essentially a "poser comic". Poser earned its fame as a very easy way to create lifelike people very quickly. As a professional computer animator, "poser" is a dirty word to many. Aside from architectural designers that need quick people for a quality render, "Poser" is synonymous with "lazy" and creating artwork with Poser characters is easy to single out and berate. But not many people know or understand how these tools enable emerging artists and the struggling professionals to produce quality work and develop their own talents.

Personally, I suck at character modeling. I am struggling and I'm making slow progress. I am a "thing modeler." I excel at creating objects and scenes and such. You can check out my deviantart galley here:

http://erikjdurwoodii.deviantart.com/gallery/

I'm a varied artist and I like to explore every facet of art that intrigues me. The purpose of these comics are to give back to a community that has been generous to me as well as tell a story and develop as an artist. One day, I won't need Poser or DAZ figures but for the sake of storytelling, I feel what I will deliver will be unlike any Poser comic anybody has ever seen. At least that I've seen... ^__^

Anyhoo, these comics can be considered Action-drama-comedies. I'm not in to the overly-violent bloody gore-fests but the situational comedy of the size change storyline. There is a dramatic component as well that explores the emotional and erotic aspects and of course the "no-holds-barred" action of everything that can go wrong, going wrong. In my typical style I try to tie it all together with intelligent humor that should be appealing to most people.

But we'll see. The first two chapters establish how the shrink ray got into Dwayne's hands and starts off as an accidental shrinking story. The third chapter takes off at the resolution of the second where Dwayne, with the help of his girlfriend, manages to get un-shrunk but through technical malfunction causes some anomalies that create bizzare effects for everyone involved.

This is looking to be a wild, surreal adventure.

I'll have some new images soon and after that, I will start a new thread starting the first chapter.

I post this here in the growth forum as the much of the story is anchored by the growth process. But, there will be all forms of size-related mayhem throughout starting with male shrinking (sudden) on to female growth (gradual and very process oriented) to shrinking woman (gradual) and everything in between; Even some breast expansion mixed in for flavor. ^__^

I would like to simultaneously premiere the chapters both here and at GiantessCity but I will make clear here so it doesn’t take anybody be surprise, the first two chapters are male shrinking with female interaction (though there will be some surprise GTS and SW moments). It’s not ‘till the third chapter will thw story head in the gradual growth direction so I’m not sure if the growth thread is the most appropriate spot to put the whole thing.

If anybody has some wise guidance for organizing this on the forum, I would appreciate it.

I have five chapters planned, three drafted and two fully written. The fifth chapter has an open end for possible continuation.

Attached are some image from the story and others I put up on GTScity so you can have kind of an idea as to how this will look. Consider these drafts as I was doing different experimentations with each.

It is my hope that this "poser comic" is well recieved and gives a much needed zeal to the poser art work. (Even though only the figures are from poser; everything else is done in 3D Studio MAX.)

Take care and I look forward to contributing to the community!

Edit: Oh and as can be seen in my DA gallery, I also draw too. So I'll be doing some of that here too ^__^

- EJDII

[TBG]

I knew I remember seeing a few of those images over at GTScity...but hasnt been a few years?

[EJDII]

I started at the beginning of this year. Those are the R&D Images. Nothing more than a year old though.

[Nixemus]

I have to say, this looks a step above what I've seen before, both in professionalism and detail.

I also love how clean the images are; a lot of work obviously went into these, and I especially like the effects on the glasses and the giant hands. Although the foot looks a bit plastic, I'll put that down to technology not doing what you tell it to :P

Needless to say I will await this with much anticipation.

[Mattariel]

Very nice images, I must say.

As you pointed out, you were unsure about posting on here...which is understandable, since there are plenty of people who get riled up about non-female-process related material, and while I often agree with them, the lure of high quality poser-series pics related to actual growth is strong enough for me to say I'm looking forward to it.

[vermin316]

All I can really say here is "me too." The previous two posters said everything I was thinking. You've obviously put a lot of work into these and it shows. I'm not a fan of shrinking, but if there's growth involved later then I guess the early shrinking stuff can be forgiven. I'm looking forward to seeing more of this.

[EJDII]

@ Nixemus:

Yeah, each of those images tested a control or technique that I wasn't too familiar with yet. In the bath image, I was trying to make the surface of the foot look "wet" but still absorb light in a natural looking way. Classically, 3d software just calculates how light reflects off a surface, but with the advent of sub-surface scattering, light can be "absorbed" and "thrown" through the inside of an object and illuminated from the inside out. That is more like real skin. But it is processor intensive of a task and is very picky with the scale of a scene.

In that shot, the dude has SSS turned off because the absorbency of light was at a depth of about 8mm but at his size, that basically went right through his body so he looked like a gummy bear with glowing translucence. The foot was the normal scale, but the "wet layer" I added wasn't able to allow the "photons" through to be absorbed by the skin. Hence the plastic look.

In the "RUN" image, I was testing light absorption in her skin, and especially on the fingernails. Since there will be a lot of "close-up" shots with Dianne, the girlfriend, I'm working extra hard to program some advanced shaders for her body. It's difficult because if I go to the great effort to have fingerprints and eyelashes and light absorption on her fingernails and hair, when I render a full body shot of her, all of that detail is in view even if the image is too granular to show, the render times will sky-rocket. So I'm making multiple levels of shaders for different "zoom levels" as well as high detail feet legs arms and hands.

All of this prep work is what is really taking all of this time.

Another factor which will set this apart from other poser work is how her geometry reacts to weight and "collisions" with other objects. Once again, DAZ and poser is nice for many things but that extra level of artistic realism will come from things like realistic gravity effects of her breasts. When she's laying down how they will droop when she outgrows her clothes, how the confined portions will stretch the clothes taut and the excess breast flesh will swell out of the holes and neckline. When she "puts her foot down" how the skin compresses and the skin tone "blanches" from the displacement of blood. Her hair... 'nuff said.

So many little things but I don't want this to take forever. I'm attempting to optimize the work flow so I don't have to wait any longer than is needed for a particular image. Dwayne is all finished. He was easy to tool. All of his customizations include new skin, three outfits and a new pair of glasses.

Dianne is (of course) much more complex and has a variety of outfits that need seaming (for the cloth simulation) a displacement surface (so her skin doesn't show through the clothes under normal circumstances) and a whole set of textures, maps and shaders for being wet, dry, dirty, wounded and electrocuted.

Oh and 26 supporting characters, 3,000 or so objects and 29 scenes and locations... thus far.

A bit of the models are canned from model kits and such but everything needs a "going over" to adapt it to the style I'm working with.

It's a lot of work, but I tell you, this is the most fun I've had in a long time artistically.

Take care

[Mr Wayne]

EJDII,

Honestly sounds quite interesting to me, I'll be looking forward to seeing particularly the 3rd chapter in full details. Just as long as its not "clothes grow with the women" and the clothes outgrowth process(es) are done in quality detail, this promises to be quite the spectacle indeed. Now if someone would do a mock up of what could have happened after the ending of The Incredible Shrinking Woman.

[Jamball]

Are you rendering these inside of poser? Or a different program (lightwave, Maya, 3D studio?) to allow you access to all the different shader levels?

Anyway, this sounds like it'll be a great project. I'm not a huge fan of SM, but I loves me some great female growth.

What are your leaning towards animating? At least the growth sections (the spurts perhaps).

--
Jamball

[EJDII]

I only pull the base figures and rough poses from Poser. Everything else is done in 3D Studio Max. Scenery, shading, lighting and rendering; everything.

I've pondered doing some scenes animated, but I do computer animation for a living and I know how much more time and effort goes into an animated clip over a well-done still.

I may do some animated clips to see how much effort is needed for this project, but at a point, the effort and time that would go into a good clip is not something I would freely give out. Maybe a snippet, but for the most part, it's too much effort for a casual community project.

Perhaps later if this really takes off but for now I'm looking forward to taking advantage of the still-media format and deliver high-quality images that way.

- EJDII

[Wulfsbane]

Looking over this here and on deviantART, I very much look forward to your work!

[EJDII]

Thanks! ^__^