One Year Reflection

Hello everyone!

This post is a bit of a ramble about my first year as a pro and why my comics are not showing up as frequently as I expected. If you are not interested in a technical and personal ramble, please go check my gallery.

If you have been following me for the last year or so you may have noticed that I had predicted 5 comics to be released during the year, but only 4 came out. There is a technical and personal explanation for that.

Becoming a professional and leaving my old Screen Name

Beginning with the released ones: they share a common denominator, all of them share a character in a HDRI world with a fixed camera or a multiple fixed camera environment. This is a legacy method from my laptop where I used to do all my work due to its big limitations. I thought that when I upgraded to my desktop that I would be able to upgrade scenarios and characters with it. I spent the few money I had trying to get a decent computer in the middle of Covid juggling with multiple sites and stores where to find such components. It was my first build since 2004 and I was a bit rusty on building computers. I ended up creating an AMD Ryzen 1600 platform with 16 MB of RAM, 256GB ssd and a much sought-after nVidia 1600 Super from an unknown brand. For a while I used an old TV for my monitor, a keyboard from my first pc from 1999 and a mouse mx500 from around 2002 I had recently restored.
Fixed cameras rig in "Second Puberty"

“Second Puberty” was the first comic done on this new platform and I was excited with its speed, but I wanted more. “Adam and Eve” was started on my laptop and finished on the new rig, and you can see how simulations were present (the melting man) and how I could ‘adapt’ clothes easily to models. Also these models have body hair, something I could not do before.
The "big and full" Adam and Eve extras living room

Now I had to become a pro due to personal reasons, that can be summarized by the bad job market to my age/skill set in my area. I had to bite the bullet and become a liberal professional (similar to a contractor in the US) and had to search how to navigate the sea of bureaucracies here. “Now I have to release comics more often to pay even more bills and monetize my investment” I thought.
Marbleous scenario with hdri background

“Marbleous 2.0” was half done and so I turned into it. Same method, HDRI and characters, but this time I had props. This is where my new rig began to struggle. The big parasol plus chairs, pillows took a toll and adding more than 3 characters filled up my card’s memory. But I had my mind set to finish it, and I did.

Roadblocks

“Wigs 3” was an old ambitious project that I had begun on the laptop but ran into a big technical wall - the scenario of the room took all of my available card memory. Could not add any character or I had to render via CPU and take a lot of time, not being viable to release it before October 31st. Also I was in the middle of the hottest summer of the millennia and my office reached 47 degrees Celsius, something that me and the rig could not bear for long.
At the same time I decided to recreate the pin-up’s so that I had something to publish between comics. Pin-ups became my lab. I could test in one or two renders how I could solve the problem of multiple assets in a scene without jeopardizing a full comic and burning precious time with the added benefit of having something to post.

Divide and conquer

At the end of the day, I am still an engineer, so I used the old divide and conquer method. Dividing a scene, rendering its parts and compiling all in Photoshop. This method resulted well in a one room story like “Wigs 3” with few props but is not an ultimate solution for all my problems. Shadows were missing on some frames, bad cuts on the door not hiding the other character, reflections on the door knob and frames missing… I had to develop other methods. Even though the render time was shortened, the post time had tripled and I could not do both at the same time on the same computer.
Wigs 3 frame render before composition

Rusty Magic, Demon Fox, Second Puberty Reloaded and others

Since releasing the short on new year I have been developing a pipeline to create and release comics on a regular basis. That pipeline is now reflected on my trello account for everyone to see via a bunch of checklists on each phase of comic development.

I had been a little depressed due to my continuous failures but decided not to give up. People have been losing their jobs around me so it is not a good time even if I really wanted to give up and find another job.

I embraced a DAZ tutorial course and learned some hidden tricks, invested some more money on solutions on the store and other third parties and finally “Second Puberty Reloaded” is on a good path. What kept each comic from being made can be summarized below:
Rusty Magic:

• The scenario was too big to fit on the card and an HDRI was not suitable
• Simulations and animations were too complex

Rusty Magic test Frame

Demon Fox:

• The scenario was too heavy on the card as well and was missing two scenario locations, now purchased
• Fox has too many chest hair that is hard to render without fireflies in the picture and heavy on the card, now testing two purchased solutions

Hairy Mr Fox test frame from "Demon Fox" aka "Wrong Locker Room"

Second puberty:

• Scenario too complex and missing some simulated clothes
• Rebuilt the scenario with assets from a lot of places
• Missing water assets, now purchased

Lin inside the second version of the Lab frame test

Conclusion

If you reached this part, thank you for your support!

This new cycle I will continue to work on the comics mentioned above as well on new ones.
The objectives are to continue to use pin-ups as a testing ground, sequence comic strips as a middle ground to fill in betweens comics and to go back to writing.
I have the objective to launch at least one new chapter on Fay’s adventures, a continuation from “The Halloween Party”, before the end of the civil year and to finally lay out the “Meiga’s World” chapters, not as a comic, but as a novel.
I also have the objective of creating a more welcoming Discord with descriptions for every character and places for everyone to discuss their journeys.

I hope I can count on you as a supporter. If you cannot support me financially, share my free works on twitter, Instagram or other social media. The more people I can reach, the merrier.

For a second happier and productive year, thanks for reading.

Ermes da Costa