Just a teaser of what's coming up!

So I'm currently hard at work on the renders for part 2 of the new monthly comic. Meaning I'll be releasing part 1 and part 2 together somewhere over the next week. The comic itself will be available for the Desire tier, the unedited renders will be available for Craving and higher.

So to whet your appetite, here's another shot from part 1, which is already complete:

To use this opportunity to go a little bit more indepth, I'll talk a bit about how I've lit this scene. Usually, to light most of my scenes, I go with a simple three point lighting system in combination with environment lights. Sometimes, if the environment map is really good, I can use just that and I don't have to bother with additional lights at all.

Over the last three years, my lighting style and quality has been a bit inconsistent as a result of that. It really is one of the trickiest things to get right as an an artist and it's one of the things I'm most intent on mastering.

In this case, the setting is a cramped interior. There is no room for creating additional spotlights without that resulting in overexposure on nearby surfaces. Think about it: if I placed an invisible, light emitting orb above the headrest of a chair, or near a wall, for the viewer there would be the weird presence of intense light on a surface without a nearby source, distracting from the shot.

So all the lights in this scene are mesh lights. That is, lamps in the ceiling and walls that were purposefully put there by the asset creator. I've tuned them a bit to my own taste and I've adjusted some of the surfaces, creating darker materials where necessary to absorb light instead of emitting it.

The end result is a really natural looking interior light design, with clear shadows and clear emission points. In the thumbnail image, Tatiana's face is mostly in shadow. Normally, I would feel inclined to correct that with a spotlight. This time, it is what it is. It's pretty counterintuitive for me to just roll with it the way it comes out of the render process, but ultimately I do think it looks better.

So this comic is going to look a little bit different to what you're used to from me if you're someone with an eye for lighting. But hopefully it will be for the better :)