Roxtar Comics

There unfortunately wont be a new page this week, but I do have something to show for it! Throughout the week I’ve been throwing myself into Blender and building out some of my scenes in 3D. I’m not the biggest fan of backgrounds and I’d say they’re the #1 thing slowing down my comic output, so I thought if I modeled them instead, it would help cut down the time it takes while also making them look more proportionally consistent. So far I’ve been working on both Mars’s lab and Ghoul’s room, and here’s the progress I have so far

I also modeled Ghoul in VRoid Studio so I could use him as a size reference to help model these spaces in a way that’s appropriately sized to a person’s proportions.

This 3D model of Ghoul isn’t going to replace hand drawn Ghoul in my comics though. Stylistically I’m still trying to keep everything looking hand drawn. I want to replace some of my backgrounds with 3D renders and draw my characters over top of them, but even those renders I won’t be putting in until I learn how to give them a cel shaded, cartoony look to fit the aesthetic I want for my comic better.

Overall the important thing is that I’ve been having a blast with what I’ve been doing! 3D modeling is something I find really fun and switching to a mixed medium workload instead of strictly hand drawing everything has been helping me spend a LOT more time doing art I enjoy instead of just mind numbingly doomscrolling all day.

Thanks for reading! The next page is halfway done and I should have it out on its scheduled time next week!

I’ve had this site for a half a year now! Wow! I know I only published it in October, so it’s only actually been live for about 2 months-ish now, but I actually bought the domain back during the summer, and had been working behind the scenes for about another 3 months on-and-off teaching myself a bunch of wordpress functions to actually get this thing off the ground. Boy am I happy I did!

Obviously over the next coming year, I want this site to grow more. More comics! Yes! What I’m really aiming for is to start getting more into the meat and potatoes of the stuff I REALLY wanna make. The single page gag strips are fun, but I have a psychological NEED to get weirder with it. I’ve been writing out a lot of big ideas for story arcs for both The Grimoire of Roxy Rockett and ÞAW. It’s a bit hard and time consuming to balance both at the same time, especially with bigger stories, but it also feels fulfilling to do it this way. This whole shebang has been a learning experience for me in not just art creation, but also time and resource management, and I expect to learn a lot more in the coming year. Something I thing I may have to do is reduce the visual quality I put into each page in order to put out a higher quantity, but I need to find a good balance that allows me to do that without the artwork looking like crap. “Learning experience, learning experience,” I continue to remind myself.

I remain hopeful despite tripping over my own shoelaces a lot with this project. Here’s to a bright and colorful 2023 full of more comics! Thank you to everyone who stops by here or my social media pages to read what I make! It means the world to me!