doctorbaer

Last weekend I blogged about my excitement having made Doctor Baer’s house with my new 3D printer:

Which got a friend of mine to point me at the iOS app Forger, an iPad version of Blender. Over the last few days I’ve been working on a model of the good Doctor.

Next I need to sculpt his staff, then I’m going to try posing him and making some figurines!

I’m continuing to practice digital watercolors in Procreate while developing ideas for another Doctor Baer book.

For those in Team Pickles who have been following along with the process materials for the next book, this is the scene where our heroes follow the anxious monk into a secret chamber wherein the Hoary Harpoon is kept. Naturally, Pickles is more interested in the opportunity for music-making.

I might go so far as to say that the watercolor brushes (at least, the ones I’ve found), feel even more natural than the ones I’ve used in Clip Studio Paint. But that comes with its own trade-off in that their realistic color mixing pulls the transparent pixels into the edges of my selections. I’ve tried to adapt to that in my approach.

But one big plus I wish someone told me about a while ago is that, unlike CSP, Procreate lets me paint in CMYK. That’s reason enough to keep practicing.

The environment was made in Blender, imported into CSP for penciling, inked on watercolor paper, and colored in Procreate. And big thanks for the color production assistance from Cailea Williams!

Back in September I shared my excitement over learning Blender well enough to create a 3d model of Doctor Baer’s house:

Blender models can easily be imported into Clip Studio Paint, which will make drawing the next book much easier. Here’s a piece I’m working on supported by the model:

But having recently purchased a Flashforge Adventurer 3, I was ready to see if I could also make a print of the model.

It worked out pretty well! I’m excited about what this means for future Doctor Baer support materials. As I design models to support the comic’s production, I’ll also have an eye on how they might make for fun little tchotchkes to include in a convention table display.

I’ll be at Genghis Con Sunday, November 26 with students from my recent residency in Cleveland Heights (funded by a generous grant from the Ohio Arts Council!). And as always with these public events, I’ll be hiding art drops around the place:

I’ll have free Doctor Baer stuff, too! I hope to see some of you there.

I had two uninterrupted hours of drawing for myself this weekend, and it felt like this.

I’ll share more of this development piece as I finish it.

With a loaner iPad Air I’ve been working on learning the app that so many of my friends are using for their comics and sketching. And it’s pretty neat! It wasn’t obvious to me how I could adapt the process I’ve come to lean on in Clip Studio Paint, but over time (and with the help of my students), I’m starting to figure out how it might work for me.

And I have to admit, the drawing experience on the iPad is pretty great. The 6B pencil in Procreate on the iPad is the next best thing to working with paper.

I see what they hype is about! I just need to practice and experiment a bit more to see where this might fit into my workflow and whether I might be able to include this in my classes.

Doctor Baer faces the mysterious liquid spirits in the catacombs of Yonyovid Cove. An art drop at the recent Buckeye Book Fair.

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If you’re at the Buckeye Book Fair this Saturday, November 4, be sure to keep an eye open for some Doctor Baer art drops I’m leaving around the convention center. Like this one, which is also a sneak peek at the next Doctor Baer story I’m working on now.