DAZ Studio : Creating Compelling Characters for Comics, Graphic Novels & Illustrated Narratives

Have you wanted to learn how to create compelling characters for your comics, graphic novels or illustrated narratives ? What makes a character convincing or captivating. How do you provide an obvious first impression with a still artwork character?

These two sessions are for you if you have wanted to tell a story visually with convincing characters. We’ll be using DAZ Studio as the primary tool to construct our character art. We include essential *information on:-

• Body types
• Basic Face Shapes
• Character relationship maps
• DAZ Studio Deformer tool
• Adding scars and cuts to a character
• Factors that shape a story!
• Setting First Impressions
• Our understanding of the characters is shaped by the actions they take
• Elements to understanding a character
• Key Properties of Characters
• The Characters Populating Your Storyworld
• Major, Minor and Placeholder Characters
• Character Archetypes
• Avoiding Clichés and Stereotypes
• Raising the Emotional Stakes
• Why is it important that characters be distinctive?
• What makes a character distinctive looking?
• What keeps characters from looking distinctive?
• Purposeful Resemblances
• Challenges In Distinctive Features
• How characters are typically differentiated
• Ways to test your cast’s distinctiveness
• Character relationship maps
• Character arcs
• Face and body types
• Morph dialling faces with G8
• Morph dialling bodies with G8
• Recommended resources
• Photoshop skin brushes
• Scars, cuts and scabs – we’ll show you how to apply these
• Ageing characters.
• Using Skin Builder in DS.

Join us for these fascinating tutorials to help you become a visual story teller with characters that your readership will remember.

The content above will be be spread across two webinar sessions….

Creating Compelling Characters Part 1

Date and time : Sat 30th September 20:00 BST(London)/12:00 PST(Los Angeles)/15:00 EST(New York)

Duration : 2 hours

Creating Compelling Characters Part 2

Date and time : Sat 7th October 20:00  BST(London)/12:00 PST(Los Angeles)/15:00 EST(New York)

Duration : 1.5 + hours

About the presenter : Peter von Stackelberg

“Whether it’s with words or images, I love to tell stories. I’ve been a storyteller as far back as I can remember — well before I made journalism my first career.

I studied journalism at Ryerson University (long before it was known as a university) and spent a number of years as an investigative journalist and news photographer. With the emergence of the web in the 1990s, I worked as a web designer, e-commerce developer, and IT project manager. In the early 2000s, I was a professional futurist doing technology forecasting and working as a technology strategist. I also began teaching college classes in strategic management, managing technology and innovation, project management, business communications, systems thinking, and other courses.

Through all of these jobs writing and visual communication remained a core part of the work I did.

I have a B.A. in Journalism from Ryerson University, an M.S. in Studies of the Future from the University of Houston-Clear Lake, and an M.S. in Information Design & Technology from SUNY IT (State University of New York Institute of

About Esther Mann

“It all starts with my deep and abiding love of comics and comic book art. It’s an obsession that started in childhood with an uncle’s 100 volume collection of Classic Illustrated comic books.

I was raised by a muralist father and can remember painting large backdrop sets, landscapes and scenes for an amazing number of years. Of all the subjects we painted I found and still find, humans and the human figure to be the most fascinating.
These loves (the human figure and comic book styles) eventually led me to 3D art, a natural extension of this interest. I started with Poser and when Daz Studio was released that became my software of choice. As I browse through my runtime, I realize I’ve been producing art using 3D models since 2003, and I see a copy of Photoshop 6 sitting here on my shelf as well. Apparently I’ve been at this a while, and yet 3D art is still in it’s infancy as an artform. It is so very exciting to see where it goes as it evolves.

I’ve sold art at Comicons, been commissioned for paintings, worked on book illustrations, and have a website for book covers. It’s awesome and so much fun! I love learning. I love art. I love the 3D art style. Together I find them to be an incredible amount of fun, there’s not much I like doing more than meeting other artists, and exchanging ideas, tips, and tricks. It is definitely my idea of a good time!”

Esther’s DeviantArt gallery