Something I have been meaning to do for awhile was to sit down and try to learn Google SketchUp. I was intimidated by it, having had some headaches and frustration with various other 3D programs, like Blender, 3DS and Maya. After working through the video tutorials, I found out that SketchUp is nowhere near as complicated, and is actually very fun to use. SketchUp is not a scary spider and will not throw me in the basement.

Here’s a couple of views of my first try, a fighter or maybe scout-class spaceship with varying degrees of detail.

A Little Spaceship

It took me a couple of hours to model this, but I think I could do it in half that now. Seriously, the tools in SketchUp make it that easy and fast.

Pew-Pew Vroom!

I’m working on a science fiction project right now and I intend to build some ships of various sizes, as well as a funky spaceport, to help with drawing various angles in perspective.

Update 06/27/08: Since this post, two companies have written to me about mentioning their Google SketchUp plugin or other product. I don’t mind at all, but it’s interesting that I’m getting this kind of response to one small post about SketchUp. Is there that little buzz about SketchUp right now that even the humble Glimbit blog gets some attention, or are these two different companies just actively and aggressively marketing their products anywhere and everywhere SketchUp is mentioned?

At any rate, I don’t intend to post much about SketchUp, but if I try out those plugins, I’ll post my thoughts.

Georges Jeanty gave an interview at popcultureaddict.com where he talks about penciling the Buffy The Vampire Slayer season 8 comic series, which requires drawing recognizable people.

This is how I like to approach my drawing. I’ll draw a face our first with whatever their supposed to be doing, like Buffy is shocked or surprised and then I’ll go through my little catalogue of photographs and look for a picture of Buffy in a similar pose. It’s never an actual pose but I want to find something where she is similarly surprised, and from there I’ll try to render on the page more to what it looks like to that character.

He says the pages with Buffy take him about 30% longer because he had to draw and redraw.

I’m not a big fan of just tracing over the faces because, in all honesty that would take a lot longer because then we’d have to find exactly that expression and exactly that size and that perspective and how that character is looking that it would just take too long. So from there I feel that I’ve developed enough of a short hand for the character.

On a related note, comics based on TV shows are getting more and more attention. If they’re done well, with top notch writers and artists, they could turn the comics industry around, maybe even another boom. The type of TV that’s popular right now lends itself to comics.

I’ve been meaning to post some thumbnails for the comic pages I’m currently working on. The thumbs are from an unfilmed script for Firefly, “Dead or Alive.” I’ve posted the script pages after the jump.

Dead or Alive, p1-4, 11/27/07

These pages will be portfolio pieces, intended to show some likenesses and done in the traditional animation style that I’ve been toying with for a few months.

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