Best Comic

Resident Evil: The Official Comic Magazine fue una serie mensual compuesta por cinco números publicados por “DC Comics” en  el año 1998. Cada número contiene una compilación de historias cortas que adaptan eventos del video juego al comic, como también historias secundarias y no canónicas que intentan explorar otros aspectos de la saga “Residen Evil”…

Following up on my last post, I got an email this week from Peter Janda. He runs Adhemar, the Belgium comic shop in Gent, which also runs a small press publishing house, releasing extremely exclusive titles and niche objects. He sent me a couple of pictures, showing five new titles from their limited  re-release of the Bessy series, originally created by the Vandersteen Studio in the 1970s.

Back then the series was in such a high demand, they succeeded in delivering one new title every week. At the same time, only one title was published every three months in The Netherlands and in Belgium, so theres still a huge amount of stories that have never been released here.

Adhemar released 25 titles in the Bessy series until now, the five that are up for order now (26-30) are in limited supply (1250 issues each) and numbered: (If youre interested, contact Adhemar.)

·    Het Zoete Kruid (The Sweet Herb)
·    De Verdwenen Pelswerksters (The missing fur workers)
·    De Bedreigde Karavaan (The threatened Caravan)
·    De Gebroken Lans (Broken Spear)
·    De Uitwisseling (The Exchange)

The Vandersteen Archives

Peter also shared some light on their upcoming release of a new classics series, called the Willy Vandersteen Archives, of which the first titles are scheduled for September/October this year. This series will hold all the stories Willy Vandersteen created before he ran the studio, so all titles are done by the master himself, story and artwork! The stories were published in the 1940s in several magazines, the new hard cover books will have the original colors from back then. Check out an exclusive preview of the first two covers beneath. The first five titles will be:

·      Het Rode Masker (The Red Mask)
·     Het Zwarte Luipaard (The Black Leopard)
·     De Blauwe Kreeft (The Blue Lobster)
·     Ridder Gloriant (Knight Gloriant)
·     De Heldentocht der Bataven (March of the Batavi) 

Peter Janda is an expert in the field of comic books and vice president of the Chambre Belge des Experts en Bandes Dessinées (The official Belgium Chambre of Experts on comic books) and is related to the  Belgium Comicbook centre, the museum in Brussels.

Heres the artwork to issue no. 18 from October 1966. It featured the story Sleep no more, Sir Thomas and a chapter of Captain Venture titled Trapped, both drawn by Dan Spiegle.

Hey guys, just a quick update right before Xmas. Pixologic has just released a great new update for Zbrush, introducing some attractive new features and much needed improvements. Most important are of course the introduction of the Autosave feature and a new, see-through option for the GUI, while the Posterize feature lets you easily create great looking cell shaded renders, mimicking traditional 2D artwork. A demo video is still in the works, so check out all the info below or go here.  Have a great Christmas everybody!

Polish by Features - A new set of Polish sliders has been added in the Tool >> Deformation sub-palette to improve your surface and make them cleaner, especially for hard surface models and product design objects. It includes Polish by Features, but also Polish by PolyGroups and Polish by Crisp Edges. DynaMesh functionality has been greatly enhanced and can now retain more of your shape in a lower polygon count than ever before, thanks to the new Polish by Features volume preservation characteristic.

Curves by Features - Creates curves based on the models PolyGroups, creased edges or its outline. These curves can then be used with any of the curve-based sculpting brushes.

Panel Loops - Based on PolyGroups, this feature will transform the selected model into individual panels with thickness. Or it can extrude those panels from the surface with clean borders and bevels, perfect for hard-edge sculpting.

Delete Loops - Allows you to remove unnecessary edge loops. At higher settings it can also drastically change the shape of your model.

Align Loops - An alternative to the Delete Loops feature, this produces the same visual effect but doesnt change the models topology.

Dynamic Brush Size - Makes it possible for the brush size to dynamically change as the model moves closer or further away from the camera. This becomes extremely helpful when sculpting items such as bolts, alpha pattern, scales, etc. No matter the distance the model is from the camera the bolt, alpha pattern and scales will remain the same size due to the brush dynamically changing.

Above: Yes, rendering great looking comics with a 3D modeling package is indeed very possible! Check out the interview with Olivier Thill and Benjamin Alcover here to know how they created their graphic novel using Zbrush.

PolyGroup Enhancements - Several functions have been added relating to ZBrushs PolyGroup options. You can now group by normals, merge stray groups (useful when groups have been auto-assigned), crease or uncrease by PolyGroup and also a Smart Polish By Feature function to improve your mesh shape without losing volume.

Posterize - Posterization takes a smooth gradient and converts it to fewer steps with abrupt changes between them; a staircase kind of effect. With additions made to the profile curves, Material Mixer, BPR Filters and a new 3D Posterize feature, you can now easily create a cell shaded render.

See-Through Mode - Makes the entire interface transparent so that you can see open windows behind ZBrush. As an example, you can use your browser to find a reference image and sculpt against it without even needing to import it into ZBrush!

Auto Save - Auto Save uses the same mechanism as QuickSave and periodically auto-save your work in the QuickSave folder. It will also auto-save when ZBrush is idle, such as if youre away from your computer or switch to another application without first closing ZBrush.