As a person who follows Black Lagoon creator and artist, Rei Hiroe, on Twitter. I always hope for the latest news that Black Lagoon will be making it's return. While he is a frequent tweeter, there has been no news on the manga front in some time. As an artist, what I did see him tweet about recently bowled me over. I'm sure you have gone to book stores and seen some of those "manga artist kits" that have a lot of the tools needed to practice, and said kits often have a wooden doll that can hold a pose. These are designed to help an artist work out how a pose should be seen for the body from any angle. Well, the collective companies of Celsys, SoftEther, and ViVienne have seemed to put forth the effort to improve on the simplicity of this art tool and bring it into the new century. They call it the "QUMA".
From watching the video that was posted by the celsysCLIPLab's own Youtube account. The QUMA is a completely articulate model that can be put into an impressive number of poses. Sensors in the body then transmit this information to a computer software that then translates that into a pose in a 3D art program. From here an artist could take the pose and translate it directly to an illustration. The software even seems to give information on shading, light, and shadow. While this appears to be a wireless model (in that I don't see any wires coming from the model to a computer). It's most likely just video manipulation. Other reports that I've read have mentioned a USB connector, and this makes it so there are no need for drivers or external power. The only question I have involves the computer end. We see this anime girl in the 3D space, but how is she designed? My hypothesis is that the software has it's own tools for template and design that is then manipulated by the QUMA. There is yet to be a release date or price for this device.
Ultimately, I think they have made a really cool tool for artists who are just starting or even seasoned professionals. Forget listening to me. You have to check this thing out. Watch the video!
What do you think about this new little tool?
-Kristoffer Remmell (FoxxFireArt) is a freelance graphic artist, writer, and over all mystery geek.- Follow for news updates: @ animevice / @ FoxxFireArt
That is a cool idea, and looks like it has some promising potential for the manga artist that is looking for help in bettering their skills.
Very cool. Maybe this could be implemented in some sort of video? instead of people having to go through and moving it virtually, they could use this model. Sort of like stop motion movies.
Sounds like a cool idea.... BUT... You have to use their 3-D models and if you want your own characters repersented you either have pay someone to model them or model them yourself. And to model something in a 3-D suite, you have to draw it in multiple prespectives (top, bottom, sides, etc.) which defeats the purpose of this tool. Its like a snake ending its own tail, the more you use it the more you have to draw to use it...
@core1065:
If it's their tool it would make sense you would need to use their software.
Not if it's being used as a professional tool, as well. It could speed up production time. You pose your character, pick your angle, screencap it, then use a tablet to draw your character. Much in the same way the series Negima! uses 3D models for many of it's environments and backgrounds.
If it helps some people, great.
I always found when I brought in 3d imaging tools into my 2d work. It just slowed down the process for me.
technically this could help those who's human anatomy/proportion in drawing are off
but I doubt if QUMA would actually sell well
since free stuffs like 3d pose studio are out there for some time already
Wow thats neat. I had a difrent way of doing some tings like this with a mod but this would be alot better.So miss drawing . Hope to get back into it one day.So many programs i want to get so little money sigh.
This is a very neat little tool, I have a feeling though that it would really only be a help to those that are just beginning to be able to understand how the body would bend and move to create more fluid drawings. It could be useful for more advanced illustrators, etc. as well, but it could also be just as quick to draw it out by that point.