Webcomic: Day 1

 Ha ha! I warned you this was going to be terrible, and it does not disappoint!

Pretend the captions are actually on the image somewhere, and that everything is framed correctly. It took me so long to get any images at all that I didn't have time to set up the rest. Also, yes, I realize you can't actually see anything. I guess I'll figure that out tomorrow.

(Narration: I'm Char, an animal mage employed by Blackthorn Protection Agency. I'm damned good at protecting my clients. Also, damned tired — I haven't had a day off in weeks. So naturally... <sound of ringing phone>)

Voice on phone: Char, I need your help.

Char: Not now, Gary. I've been watching that kid for three weeks. The next time he pulls my tail, I'm going to bite him, and then what —

Voice on phone: Not that. This is for a friend. A rune mage.

 

Voice on the phone: Someone's trying to kill him.

Things I learned today

1. DAZ Studio is supposed to be able to store files anywhere, but that may not be true. By default, it installs and stores everything on the iCloud drive. Then, of course, I ran out of storage space. And since I already pay for Dropbox, I didn't want to pay to increase my iCloud space. So I told it to store things elsewhere and things went wonky.
   I uninstalled and reinstalled a few times. It's currently still using the Dropbox drive, but it took a really long time to install some package that should have been quick, so I may just need to reinstall with the standard location.
   
   
2. My computer is great for what I normally use it for (writing, web surfing, reading email, GIMP), but rendering is really taxing it. (For example, it's only 79% through the first render at 21 minutes.)
   
   Note to self: I need to stop streaming the kitten cam before rendering. Also, I can probably cut down on the work it's doing if I'm okay with the output not being as fine (which I am), but I'll have to figure out what settings to tweak.
   
   After the first render took 90 minutes, I dropped the pixel size from 700x900 to 350x455 and decreased some other random numbers. After that it only took a few minutes to get a terrible image similar to the first terrible image.
   
   
3. I think I'm supposed to have some backdrop on the other side of the window in the scene. Oh well. Pretend there are curtains instead of an infinite void. But since I haven't figured out the lighting, you can't see it anyhow.
   
   
4. You have no idea how long it took me to bend her elbow so I could pretend she was holding a phone. I think her hand is currently occupying the space in the middle of her head, but that fell into the "close enough" rule. Learning curve!
   
   
5. I think I need to figure out what I'm doing that's making everything so washed out tomorrow. Lighting? Something else? Probably the lighting.

The good news is that I've left significant room for improvement.