I am working with a new feature that is included in Clip Studio Paint Version 2 which was recently released. They now offer you the ability to create custom 3D head-shapes for your characters. There are a variety of basic starter head-shapes from a standard human head to various cartoon head shapes from which to start your character’s head from.
I am still getting into the details, but for my first attempts this turned out fairly decent. I didn’t delve too deep into expressions as I wanted to get the basic shapes configured. I’ve come close for each of my current characters and so far I’m really happy with the results. (See the image viewer below) This will really come in handy when I want to do various camera views from low/high angles to side shots or even rear angles.
What would be really nice is if there was a way to model hair styles, but this is as about as far as I want to get into fussing with 3D models. The only drawback that I’ve found so far is that there seems to be no way to connect these head models to a matching body shape. Basically the software wants you to line everything up with the 3D tools then use the camera to move around the figure. If you wanted to experiment with a different pose, you’d have to move the body and head separately. That’s a pain in the butt, but not a deal killer.
I’m sure they’ll work that feature out here sooner than later. For now though, this will be a big help in keeping my characters on model page to page.
