Incorporating 3D in a 2D Comic.

This last week started off lousy with a surprise discovery of a ground nest of wasps in our front yard and a flat tire almost a year after my last one. Apparently, wasps don't take very well to a lawn mower over their heads. Surprisingly, I got away with only a few stings. And thankfully, the rest of the week has progressed in a more positive manner.

Anywho, I wanted to talk about a trend that I've seen increasing in the last year or so, at least with digital artists: incorporating 3D into 2D pictures. A few years ago, Matt Kohr posted a series on how to use Google Sketchup to make the framework for a complex background. As a series based around concept art in general, this term is apparently nothing relatively new - fast and loose, sampling textures and shapes in a piece to get a concept down fully and quickly is a practice not unheard of. What surprised me, however, was after I decided to mix 3D backgrounds into my comic projects that this is a practice slowly spreading in comics too.

My first comic project that I discussed last week. 

Environments are harder when you're starting out. I'll admit, the most I'd ever done with digital backgrounds involved very little in the way of straight lines beforehand. So it seemed like when doing an urban-based story, throwing an environment together in Blender with the Freestyle plugin seemed like a great idea. I wasn't alone, however; people have been using Sketchup to start backgrounds and expand on them for at least a year at this point. 

The only downside of creating your own backgrounds in 3D is it does tend to take much longer than in 2D because you're rendering everything of importance. The one upside is that once you have the piece done, you can use it and re-use it again and again if more than one scene is based out of that area.

Once I get the main character's store and apartment done, I'm set for several chapters' worth of stuff. 

What are tips and tricks you use when dealing with environments?