I've decided to return to the "Curse of Loki" series, since it seems to be much more popular than my one-offs have been. For series seven, I'm throwing a new technique and a new program into the mix. Inspired by the movie "Appleseed" and many other manga movies, I'm going to try and create 3D cell-shaded backgrounds, most likely with Maya or 3DMax, and insert hand drawn figures.

This makes background continuity a bit easier, though the photoshop treatments will have to be even more meticulous. I probably wouldn't use this method for a one-off. It feels too much like a cop-out, but for any kind of continuous series It ought to look great, and save a little time.

Unfortunately this means I won't be doing much other than grinding my way through the sizable (I'm told) learning curve for using maya, and deciding how many of Maya's features do I want to use. Lighting is a particularly sticky issue. Maya has loads of lighting effects that will have to mesh with the effects on the hand drawings. I've thought of using poser, but I'm told you have to import models into poser, you can't create them yourself. Since I've never seen a Poser background object I liked, this simply won't do.