An Interview with James Roden of Requiem
Comic title: Requiem
Comic URL: http://requiem.spiderforest.com
Creator: James Roden
Genre: Sci/Fi Fantasy
1) What is your comic about?
Requiem is a sci/fi, end of the world story that delves heavily into archeology, fringe science, and the disintegration of existence along the way 
2) How did you get started making webcomics?
I started Requiem back in June 2004, primarily as a way to get this idea I had iin my head for almost 30 years out. That idea is the comic you’re reading.
3) Five years from now, what do you see your comic becoming? Will it be over? Will it have grown larger?
I highly doubt that Requiem (and it’s followup) will be done by then. One of the things I used to say about Requiem was that it was “The End of the World, and What Comes After.” I’m still getting to the after part 
4) What is your favorite comic page?
Right now it’s http://requiem.spiderforest.com/?p=2513
No postwork, no photoshopping. Everything, even the snow was 3d rendered. And it looks great. And I love the character interplay too
5) Is there a storyline you’re really looking forward to? What is it about? Give us a spoiler warning if necessary!
The one right now actually. There has been a large scale conspiracy that has been slowly worked into the storyline involving the family business of one of the main characters, and a seperatist political group…right now things are just about to touch off.
6) Can you give us a short explanation on how you make your pages? If you have a tutorial or anything, please link it.
The closest thing I ever did for a tutorial/explanation was made for a forum thread here, and it pretty much sums things up:
“The work process for Requiem is kind of big….
Poser 6 first. Sets and scenes are either built from stuff I model special for the occasion, or from things that I have put together previously. People are introduced into the scene at this stage in the process, and are posed and expressions and such are put on to each one by altering specific parameters that control every part of the model. Everybody gets clothed as well, and other scene objects that these people are interacting with are put in. Then the base file is saved.
From there, the file is imported into Carrara and scene lighting is set, Any effects and scene elements that are still needed are added to the Carrara file and then the first panel is rendered based off of the internal camera within Carrara. Then the scene that I have put together in Carrara is saved and closed.
For additional panels, Poser is openend up again, and people are reposed and such and things are saved. Now when I open up Carrara again for the next panel, it is referring to the previously imported Poser file (that I just altered and saved) and the characters are automatically reposed and re-expressioned. I then render the next panel and so on and so forth.
Once I have enough panels for a comic, the thing gets assembled in Fireworks and put together as a 300DPI comic file. And from there, once miscellaneous postwork and polishing is complete and dialog is added, it gets downsampled to a 600×900 72dpi comic page and then uplaoded to the site.
And to give you an idea of how things look in process, I have a Carrara screen capture in midstep…and the panel that is rendered off of it
But how does it become a picture?
Within each model there are textures (jpeg and png) that are set up as templates and then are skinned over the areas that they represent on each model. Underneath it all, everything is just a wireframe that represents topographical and coordinate data, and the textures are laid out in particular assigned areas over that to make it look like something.
For one example….Poser scene files are known by the extension PZ3. If you open one in notepad, you are going to discover a huge amount of x,y,z coordinates that literally dictate every section of the model (or person) you’ve built.
Within each of these 3d programs there is a renderer that takes all of these templates and models, and any atmospheric settings (like whether the sun is up or down, or clouds in the sky) and computes them all, and generates an images based off of all of that data. I do most of my stuff in Carrara mainly because of how fast it is, and the fact that the results look great. Carrara’s renderer is internal (built into the program), but others are external and can be used in conjunction with other programs.”
7) Be your own critic! When it comes to your comic, what are you looking to improve upon?
I keep trying to push the envelope on what I can accomplish in a 3d setting. I figured out how to make snow and rain work and look good…right now, I’m looking at fire a lot. And trying to figure out how to do it without Photoshop painting it in.
8 )What tip would I give you to help you do a better 3d comic?
Sit down and watch the directors cut of Robert Rodriguez’s El Mariachi Trilogy. Listen to the directors commentary, and you’ll hear him talk a hell of a lot about how scense are composed, lit and shot. El Mariachi is the most useful one for this kind of thing, I think. I learned a hell of a lot about how to make a few buildings look like a whole city from this guy (just by changing some camera angles), not to mention some invaluable information about composition.