You’ve heard about graphic novels and just plain old novels. But there is something else around that is different. There’s no market for this as far as I know. But a number of 3D enthusiasts use Daz 3D to create graphic stories. These are stories where the narrative takes a profoundly second place to the art.

Graphic novels are story-driven. The art illustrates the story. Comic books have a strong narrative, though they are more graphic-centric.

The world of 3D art stories is different. The graphic tells the story and you don’t need words. The words are there to color the story, so to speak, to add context.

The stories are seriously episodic. The narrative flow between graphics is frequently missing. So the sense one has is that you’ve peeked in on the lives of the characters for a brief moment before the window shuts again. Then you see more with the next graphic but you don’t know what happened in between.

I love these! Here’s one of my favorite artists doing these: Thomas Slofkosky (nicknamed Junk on the Daz site). This is a current SF story he’s doing called Child of the Stars: https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/7873076/

And here is his Space Crimes series, which I also love. https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/#galleries/2969466

Click each of the graphics to see the story text next to it (and to get a bigger version of the graphic).

As far as I know there is no market for these, so this is being done out of love and a passion for story and art. It’s not even easy to find them on the site. They’re just a bit of extra goodness when you land on one. They’re unearned joy. They’re play.

So I’ve decided to dip my toe in. I’m doing art in Daz anyway, might as well add some words and a bit of a narrative flow to the graphics. I’ve done my first graphic with descriptive narrative. You can see it at this link. Click the graphic to get a bigger picture. You’ll find the narrative along the side.

I have a theory that these will be stronger if it is strongly voiced. The picture already sets the scene so no matter how lyrical my descriptions are, they won’t matter. But voice? That’s entirely a different proposition. I’m anxious to find out how this works out and to have the opportunity to improve my voice skills.

Of course, it’s not truly a story until there is more than one image with these characters. So I’ll be working on that as well. Once I have more in that sequence I’ll post a link here. Meanwhile, this is just for play. Since I have many more serious things to do, and because each of these pieces of art takes a few days or more, I will be slow getting this updated.

I hope you are also finding things to do that are just for fun. Be well, friends!