[00:02] mean the models. See, I wrote the lore for my V-tuber 5 years ago, but I was never able to make it more than just a text document. I simply couldn't afford to make it a full-blown lore video like some other big V-tubers. So, eventually,
[00:14] forgotten. That is until now, because I found a way to bring it to life for free. But, not as a lore video, but rather a web toon like Solo Leveling. And the best part? I
[00:28] didn't even have to draw a thing. Let's get it. This is Sumi by Storyboarding, a to make creating web toons or manual-like comics easy for even a clueless noob like me. They are also the kind sponsors of today's video. How it
[00:43] works is simple. You can make comics using 3D VRoid models in 3D environments. It's quick, easy, and requires zero drawing ability. It's currently launched as a beta with plenty of active users who are already creating
[00:56] all sorts of content like short stories and memes. Also, side note, it's really cool to see how active the devs are in improving the app. Like, a bunch of new things were actually added soon after this video was recorded. But, whilst you
[01:08] can use the app to make basically anything you want, I wanted to turn this interesting, and because I'm a little crazy, I decided to challenge myself to create this web toon in just 10 hours. For comparison, it takes professionals
[01:22] 50 hours to make a single episode, and that's with assistance. HOW? I DON'T KNOW. SO, TO MAKE THIS IMPOSSIBLE task possible, I needed a solid plan. We'll split up the 10 hours into four steps. Step one is the first 2 hours, and it
[01:37] Step one is the first 2 hours, and it involves learning, and lots of it. Since I have zero experience with basically everything, I'll spend hours one and two learning how to use Sumi, and studying how to make a good web toon, which also
[01:50] means studying how to write, which I am notoriously terrible at. Next is step two, which are [music] hours two to four. It will involve asset creation and rewriting my lore. But, Zekos, you already have perfectly good lore. And
[02:05] >> [laughter] >> but I can't turn it into a web toon with how it is right now. I wrote this thing 5 years ago with even less knowledge than I have currently. It's definitely due for an update. But, once that's
[02:18] done, we can move on to step three, which is making the web toon itself in Sumi. This will take up the vast majority of the time limit with five of the 10 hours. Lastly, I've decided to make step four a buffer zone, where an
[02:31] hour will be dedicated to accounting for issues I run into. This can also be used as part of step three if extra time is necessary. We have one goal to reach, and that is by the end of the challenge, I must have at least one complete
[02:46] episode to upload to Sumi. And to make sure I'm on schedule, I'll be tracking my time, which you'll see on the corner of my screen. We have the app, we have the plan, and we have a goal. We're almost ready. The final thing left to do
[02:58] is for you to hit that subscribe button, because we are aiming for 100,000 promised my community that I'd be hosting my very first IRL stream wearing a maid outfit if we actually hit it. So, if that sounds good to you, you know
[03:13] what to do. Now, let's get into it. Step one, learning. I decided to learn how Sumi works first before learning how to make a web toon. It's much easier to the tools you're given. I created my first file, which will be my training
[03:26] grounds where I will learn everything I need to know on exactly how to use this getting used to, but because I'm a gamer, I >> a lot of it felt familiar. So, W A S D to move around, R to move your camera
[03:40] up, and F to move it down. You can hold left click to pan the camera, and my personal favorite, square brackets to change your FOV. If you've ever done any kind of photography, this is basically equivalent to changing your lens.
[03:53] straightforward, but learning the app itself was a little bit harder. The UI was completely new to me, so I had to figure out how to navigate. Thankfully, Sumi has tutorials to get people started. They teach you basically
[04:06] dropping your character to setting up a scene, and of course, making the comic. So, two quick videos, 1 hour of learning, and a few bugs later, I've more or less gotten the hang of navigating the app. I was confident
[04:21] enough to move on to the next part, which was learning how to make the web toon. But, I didn't want to just learn it. I wanted to learn how to make it good. So, like most things, I went to YouTube for advice. I spent the next
[04:33] hour watching videos and learning everything I could. Here's a few that you, too. Number one, how you space panels determines the flow of the story. Shorter distances indicate events that happen in quick succession, whereas
[04:46] larger distances indicate a longer passage of time. Number two, avoid clustering too many panels and dialogues, as this will overwhelm the reader. A good rule of thumb is to keep it to two panels per page. And for web
[04:58] toons, you can think of a page as the amount you can fit on a screen. So, two panels in one screen is pretty good. Number three, you might have heard this one before, but show, don't tell. Comics are a visual medium, so let the art do
[05:11] dialogues, you should make use of subtext. Don't spell it out for them. Instead, allow them the opportunity to understand things through context. And lastly, number four, make use of photography and cinematography
[05:25] techniques, as this will help you with better composition and visual storytelling. Look out for things like the rule of thirds, lens choice, and the 180° rule, for example. I'll be compiling all the videos that I've
[05:37] learned in a playlist below for you to check out after this video. I'm not going to lie, only having an hour to learn all of this from scratch low-key felt like I was cramming for an exam. But, with the 2 hours up, it was time
[05:49] for step two, setup. This step was all about taking what we've learned and using that to set up the foundation of the entire comic. Studying how to write a web toon let me improve the lore I wrote 5 years ago, and to also rewrite
[06:02] it to fit the web toon style of comics. Understanding how Sumi works allowed me to know exactly what assets I need to make this whole thing happen. So, with that said, let's boot up part one of this process and rewrite the lore.
[06:15] Whilst the original was okay, you could definitely see how inexperienced I was. There was little in the way of substance and storytelling. So, I ended up taking the core concepts and fleshed them out using everything I learned in step one.
[06:28] As I finished my three acts, I wrote down a list of all the assets I would need to use in Sumi. But, as I was doing so, I started to realize two really big glaring issues. See, the ideal workflow would have been as follows, write the
[06:43] beats of your story, script out your dialogue, and download or reuse some existing assets. But, as I was writing my beats, I realized that I didn't have enough time to write the script. It's time to stop. Nor would I be able to
[06:57] translate the new story I've written that has a bunch more detail into a web that has a bunch more detail into a web toon in just 6 hours. This was big issue number one. So, I had to rethink my plan on the fly and trim as much as I could,
[07:11] leaving only the most important part. I also scrapped the dialogue script entirely, as there was simply no time for it. I would just have to wing it when the time comes. But, that was only issue number one. Issue number two were
[07:23] the assets. Whilst Sumi has plenty of assets to work with, a lot of it was focused on the modern aesthetic, which is great, but my story didn't take place in today's time, but rather a few hundred years prior. Kind of close to
[07:38] the medieval era. But, Zekos, Sumi has literally medieval assets right there. And yes, I do see it, but the objects aren't the issue. It was the characters. None of them fit the bill of what I was looking for, and to make matters worse,
[07:53] Sumi also lacked the one thing that was core to the story, my origin point and the very thing that defined my character, The story starts out with birds, and my whole lore revolves around me having
[08:08] been a bird. So, this was a really big deal. To fix the first part of issue number two, I basically scrapped most of the supporting cast and just dealt with having different era clothing on more important characters. I'm sure they had
[08:20] fedoras and beanie sweaters with collared shirts in the 1600s, right? Right? Everyone else was basically given the early Ruby treatment, where they you know the reference, then you're a real one. But, this didn't solve the
[08:35] second part of the issue, birds. My initial plan was to download a free 3D asset from somewhere like Sketchfab, and then pose it in another 3D program. It worked to an extent. I was able to find a 3D
[08:49] expected, by the way, but problems started happening when I dropped it into started happening when I dropped it into Sumi. For some reason, I just couldn't move it. The app literally would not allow me to move the 3D model, no matter
[09:03] other models to troubleshoot the issue, but nothing I tried worked, and an hour and a half was wasted just like that. It was discouraging and frustrating, to say the least, but the app was still so new,
[09:17] so some bugs were bound to show up. Nevertheless, the clock was still ticking, and I had no time to waste. I was frustrated, but I needed to lock back in. So, I decided to come back to the issue later and focus on the things
[09:30] that I could actually do right now. And that was making sure I had the essential assets from the list I made earlier ready to use in Sumi. So, I went back to VRoid, created the remaining assets, and exported all 10 of them. But, as luck
[09:44] would have it, disaster strikes again. VRoid would struggle exporting my models. Thankfully, though, I figured it out without wasting too much time, and I was able to bring all the key models into Sumi. Hey, hey, yo, Zekoz, what are
[09:58] you doing? Just exporting and importing them alone took over 40 minutes total. But, hey, the gang was all here and ready to go. It was finally time to make the Webtoon comic. Step three, making the Webtoon.
[10:14] This part of the plan was supposed to happen 4 hours in to give me 5 hours to work with. But, as you already have bare witness to all the trials and tribulations, I ended up starting this part of the plan 7 and 1/2 hours in.
[10:29] Meaning, instead of 5 hours, I only had 1 and 1/2 hours to work with. Good lord! More than half of my time was Thanos' snapped just like that
[10:41] before I could even start the Webtoon. At the start of the challenge, I was really excited and ready to take it all on, even confident in my ability to learn and adapt quickly. But, after all of the issues, frustrations, and the
[10:55] fact that I've been at this for almost 8 hours in the exact same day, but barely got anywhere, I was getting tilted and [music] doubt started to creep in. I honestly didn't know if I could do it
[11:10] anymore. All that confidence and pumped up energy just washed away. up energy just washed away. Maybe this wasn't meant to be. But, then I remembered all the prep that went into this
[11:25] project, all the things I've learned during it, and all the hell that I had to go through to get even to this point in the challenge. Was I really going to look at all of that and throw it away just because I ran into a few hurdles
[11:40] and got a bit discouraged? Hell no! I hadn't even started yet. So, what if I lost like 70% of my time? That's fine. I say, "Bring it on. Challenge accepted." First things first, remember that bird issue we had earlier? I couldn't use a
[11:55] part out of the story. So, I had to be resourceful. I figured they'd be flying in the sky, so the sun would turn them from below. So, I took advantage of that and plugged in this PNG, which worked
[12:09] entire sequence where my character gets struck by lightning in a storm and falls into the water, I just implied it through darkness, sound effects, and a single lightning strike. It ended up being a decent compromise that
[12:23] accidentally leveraged subtext. You know that thing we mentioned earlier? I even added some custom effects to get the exact feel I wanted. See, when I read through my study notes, I realized that Webtoons like to fade to black to
[12:37] symbolize a change in atmosphere, lighting, or a passage of time. So, I tried to mimic that. Unfortunately, Sumugi didn't have a transparent gradient to work with. So, I had to make my own in Photoshop and then port it
[12:50] over. But, honestly, it was really easy and it worked pretty damn well. Boom! Problem solved. Now we get to have some fun in 3D. But, in order to have fun in 3D, we need a 3D scene to play in first.
[13:05] So, I took whatever was available in Sumugi and created a small shoreline. Then I placed all my characters, posed them, added some little expressions, and took my pictures, creating my first ever Webtoon panels using 3D assets. Pretty
[13:19] same process in addition to adding speech bubbles and special effects for each panel. I was flying through these and even optimized the things that took the longest time, like posing. I did this by selecting pre-made poses in
[13:33] Sumugi and then adjusting them according to my needs. I spewed out panel after >> [laughter] >> But, the sheer speed I was going at made me realize something. If I were to draw all of this myself, color and all, I
[13:47] would not be able to get past even the first panel at this point in time. So, I'm really thanking my lucky stars for how easy Sumugi is to operate, despite its bugs and glitches as an new app. Like this one here, for example, where
[14:02] for some reason my entire comic was moved all the way down to Australia. back up where it's supposed to be, but then it moved down again later. So, I decided to just leave it and fix it later at the end.
[14:16] And speaking of which, the end was getting uncomfortably close. And what makes matters worse, I took a look at where I was in the story and was shocked to find out that I only made it to the start of Act Two. There wasn't even
[14:29] enough in the comic right now to call it an episode, let alone an entire story. But, I knew I just had to power through. I got the hang of the app. I've already made effects. I was going super speed and was going to be smooth sailing from
[14:43] and was going to be smooth sailing from now on. I just had to I was too late. If I uploaded this now, it would just
[14:55] look abrupt and unfinished. I did everything I could. I cut corners, optimized my workflow, and even used my emergency buffer. But, in the end, I still failed.
[15:14] created so far, a growing itch started to develop in the back of my head that I just couldn't get rid of. What if you had more time? What had the assets. What if it wasn't buggy? What if you just threw away the clock?
[15:28] What if you just finished it? Curiosity was my gluttony. I knew I couldn't just leave it there. If we look at the end goal that I set at the start, it wasn't to finish an entire Webtoon in 10 hours. It was just to have
[15:42] a complete episode to upload. So, I said, "Screw it." Gave myself back the 3 and 1/2 hours that I lost due to silly, time-consuming issues, and went along with it. It wasn't about a time challenge anymore.
[15:55] I just wanted to finish what I started. To see things through. See, life is like a marathon. There are times when you're ahead and times when you're behind. Now, quit, or you can choose to be discouraged and finish the race anyway.
[16:10] I wanted to finish the race for this challenge, even if it meant coming in dead last. I didn't know anything going into this, but by finishing it, I was able to prove to myself that despite the setbacks,
[16:22] I could still do it. And on top of that, I've also learned way more than I could have thought of, and I've grown a newly found appreciation for the people who create these amazing worlds on the daily. And right at the very end, may
[16:34] not be a complete story, but it is a complete episode. Whether you want to make long Webtoon episodes like me or simply want to share short stories or, heck, even memes, you can do so right now by clicking the
[16:47] first link in the description to try out Sumugi. Make sure you sign up using code Zekoz. And if you have any feedback, ideas, or just want to showcase your own creations, you can join their official Discord as well. Thank you again,
[16:59] Sumugi, for sponsoring this fun project and video. If you want to see me take on another challenge, give this next video a watch. Here, I tried to make a 3D model for the first time using VRoid in just 1 day. Ciao.