More pages from the Sketchbook...

A few more doodles from the course of the week...Some colored stuff will get added later.

Studies

Two studies done from still-life objects in photoshop. I've been thinking lately about ways to improve my skills, and what better way than to go back to basics? So here's some relatively simple shapes.

Gestures and Dragons...

Like any other artist, gestures are an important exercise I keep up with. It's a great way to warm-up and get your mind into the right mode of thought, and it helps you hone your ability to not make your drawings suck or be as stiff as board planks.

Even though doing gestures of everyday events and people (parades, malls, etc.) are a vital thing, for warm-up purposes it doesn't quite work out. There's not many options, to be frank, that can let you replicate the timed sessions a class or life drawing session gives you, beyond using a stopwatch and some self-control.

That is, of course, until I found out about irfanview. I knew about it for sometime, but I didn't know it had a pretty damn extensive slideshow feature. This, coupled with the terrific photos from Character Designs, makes for an great way to get into a warm-up routine (To me, at least, it beats posemaniacs out of the water.)

So to tie this all into some new art to post, here are some gesture sketches I did using this set-up, as well as a little dragon sketch I did the other day (if for no other fact than "How to Train Your Dragon" is still fresh in my mind.)

Sea Monster Studies

Some doodles out of the old sketchbook of a sea monster...the face was a blend of these two fish I saw on Discovery Channel's "Life" last Sunday...

Post-Megacon!

Geez, at the rate I'm posting here I'm in the running for longest time between updates...

Well then! Time for some art!
Chris and I last week were at Megacon last weekend (what with it being not more than 30 minutes away from me,) and we had a great deal of fun! It's not as artist friendly as some other conventions (Read: Heroes con,) but like any other one it always ends up being entertaining in one way or another. We had issue 01 of Border Crossings printed and on sale there, and we were able to sell quite a few copies (enough to cover parking, at any rate, so yay!)

There's gonna be some brand-spanking new art up here soon, and to kick it off, here's a warm-up doodle I did one evening before sitting down to ink. It's some sort of lizard fellow, near as I can tell.

Landscape WIPS

Wow, you go and move and next thing you know there's a month between posts. Apologies for that.


Here are some things that I started randomly making a few afternoons. They more or less started out as some blobs of color without any direction, then as more marks were made I started to refine them up to the point where I could put down some lines to differentiate some stuff. The fun part was that these were all made on an old intuos tablet, which was refreshing after being used to drawing on the cintiq for quite some time.

The purplish/blue one with the big tree balls (I don't really know how else to describe them,) has been taken one step further at the moment, with tighter linework put down ontop of the rough stuff. The ultimate goal will be to have three finished works on my hard drive, so we'll see where they end up!

A new Year...

Well! It's been a looong time since my last post. This year, the holidays were extremely busy for me, and this has been about the first time in a long while where I felt like I can at least take a minute to breath and catch some of you wandering readers up to date. I think I can be safe to promise that I don't intend to have this long of a lapse again for a long, long while.

Border Crossings, for those of you who don't read it regularly, has kicked into Issue 02 last fall, and has been steadily updating. Not every page has been a winner in my eyes, but overall I think it's shaping up to be a stronger issue than the last one.

Here's one of a few sketches I did of Venetia as prep work for the second issue. There's about a two week gap in the timeline between the events of the first issue and the second, so I felt that by that point Venetia would have tried to get herself into comfier clothing. She still retains part of her wetsuit, but you can also see that she's started to adopt the Island's culture. By the time I started drawing her in the comic, she acquired some sort of dreadlock hairstyle, capped with metal bits.


Here's some other random sketches as well, of various things that had just popped into my head over time.

A quick little BC illo...

As Chris and I move to update the site and churn out issue 02, we still made plans to make sure our weekly content update continued. This little illustration of an Annelid is one of such updates that we've done when I was unable to update a page (between issues, or previously, when I was moving. Never for anything else!)

I wanted to talk about this piece because it's an example of happy accidents. Originally, it had a lightsource from above illuminating the creature. It was alright, but it felt like the drawing wasn't working to the best of abilities. So I took it out of Painter, moved it into Photoshop, and began playing with some layer modes. After some weird result of difference and/or exclusion, the light source became inversed, giving the drawing a much needed boost.

If you're ever stuck on a piece, (especially a digital one,) sometimes all you need is to change something dramatically on it, whether it be the color scheme, the lighting, etc. Often, happy accidents emerge which push you past the block, and gets you moving again.

And so it begins...

Today, I sit down and begin thumbnailing the pages for Issue 02 of Border Crossings. This isn't the first itme I read through the script though. I received it a few weeks ago from Chris, and gave it a quick read to get an idea of the story and what I might have to draw. Without spoiling much, there's a lot of great stuff in it, and I think this issue will be much better than our first one (which I'm still proud of.) I've taken a lot of guesswork out of my process over the course of the first issue, so I expect things to go smoothly this time around.

When you read through a script, whether it be for comic books, or in preparation for storyboards, the more times you read through it, the better off you'll be. The biggest benefit you can have is it'll cut down on continuity errors throughout the story. I like to spend about a day reading and re-reading through the script, taking breaks occasionally to read the news or other articles online, look up some reference depending on what the script may call, and of course, draw. I'll start thumbnailing about halfway through the day, and revise it one or two times before I start doing my roughs.

The next couple of posts will be Border Crossings-centric, with some sketches and other goodies from the next issue. Stay tuned!

Toadbat...DONE!

Here's the finished Toadbat piece. Towards the end of it I began to try different ideas to make it stronger, but at some point I realized I was just pushing pixels together, so I decided it was high time to call it done. In other news, Border Crossings is towards the end of its first issue! Tomorrow will be page 21, then after that will be the last page of issue 01. Chris and I are planning to take a two-week break between issues, but it won't mean we're resting. Instead, we'll be redesigning the site to make it more friendly for first-time readers, while doing a marketing blitz for the webcomic. I'll be taking the time to also work on building up a buffer for issue 02, so I'll have a little more free time for other projects.

Paint Paint Paint...

Here's an update on the Toadbat, now with color! Right now, the color scheme is being glazed over the grey values. You'll notice that it muddies the colors a bit, but that's fine, as right now this is just to get a general idea of color and lighting. Stay tuned!


Also, here's a little warm-up I did this morning. I was reading through the illustrated edition of "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (by David Chauvel and Enrique Fernandez) and I forgot how incredible Fernandez's work is in it. So this is a sort of practice in that thick paint style of his. Not nearly as nice, but it's always good to do stuff you wouldn't normally tackle...

It's a bird, It's a plane, It's a...Toadbat?!

This is the full image from the last post, with tonal values splashed on there. It's still a work in progress, but at the moment I'm working up a solid value relationship before I start to tackle color. This was a tip I learned from watching one of J.P. Targete's videos from The Gnomon Workshop (quite possibly one of the most helpful videos I've ever seen from them.)

The actual idea for this came about from listening to one of Bobby Chiu's video streams. Somebody suggested he draw "a toad crossed with a bat," and when he decided not to take it, I thought it'd be a waste to let a weird idea like that slip away. So that's how this came about!

It's a bird...it's a plane...

It's...well...what the heck is it? It's a peek at a little illustration I'm doing...a shiny ha'penny to the one who can guess what it might be.

Painting fun...

Here's some late night screw-arounds in the painting department...

Market Square

Here's a teaser for this coming Friday's NEW page of Border Crossings. For anyone that had been following, there was a two week break as I made the move from Atlanta BACK down to Central Florida. But now we're settled in and work has returned to a steady pace.

I'm really happy with how the inks on this page turned out, and you'll get to see not only a confident, inked page, BUT a new attempt at coloring, one that's taking a cue from the lessons learned from Mark Sweeney's blog about ink limits. His little corner of the web is more than helpful: It's a damn goldmine that's free to the public. Ya can't find this stuff in books!

Mark Sweeney's Blog: Link

Silhouette Doodlin'

Here's some creature doodles that were done as warm-ups recently. Sometimes it's fun to just take a big, fat brush and see where it takes you on the page...Especially when you know you aren't trying to achieve anything beyond letting your mind wander. Done in Alias Sketchbook.

Ligan Square

Above is from the latest page of Border Crossings, which, if you follow the webcomic at all, you will get to see come Friday, when it's updated. It depicts our first view of The Last Island, where all the land-dwelling races have converged upon (either by choice or by force) as the landmasses have sunk below the ocean. If you notice, the Rhizome is sporting a funky pattern on its camo-sheath, something that was spur of the moment and that I really enjoyed compared to my previous solution for depicting the swirling, psychedelic colors of the sheath.

I wanted to talk about this panel for two reasons. One, because I'm actually quite happy with it as a separate little piece of work, and two, the inking on this is FAR different than what I've done since my process post about inking a few weeks back.

Ever since I did page 9, I've grown unhappy with using rapidographs as my inking solution. I never felt totally happy with it, and often I noticed I moved veeeeerrrryyy slowly when inking. So, since then I started an experiment of inking digitally. Remember the Frog Grazer illustration a few posts back? The reason for that piece existing is because I was testing out a new brush that was to become my standard inking tool for BC. I figured if it was a bust, no one would be the wiser, and if it worked out, hey hey, I have a new thing to practice.

I've noticed lately that I've been inking faster now, mostly because of a boost of confidence (probably because I always know that that ink I'm throwing down isn't permanent.) At some point in the future I'd like to switch over to traditional brush, but while I continue to practice with a real brush, scrawling mishapen characters with the permanence of Higgins Ink, I'll keep going along with this digital solution.

Not Dead Yet...

...Life's just been busy! I've been gearing up for a move out of the current apartment that's taking place in about a week, so between that, keeping stuff going for Border Crossings, searching for more freelance stuff to take on to earn a little more income, and some personal projects, I've been quite neglectful of all my haunts on the internet. In the meantime though, I thought I'd throw out two things for everyone to see, one as a preview and one as an in-progress shot.
This first one is a color rough done awhile back for an illustration piece I've yet to have time to tackle. As with all things I've been doing lately, it's an exercise in learning new things, and I'm actually quite tempted to do this up completely traditionally. I actually really like the composition and colors for this, and think when it's completed it'll look pretty good as an illo.


Remember this? With whatever free time I've had as of late, I've been working on this bit by bit. I had started to record the process, but quickly after finishing the grayscale stage it seemed to go by the wayside (mostly because running the software AND painter was making everything slow.) In anycase, I'm at a crossroads with this piece -- while I like the idea of it, I'm not sure if the composition (and, by extension, the POV choice) is as savvy as it can be. I think this little bit has been nipping at me the whole time through the piece, since I've restarted it from scratch a few times now, this being the fourth iteration. So I ask the folk of the internet of their opinion, whether it be a suggestion to improve it, a Yea or Nay to trash it and start anew, or otherwise.

Keep tight folks, I'll see if I can squeeze another post in before the move.

Frog Grazer

I've been playing around with making brushes in photoshop look and act a bit more like real brushes for inking purposes. I made one that I think worked pretty well, so I did a small illustration to try it out.


Later on, I decided to color it, just to bring it all the way to completion. I'm not really sure what this critter's deal is, but he's got a colorful butt.

Colors.

The next, and near final stage of making a comic page is coloring. If you do a quick search on the internet, you'll find TONS of information and ideas on how to go about it. Like most everything else in life, there's not really a wrong way to go about it. The method I use I actually learned from the DC Guide to Computer Coloring and Lettering, written by Mark Chiarello and Todd Klein. If your linework was done in ink, I'd advise to follow this method, as it seems to work pretty well.

Most tutorials I've seen out on the web tell you to take your linework, duplicate it onto another layer, then set it to multiply. This lets you color underneath the linework without disturbing any of your hard work. That's all well and good, and it has its uses, but for me, I actually prefer to use channels to separate my lineart. I work in CMYK mode for all my comic pages, since I always assume that at some point or another these pages may be in print (this is something that if you ARE actively doing a webcomic or something else you intend to publish that you should take into account.) Working in CMYK let's me do a couple of things: I can separate my lineart onto a whole different channel away from the artwork, check my colors to see if there's too much (if any) black (otherwise known as K) in them, and it cuts down on my layer use (at most, I end up using 4 or 5. Most of the time it's around 2-3.)

So, the first step in all of this is to separate shapes in the lineart in a process known as "flatting." At this time, I'm not worrying about the correct colors. I have two goals here:
1) Cover all the white of the page
2) Make sure all my colors are distinct enough from each other that I can select them with the magic wand later without any problems.

Whenever I do any color fill-ins, I always use the Pencil tool. Why? Because it's aliased, just like my lineart. Why in the heck would I work mostly aliased? Because it actually helps in keeping stuff fairly sharp when you scale down. If it was all done aliased, it can have the potential to become blurrier than you imagined.

This is what the page looks like if I were to close the document and open it back up. Notice there's no white between the colors? This ties into a later step, called "trapping."
Now comes the time where I start to lay in the actual colors that will appear when the comic gets put on the web. I lock the layer that had my selection colors (all those ugly colors we saw earlier,) and start a new layer on top of it. Then, I usually use the rectangle selection tool and throw in large expanses of color to set the main colors of each scene. The top panel's color was blue, while as you can see, the bottom panels were a purple color for the Rhizome's airlock chamber. I'm still using the pencil tool.
Here are all the base colors laid in with the pencil tool. You might notice on the top panel there's some fancy textures going on. Any sort of extra detailing that isn't just blocks of color, I'll do with a brush, since the brush will handle that sort of thing A LOT better than the pencil tool ever could. In some areas you can see I colored while thinking about shadows, but most of that work is saved for the next step.
I create two new layers, one for shadows, and one for any sort of lighting effects (like the top panel.) The shadows are mostly handled with either the Multiply or Darken mode on, but the lighting effects can vary, depending on what's needed. The top panel's light effects were mostly done with the brush in Color Dodge mode, to get that super bright effect.

I should note, during all this, and especially towards the end, you should have color theory in mind. If your light is a cool green-blue, then you can expect your shadows to actually be something like a warm red-violet. There are a ton of places to learn about this sort of thing, and it's really a subject that goes beyond just this one post.

Anyway, back to the matter at hand: I have all my coloring done, and I flatten the image. Remember when I mentioned earlier about "trapping?" Well, I need to make sure my lineart has a deep-rich black, and there will definitely be NO WHITE between the lines. So, I copy my lineart (that was on a separate channel, remember?) back onto the main page with a color of 60C/40M/40Y/100K.

Why that mix? Because straight 100 percent black isn't really black, it looks more like a dark muddy grey. That mix above actually gives a deep, rich black.

Once the lineart is copied, I delete the extra channel, and save it. Now we take it into Illustrator, letter it, then save it as JPEG to the web! Then come Friday, you have a new page of Border Crossings!

Okay, now a few end-class notes: I really recommend picking up the DC Guide to Computer Coloring and Lettering. The other DC books are alright (I feel there's probably better material elsewhere,) but the Coloring guide is a BIBLE. All these steps I glossed over are covered in pretty good detail here, and it's definitely worth your money to have it with you if you do this regularly.

Now then, here are a few links that talk more about coloring and lettering:

Mark Sweeney's Blog: I actually found this about a half a week ago, but it answers a lot of questions like, "Why shouldn't I use black in my colors," or "Is RGB and CMYK really different?" Consider it supplemental reading to your DC guide.

Balloon Tales: This site goes into MUCH greater depth on lettering than I ever could. Worth a read to learn how to do lettering properly and why(something that most people who self-publish don't really take the time or care to learn.) Seriously, you want to look amateur? Don't read this site, and use Comic Sans or (god forbid) Arial for your lettering. You want your work to actually look professional, READ THIS SITE.

Inking.

A'right, now that the pencils have been scanned, we move onto inking! I wouldn't be honest if I didn't give this disclaimer before I get into this post: Out of all the phases in my comic-making process, this is the one that is still fluctuating and changing wildly. Inking isn't my strong suite, and my method is NOT the best, or even one of the better methods out there. Now then...

I'm a little hesitant to ink over my original pencils. I have too much pressure attached to the whole thing, so to take that away I actually print out my pencils onto a separate page. If anything goes wrong, hey, no big deal, right? Just print out another, or even better, smatter the page with some white touchup and I'll be good to go.

Most of my lines are done with a Rapidograph Koh-I-Noor technical pen. I used Microns and other disposable tech pens in the past, but I don't care for them. The ink fades, and they never last long enough if you're inking more than 2-3 pages, 4 at best. I was fortunate though, that my family had a full set of Rapidographs just sitting at home for years, well before I actually went to use them (my Mom, who is the ever vigilant coupon-saver and sales watcher, probably grabbed them from Michaels at a liquidation sale or something else that had them immensely cheap.) I actually use Higgin's Drawing Ink (I think it's called Black Magic?) in my tech pens, something that has some advantages and disadvantages.

Pros:
-It's a thin enough ink that it flows through the pen without gunking it up too much
-You're able to buy the HUGE bottles of it and keep your pens topped off for months, if not years.
-It's a decent ink that you know what's in it.

Cons:
-It probably does cause more maintenance for a pen that already requires quite a bit of maintenance. I think these things have become a little more finicky since using Higgins in them, and I've noticed times where they'll vomit ink in their caps or all over the tip.
-Unless you have an eyedropper or even better, a pipette, it can become a REAL hassle to fill them.
-It doesn't nearly have the same line variance as a nib pen, or even better, a brush.
-It's a decent ink. It's not the best ink I've had (I actually prefer Bombay Ink,) so you have to take into account all the qualities that comes with a decent quality ink.

That third Con is a big thing This is another thing I wanted to mention about tech pens, that could either be a pro or con depending on how you look at it: All the pens are fixed width. Microns at least actually have some flexibility to them, albeit very small amount of flex. The way Rapidographs are designed, they can't take advantage of a felt nib for that flex. It's cold, unbending metal. The plus side is that you're inking a lot of technical things, say buildings, machinery, or vehicles, you have an unyielding line that can offer a smooth, mechanical look to them. The downside? If you ink anything else with them, you get a smooth, mechanical look that's hard to shake. Not only that, but if you want to really take advantage of inking theory such as line weights, you need to buy several of these pens. I think now is the time I should mention one of these fellas runs about $25. Yep. Just one.

To fill blacks, I've ditched using a regular brush to using a Niji waterbrush filled with Higgins ink, something that I learned from James Gurney (though he uses it for far better endeavours.) It saves time going to and from the well, and if you don't have a crappy enough brush for black fill-in or you can't fit your wide brush into the ink well, these'll do nicely, and cost about as much as a cheap brush. They have nylon fibers for the bristles instead of felt, so you'll actually be able to do some brush effects with them (go on, try it!) I ought to note that I haven't gotten a rich, even black from them yet, it comes out more as a really dark grey. It might be the paper I'm using to ink, which is some leftover Blueline paper (something that doesn't seem to suck up ink well at all.) So once I run through that and switch over to decent paper, this may not be the case anymore.

Anyway, at this stage there's two big goals: Determining my spot blacks to make compositional elements work better, and to refine my linework once again and add all the necessary details.

There are not many people in the world of comics that I think can pull off good artwork without spot blacks (Cheeks immediately springs to mind as being one of the top guys who can do such a thing.) I can tell you right now, good spot blacks on a page can make a page. A good rule of thumb that one of my professors use to tell us was "It needs to look good as lineart. If it doesn't look good as lineart, or even worse, it reproduces terribly, you're artwork isn't doing its job." If you shy away from spot blacks, I urge you to reconsider. They don't have to be used as shadows, and infact, you shouldn't think of them that way. I should probably give another post solely on this.

Anyway, as I said before, this stage in my process is right now always in flux. What I do on one page may not be what I'll do for another, and the page after that might be different too. In fact, I'm actually trying out digitally inking my next page of pencils in photoshop to see if I can get a more sensitive line quality. I've picked up the brush again after nearly a good year and a half of neglecting practice, and I'm starting to do that again. I hope one day to actually be able to ink most of my stuff with a brush. I've also been looking at nib pens again after a few helpful suggestions from old friends and professionals. Maybe someday once I'm a little more experienced and not as wet behind the ears I'll be able to do a more proper post on all this.

In the meantime, stay tuned for the next process post. Once the inks are all dry, we take it back yet again into the computer, and begin the coloring/lettering process! I should also mention that come this Friday, you'll be able to see the finished page in all its glory on the webcomic Border Crossings, which can be found riiiiiight over here.

Random Art

Since it's been awhile since artwork has actually been on this blog, here's two things that have already made the rounds in other parts of the Internet. One was a creature study/paint exercise, while the other is some linework for an illustration I'm working on. Enjoy!

Penciling.

Above are the pencils for page 09 of Border Crossings. There's not much to say, but I'll see what I can muster:

A few of the pages I did for Border Crossings were actually penciled digitally -- if you can figure out which ones they are, then I didn't do my job well enough. This page is actually the second iteration. The first version of it was done all on my Cintiq a while back, and while it was alright, there were underlying storytelling issues, which got compounded by my tightening of the pencils (which showed my frustration with the storytelling A LOT.)

I should mention that at this stage, I actually have a pretty good idea of what the page will look like, and not much is actually drawn on the fly. By the time I'm done with layouts and getting to this stage, the page is complete in my mind, it's just a matter of getting it onto the paper.

There were a few problems to solve though during it. A few of the things were realizing that I hadn't designed the tattoos yet for the Pnaiki and some background item designs. For the Pnaiki, I did a quick sketch to get the general tatoos down, while for the background items, I went through my morgue file to find some exposed engines and other objects with big, huge pistons, gears, etc.

My setup for drawing is probably pretty average: I have a drafting table (though I've been thinking of getting a new one - I'd like a table I can stand and draw at,) a good light source, an eraser, pencils, and of course, rulers and other drafting tools. It was drawn with a col-erase blue pencil, which I rather enjoy for penciling because it's a good mix of hard/soft lead and I can get a good line out of it. I imagine there's an equivalent for a regular graphite pencil, I just never looked hard enough.

From here, I take the pencils, scan them into Photoshop, then I move onto the inks phase!