One day COMiC!!!!!!!!

[DodgeR]

One day! - two pages! lots of dried up black pens, blood, sweat, enjoyment and many exclamation!!!!!  marks later!!!

And i came up with this

page one


page two


and yes it is a pumpkin with wings!!!!

if anyone wants to colour feel free!!!

[Evil]

Wow, I wouldnt mind coloring this. Not a lot of detail though. Looks really good.

[Nacho]

It is a perfect example of what can be done in a two colours style, amazing, I must say that I really love that, my favourite Tintín comics were the early ones, which were coloured after, you can see how Hergé used the ink for creating that wonderful comics...

I love the pumpkin, though.

[DodgeR]

Evil: thanks, yeh i kept detail to a minimum worked out a strange process of getting this black and white effect, which even at high res gives this effect, meant i could plan, design rough pencil, neat pencil and ink and text in one day!!

Farlander: Cheers, yes a good excercise for myself too, trying to limit myself to shading only with two shades to improve my skills.  The pumpkin came from a random art thread killer pumpkins! where i came up with the design.

[Eggie]

Eeeek! That's awesome. You have to teach me how to ink like that. It's my favourite shading style!

[Moresco]

I really liked it too.  I started coloring it but got sidetracked...think I have it in my art folder saved, I'll finish it in a couple days probably.  You really should make full comics, if you don't already.

[DodgeR]

Eggie: Thanks, yeh ill knock up a tutorial for how i did this quite hard to explain because the lightsources arent physically possible but more for dramatic effect.

Moresco:  Cheers, yeh post what you have done up here if you like.  I dont make full comics myself i am the first to admit my skills on comics are way behind the proffesionals but still fun to do.

[DodgeR]

okay done a quick tutorial on the process i used to acheive this effect.

Packages used:  Paintshop pro 7/8: http://www.jasc.com/
                          Opencanvas: http://www.portalgraphics.net/oC20/download.html.en

Resources: Blambot Comic Fonts: http://www.blambot.com/title3.html

Equipment: Pencil 2B
                  Staedler Mars-Lumochrom blue non repro pencil
                  Set Square
                  Faber-Castell indian ink fine black line pen
                  Tria pantone black marker
                  Scanner
                  Kneadable putty rubber

Okay the first set of images showes the intial process of laying out and planning.


Stage 1:  I had decided on a simple story in my mind of a runaway from a cult,  the story was to go from a simple introduction to the cult to the chase of the runaway.   This panel shows my rough sketches(only 1x2" in size) in no particular order of showing the scenes.  I read once that in a comic you only need to show what is directly neccessary and the viewer will fill in the missing scenes.

Stage 2:  I took my small thumbnails into paintshop and resised and layed out roughly to check the flow of the page.  This was then increased in size to a resolution of 1500 x 1800 pixels.

Stage 3:  Saving the image as a bmp and moving into opencanvas i roughly layed out how the light and shade would work, comics generally read from left to right so the flow is directed to carry the eye in that direction. once i am pretty happy i save the image and use it as a guide.



Stage 4:  On an a4 page i plan the layout with a set sqaure for the size of the panels making sure all angles are right angles.  using the blue non repro pencil(cant see here because the image is greyscale) i map out the basic shapes, and block in some of the main areas of dark.  

The image is then scanned in at 100dpi(for purposes of speed and saving hard disk space.)  In paintshop i partially blur the image to smooth out the pencils and flip horizontally.  Doing this will allow you to see errors in composition, light, figure work etc.  If you have been looking at a drawing for long enough you dont see the errors, so mirroring makes you look at it in a new light.

Stage 5:  After deciding i am happy i move on to penciling in the details using a 2B, working finer details and reinforcing my lines.  Once again i scan at 100dpi and check for any major errors

Stage 6:  I begin to lay out the areas or light and dark with my fineliner,  now is the time to be bold and confident with you pen i just get on with it no thinking required for this part.

Okay the final stages - they all look pretty similar here due to the small image size.....


Stage 7:  Alright i have blocked in all the areas of black now after making the lines with my fineliner i added the large black sections using the tria pantone marker using the big nib.  

I then scanned in at 400 dpi and took in paintshop where i adjusted contrast and brightness by about + 16 each, blurred the image once maybe twice and then reduced the colours to 2.  So the image is a jagged mess of black and white, time to hit the blur tool about 3 more times to smooth out all the lines.

Stage 8:  Okay the image is then taken into opencanvas as a bmp, using the paintbrush tool i reinforce some lost lines from the decrease to 2 colours.  Add a few more details and save and take back into paintshop.

Stage 9:  Once in paintshop again reduce to 2 colours, blur and blur again.  Lines have been added using the line tool to break panels up also seen in stage 7 & 8.  The image is cropped and i went and visited Blambot to find a suitable free font.  Then using paintshop i add speech bubbles and text boxes, aplly the  text and the page is finished, all in less than 4 hours from start to finish.  


Hope you enjoyed!

Dodge

[Eggie]

Thankyou!  

[Gilbert]

* Gilbot V7000a thought he was the only AGSer who uses OC, but someone proved him wrong!

[DodgeR]

Eggie: no probs i enjoyed it!

Gilbot: Yeh opencanvas is a sweet little package, like a watered down version of painter.  And the fact that on the older versions you can mix it up over a direct connection with two other artists makes it a totally individual package.