Messages

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Latest pic is cammy from ssf2, origional pose

Evil:  Cheers, i will do a colour tut for this style soon but open canvas does some of the work for you by acting more like a natural media, thats where some of the smoothness comes from.

Jason: Thanks, Jack Kirby havent heard of him but ill be sure to check his work out sometime soon.  Yeh that is a good point, it does look like the gun weighs too much i was trying to make it look like he was aiming from the hip ala western movie style.  

Thanks for all the comments so far everyone 8)

cool nice picture! i like the bus best nice choice of colours and sweet perspective 8)

i would go with the resizing image as mentioned before to acheive a AA look

Ginny W: Thanks, dont have time at the mo to put a tut together just yet but i will soon:)
in the mean time heres a link to my last post here with tut :-
http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?board=4;action=display;threadid=8410

Cerulean: Yeh i had a comment on this from someone else too, its gonna be ammended:)

and another quick recent sketch in oc

Another piece i have done recently:)

Cheers all 8)

Gemmalah: the girl has got her arms wrapped around the dudes arm as he pushes her back, i know it isnt fully clear:/

Jaz: The technique is pencil sketch, scanned and coloured in opencanvas.  i did a tut on my last piece maybe i will on this too:)

Done some new artwork recently though not game related, though id share with you peeps. 8)

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.

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: 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.

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.

nice use of perspective i can see some technique behind the scenes of this pic!

yup awesome work!!! great improvements and good atmosphere in the image now

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!!!

You talk to ladies on the phone why??

Jurassic 5
DJ Yoda - how to cut and paste vol 1 & 2
Plump DJ's
Fatboy Slim
The Coral
Blur
Royksopp
Anything else chilled out or funky

yeh sorry about that should have been in the general forum!:-(

okay some other good ones if you liked the first

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail53.html
funny

http://www.homestarrunner.com/cheatintro.swf
subtle funny

warning for 56k ers

Helo all, not started a thread on here before!

I saw this the other day, made me laugh

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail58.html

Wont be to everyones humour, but i was drawing a dragon pic at the time so kinda relevant

peace
Dodge

A Game in production called freefall beyond Midnight - Okay the game has grown too large and seems to have escaped my grasp.  Im now looking to hand over the project to someone who wishes to take this on.  

The majority of the the backgrounds animation and about half the sprites are in place.  The file is about 1 meg in size for the game and i have lots of other graphics etc.  

If you want to see how the game is looking so far come visit
http://www.thedumpvalve.netfirms.com/free.htm

what im looking for is someone who has the experience and the skills to take this on and pull it into shape.  I reached my limit a few months back, i am not a programmer and do not think in the correct way to get this together myself.  

What i can offer is a full desription of the story so far to anyone who is interested, the game is roughly at the moment 30% finished with about 3 or four rooms already finished and scripted, with backgrounds for 4 more done and it was roughtly a nine room game so... i dont want to hand what is compiled out to everyone who asks though because it could ruin the finished product for a number of people.  

I personally can help with the rest of the graphics which arent finished, ie backgrounds inventory items etc,

Give me a shout on my email at thedodger2002@hotmail.com
or leave me a message here or try and catch me on irc.

Dodge