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Drawing explosion-behind-character-in-front is difficult and you did it pretty good. Good shading on the clothes generally, maybe the face is a bit scribbly, but I think it's passable for what it is.

on the comic page, it's real ink on paper, I very rarely ink for work on photoshop. This is an exception but usually, my best iniking in with real inks.

Glad if I could help at all, if you have any questions I might be able to help with, shoot. From working on your face I noticed: you're weak at nose and nosetril placement, you don't define the lips, especially upper lip, much, and finally that you make constantly round faces. I put more chin on it for the kirby-esque edits, and edited the lips in a different manner on every iteration to give you a sense of how many different 'faces' there exist with very minor alterations. This is what you need to break out of the manga style thing: more definition. Don't be afraid of full lips, more bony faces, long faces, narrower eyes, crooked noses etc

Sure. working on it.

EDIT: so, here goes, 30 minute stuff here, drawn in ps and not real inks, so sorry about quality.



This is your guy here. The lineart is pretty solid as it is, although one can never tell until you ink with real ink. Photoshop never is good enough. If you have to ink on the computer, go with Painter or Illustrator. Having said that, all my examples were with a 3pixel black brush in photoshop, so whatever. Let's move on.



This is really light, basic feathering. When you want something fast and clean. It doesn't suggest a particular texture, and can be applied to any material without making any serious issue. If you want to do something fast just to pronounce the shapes, feather in the direction of the lightsource, or a few degrees offsetted from that. Feathering in 90 degrees from the lightsource can be kinda strange looking, but it does lead to some moebius-style as you'll see below, if you take it to a logical extreme.



Some of the time, you'll find yourself needing high contrast when doing comic work. To accentuate a mood, or just to make a shape punch out from it's environment. This is pretty sloppy high-contrast work here, with no finishes. What I mean by finishes is that the contours of the black are just bare against the white, which is a style in itself, a very difficult one at that, used by artists like Munoz, or Breccia or even Frank Miller. Sometimes you might find yourself working from a contrast base such as this, but wanting finishes also.



This is again, feathering from a high-contrast base, this time. It's pretty simple to see how this works. This is pretty much 50% of my own work, only I mix the feathering with cross-hatching sometimes, but I'm pretty comfortable with BLACK - light detail - WHITE on the whole. This is a good skill to have, I suggest it.




Sometimes a more stylized feathering style, thicker lines, more space between them might seem appropriate. I don't do very well here, but there's a lot of people that work almost all in this style and do wonders. this is like 100% black, 0% white and the middle tone of the feathers being about 40% which is pretty strong if you can do it.



This is pretty much me, here. High contrast, then feather, then mix it up with controlled cross-hatching and a bit of noise. There's not much to say about how to cross-hatch other than it has to do with intuition, practise and developing your own feel. Usually I start with a feathered base, and then start to do short groups of angled lines on top of that base, then I go again, rotating the lines until I'm happy with the cluster and the shadow and texture it suggests. Speaking of texture, this is ALWAYS a dirty effect style. Anything you do like this will turn out rugged and dirty-looking, which might suit some things, but some things not. There's a huge difficulty in drawing things like this and then doing a pretty girl face next to this and appling only a light feathering. The style shift is tolerable, but always looks a bit out of the ordinary, so take care.



Just a different feathering style. All downstrokes. The effect this has on the viewer is psychological. Downwards feathering makes the face look tired, weary. Just saying that somehow, the downwards lines do this.




If you don't really need/want shading, but just definition, try angling your linework. And putting in more strength to your outlines. one-stroke belgian school is cool, but sometimes a bit of american oomph in lineart can be useful. Use straight lines, use curve against straight line, use dissagreeable curves against each other, make it dynamic and flexible.




And from that base, there's room for so many Jack-Kirby-isms it can make a man cry. The lightning-bolt-chin, the cheekbone dagger, the random-lines-I-dont-have-names-for! This is pretty much ready to jump into spandex and cape and go off to fist crime. I mean, fight crime. Hm.



This is a weak attempt at doing what Moebius does with his linework sometimes. He does a lot of things, but this is one of the more strange and interesting effects. Something like a blinder strip thing going on, useful when you want an increased sense of unreality. Doesn't suggest any sort of texture, in fact, if you do this all over in a pic, it unifies everything into one massive holistic ripply effect. It's interesting, give it a try. This usually is 90 degrees  from direction of main lightsource.



The wonders of modern technology. I had a busy cross-hatched base, and then I cross-hatched on top of this with the eraser. This is a difficult effect to achieve on paper, but so easy in digital. Diffusing from black gives better control over implied noise and specular highlight. I suggest this however, sparingly.



A simple diffused line can make such a big difference as you see. Sometimes by doing little, you can signify enough about the shapes you want to shade. Just saying this, you don't want to go all charcoal-mad on everything you try to shade. Comic art isn't fine art, stylization is good and wanted. Forget reality. Think about what mood you want to achieve as much as you think 'now, where's my lightsource?'



A lot of people can use pure scribbly noise shading to great effect. As you can see, I'm not one of them. What's useful about this is how it implies uneven texture, though. Just something else you might want to practise once in a while.

EDIT: also, look at this comic page I did a while ago, for different shading effects all in the same page:

This is an awesome game that everybody should play. Get it. Now. Then e-mail eric when you get stuck, don't post in the hints and tips thread, just e-mail the hell out of him.

Pie.

Exactly, the issue would be why your girlfriend felt the need to have implants. That motivation is so very difficult to examine thoroughly and -this is where it gets sticky- by examining it, by bringing all the aspects of societal programming to the fore one risks to damage critical aspects of one's personality as they partain to sexual identity. Is it worth the bother? Would a thorough examination of your girlfriend's sexual hang-ups and self-esteem really stand to help her become more 'liberated' or whatnot? Or would they implant (sorry) further guilt into mental procedures that could really do without? These things have a precious balance all of their own, and whereas I won't be the one to say that sexuality shouldn't be discussed and that we shouldn't be especially critical of the social ramifications of it all, in the end we ourselves are products of our environment and if somebody has come to find abnormally large boobs attractive, then that's what they find attractive!

No we cannot lock this now. There's still pertinent discussion to be had about pie in this thread.

I like to put my cursor up to pictures and lines, pretty much whatever I can, and try to get one of the angles on the arrow to line up so that it looks like the edge of the arrow is part of the line. It brings me some strange satisfaction when I achieve this, and will sit and look at my discovery with pride for longer than I probably should, and if I'm unable to find any lines that match up, I get really sort of dissapointed.

Typing it all out, I've just realized for the first time how weird that is.

I do this a lot too.

bernie, post a clean-outlined human face at 3/4 or whatever with no shading on it, nice and big and i'll illustrate a few different techniques you might find interesting.

oh wow, here's a game to remake for orow.

I'm too late, spent a day having drunkenly passed out after seeing the boring Brokeback Mountain. Oh well

a point:

muscular male protagonists and sexy female protagonists appeal to the same set of impulses in the viewer. Whether their muscularity/sexiness is justified plot-wise is a secondary issue. Both the strong, able male lead and the fuckable female lead serve to involve the viewer instinctually. Power and mating, what can I say? A man that is huge with bulging muscules objectifies the traits of the alpha male (violence, authority, control, safety) just like a woman who is sexy does the same for the traits humans OF BOTH SEXES attribute to the alpha female (willingless to mate, more or less! sorry, women! Talk to Darwin!). If someone has a problem with this, they should adress it on this level: the instinctual makeover of the human being, and the social constructions which support it. Talking about how big the boobs a girl has in an adventure game is  very politically correct, and as the whole political correctness movement has ably shown, it's excellent for making surface change and ignoring the root of the issues. 

I'm a bit stupid like that in that when I first saw the image I zoomed in and checked out the pixel art, wondering why the artist didn't dither between the shades, why the line of the neck on the fabric isn't antialiased and that sort of thing. I remember thinking 'she has a pretty face, and these boobs are ridiculous' but I wasn't outraged or anything. I remember thinking the in-game sprite looked a bit worse for the huge mammaries. Personally, I'm pretty sure she'd look even more alluring dressed in something sensible and with regular boobs, but hey, if nurse outfit it has to be, 2 sizes too small, huge tits, whatever.

I'll have no problem taking the game seriously regardless of her boob size. It doesn't matter much to me. I do see a problem with such depictions of women in popular culture generally, but it's a generalized phenomenon, my opinions on the matter simply have nothing to do with a game you're making on your spare time, to indulge on your personal wants. Political Correctness I'll leave to the politically correct. I beat up women and have sex with goats.

I however, am a girl.

Though your point is valid, Helm, I think the obviously artificial characteristics of the landscape gives it an interesting science fiction feel, like the constructed habitats in Ringworld or Iain Banks' Culture novels.

I agree that this feeling is achieved, or that now that you've rationalized it I cannot help but humour the notion that this occurs, it's not easy to say what goes on. I still think it's better to not risk this, and create naturalistic terrain.

Yeah, what's up with that? As an outsider, I've noticed that the people who seem to be the most popular and respected on these forums (and in the community in general) aren't necessarily the ones who have made the best games.

Not a big mystery. There's much respect for those who make great games. But the ones who are very socially active here are not always the same people. The forum is very much a social beast, not always and completely about the AGS games that are produced. Those who are charismatic are popular, like in any other internet community.

No. That is not her.

Sure, don't mention it.

I'm really glad you like, earlwood. I am a big King Crimson fan myself, although I don't think I'm doing anything especially Frippian on this track! More of a Psychotic Waltz meets Shape of Despair while early Fates Warning are making bbq type of party I guess.

But man, does Larks' Tongue in Aspic pt.1 rock out or what. I especially love the violin-with-soundeffect melody on the end, that part makes it for me.

sexy mcsexyeyes over there, eric told me what her name was and I googled her years ago. Can't remember now.

We are considering various layers of vocals. There's going to be choir-ed "ahhs" that sort of thing in various parts, vocalizations, not lyrics, and then there's going to be deep brutal vocals in the vein of many doom-death bands, some shredded high-end screaming and a strong male singing lead. It's all down to where I place the voices and what they do, I don't think the music will inherently suffer from not remaining instrumental.

You render pretty well, it's the composition that's boring, in this case. A flat field, with a rentangular long stripe of water, 90 degree cutout chasm, very ordered, very unnatural.