Peptober Day 7: Sneak Peak Crop

I've had a potential story in my head for the last 3-4 years. It was one of those ideas that just seemed too hard, too messy, like there was no entry point into the story. That all changed recently when I was struck by a flash of inspiration and I sat down to pen a draft of the story. Expecting it to be around 15 pages long and not sure how it would go, I was surprised when 32 pages flew out of me in the space of a few days.


This was a first for me. I have never written something in that short space of time. But the time it took is really just a shorthand way to explain I was in that elusive flow state. I didn't have to force myself to make it or slog through. The story is ‘inspired' by a work situation I was in a few years ago. Disclaimer: any likeness or similarity to living or dead persons is purely coincidental. 



I can’t share much now. But the above is a detailed crop of the comic. One of the technical aspects that helped this comic flow out of me was writing it digitally within Procreate. I set up a file that had over 100 layers and used each layer as a new page. This way I could flip back and forth in the story if I needed to reference a previous panel, drawing, or wording. This meant I had to draw at a lower resolution for the pencils. Then when I was done, I simply pasted those lower resolution pencil files into a higher resolution file to digitally ink over the top of. This mostly worked, although I had some difficulties in simply increasing the DPI, which caused some minor formatting headaches.

Actually, I could write more about the process of making this comic, and will probably come back and revisit it in a future post. This comic marked probably about 4-5 personal achievements/advancements with new techniques. It’s not often I get to say that.

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading...

Comments are always welcome. To subscribe via RSS, click here or sign up for my new publications' newsletter.

Popular Posts

Creating Screen tone effect in Photoshop

Image
Also known as zipatone, Ben-Day dots, halftones etc For this tutorial a basic knowledge of Photoshop, colour modes, resolution, history and layers pallete, copy and paste functions will help. It is often desirable to achieve screen tones for artwork for either practicality or for effect. What ever you need it for I am going to show you the most effective way to achieve this using Photoshop. If you can master this, then there is no need to track down real zipatone and fiddle around with cutting it up. The middle section on ‘creating dot patterns’ is fixed although how you create your grey areas and how you use the dot pattern is up to you. Firstly this tutorial has nothing to do with the halftone pattern in the Filter menu. In my mind this filter gives a poor, hard to control, and fuzzy result. Which is not suitable when you need real screen tones for something like screen printing. Creating greys First open the artwork you want to add screen tones to; Be sure that this a
Read more

Tangency

Image
The problem of contrast and tone . One of the major concerns when drawing comics or images is that of tone and contrast. This is especially true of B&W drawings but to a lesser degree with colour. It is often referred to as ‘tangency’. When you do not have tangency, the lines that you have drawn blend into one another an become hard to decipher. The image is basically flat and hard to read.  A/ This image doesn’t give us enough information; there is no contrast or line variation. B/ This is a little better, with some added line width, but still flat C/ This example is much better, there is line width, hatching and cross hatching, and areas of black. This helps us discern where the objects are sitting.  D/ This example uses screen dots to create a grey tone that gives us contrast. Notice how I’ve placed the black differently in this picture. The picture is a little flatter than ‘C’ but still works. This method could be used for stylistic purposes. E/ In this example I have gone too
Read more

Review of Sanford Prismacolour Non-photo blue pencils

Image
WARNING: Comic talk ahead! I wanted to write a short review of the 'non-photo' blue pencils I have been using lately. I'm doing this so that if you have to order these things through the mail or don't want to waste money trying and buying these things then hopefully this review will point you in the right direction. There are three pencils that I have come across. There are other types and brands, but these are the ones I have had experience with and I think may be the most commonly used in comics. 1-Sanford col-erase non-photo blue. (pictured) This pencil's lead is quite hard and hardly shows up on the paper. This is good if you only want faint marks as guidelines and not so much an actual finished drawing. There is an eraser on the end that actually works to a certain degree. Although it's really only for peace of mind as you don't need to erase the pencil after inking anyway. I found this pencil too light to do actual finished or rough outlined
Read more