24 Hour Comic Day

This weekend past, was 24 hour comic day, I took part in it a few years ago, but didn't make it last year. While I was doing it I recorded both my screen and what my webcam was seeing, I thought it'd be quite funny, but I'm just going to pop my screen up for the moment (It turned into a  rather embarrassing karaoke half way through) and I some how managed to miss half the second and third pages...

I was pleased that this year I managed to write an easily 24 page long story, but frustrated because I got bogged down in detail, and picked the totally wrong style to attempt it in. I decided I'd give this digital painting a go, and I'm actually pretty pleased with the results. There's a list of things I'd go back and sort out though, the people were rushed due to time, and there could have been a better attempt at atmosphere and value balancing.

The pages are below in-case your interested and I'm sure you've seen the video above.

P.S I didn't have any of my comic fonts installed so you'll have to make do with what's there, my bad.

"If my calculations are correct, when this baby hits eighty-eight miles per hour..."

Ok so a bit of a quick update this week, me and my friend Myles were chatting away on Saturday morning, and I was talking about how I didn't want to be stuck in one style, for example I always start with the same shapes for faces and heads. And I've been thinking about it since. My problem seems to be that there is no thought to my characters personality, who they are? what they do?

So I end up just starting, not really thinking about height, weight, are they scary? goofy? moody? nerdy? These are all things that eventually I want the drawing to portray before someones even read a word. big friendly eyes, little beady eyes, messy thick eye brows or tidy plucked ones; they all make a difference.

So earlier today I figured I'd try and change it up a bit, even if it meant things looked goofy so here is the first three I did. I deliberately kept them quick so I didn't have a chance to go back and change them or think too hard about it.

Anyways I want to end this before I get too in depth, it's maybe a topic I'll cover another time, but next time you doodle someone think about who they are and try to exaggerate the bits that show that.

Silly Airships

So airship this week sounds fun! I thought I would throw in some additional challenges for myself this week. the first one was to use a software that I neglect rather often and that is Illustrator along with that challenge I thought I would record the creation of the image as well, so that is am other thing to do is to get that sorted out and edited down.

As you can see its more of a silly go at this type of thing using bright colours to show that and happiness to it as well. Created through the use of shapes and different gradient effects on it. It has been a while since I have last used Illustrator properly but this week been dabbling with it early on and thought I would give it a good shot. Just need to find some magazines I have that have some tutorials for using this software and practice them to get a better hang of it.

digital creation

Hey, once again it's Friday.

Well this week I have been trying my hand at web comics and creating them fully through Photoshop. It's not easy as I discovered when i was doing this. It was my first attempt at this using Photoshop so it might not look the best but it was a fun to do and now I have 4 others waiting to be done now.

 

Like I said not the best thing in the world but I would say a good start at doing this stuff. All done through Photoshop and a graphic tablet (Wacom for the win). A quick run through of the process. 1) blue outline showing what I was going to draw. 2) Went over it in black on a new layer. 3) New layer under that adding colour to the image. very simple approach to it but it works. That is me for this week and I will have some to the those over web comics done for this or something else. Till then Cya.

Remember when I said that bit about painting?

My second attempt at 'digital painting'. (currently a work in progress)

Up until this last week I've taken a similar approach to all my drawings. I draw lines, then flat colors, then shadows and finally highlights. It works, and I know I'll never have a problem colouring something I can draw. But I felt like a change, I wanted to look at my images a different way instead of just ink and some colour I felt like building it up from scratch.

It feels like a very different approach almost like sculpting, slowly adding more colour and tones until it resembles the shape, curve, texture that you want. It's a nice change from drawing I think I probably get more out of it. It really helps me to understand what I'm dealing with but it just takes so damn long, I can throw out a drawing in a few hours probably less and yet with painting I find myself working on the image long after that, days, weeks maybe longer.

Something else I got to do last week was to start using new brushes, and creating some custom ones for painting. I'm always surprised at how well you can emulate the different types of media by using a different brush that's something I'd like to do a proper discussion on though so I'll save that for another week.

So happy reading, and look out for next weeks post!