Remus Shepherd (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} remus_shepherd) wrote,@ 2005-11-16 12:00:00 |
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My methodology -- how to improve it?
Here is a walkthrough of how I draw my webcomic, Indefensible Positions.
Those of you who are new to photoshop can take it as a series of tips that might help you. I would not take it as a 'How To', because I am cutting so many corners and intentionally sacrificing a lot of quality. If you want to learn how to draw well in photoshop, there are lots of tutorials out there. At best, this might be an example of how to draw in photoshop quickly.
For those of you who are better artists than I, I'd appreciate hearing any advice you may have. As quick as this method is, I'd like it to be faster, and I'd like to get a better quality finished product. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
Because my comic is wordy, I start by placing the text in roughly the locations I want them to be. From the amount of text and where it's positioned, I can plan out the panels and make a quick bluesketch of the characters. This is all very rough and usually changes drastically by the time I'm finished -- take a look at the finished page for this bluesketch, and see how much it's changed.
Note that the page size is about four times the size of the finished page. I experimented with working even larger than that, but my PC began to bog down, so I don't think I'll go into much higher resolution for a while.
From here on, I'm going to focus on a single panel. I pretty much do things one panel at a time, replicating the following method for each panel and/or character.
If I'm doing a background, I need to lay out perspective lines. Right now I'm doing very simple backgrounds, with shades or simple textures, but if there are objects visible the perspective needs to be right. The perspective lines are in a different layer and a different color, so I can see them easily and turn them on or off as I need.
Here I've drawn the background in, again very simply. I don't need to respect the borders of the panel at all; I will later select the interior of the border, invert the selection, and erase everything outside of it.
Now I'm preparing for working on the characters, which I will begin in the now-empty layer 'p3 sk lines'. Everything is on a different layer, and I've turned speech and perspective lines off. I then create a 'dimmer' layer that is filled with white and set to partial transparency -- usually between 40% - 80%. This works better than adjusting the transparency of all the layers below the layer I'm drawing on.
At this point I sometimes need to enhance the bluesketch with more detail. Depending on the pose, I may also get a photo model (from a google image search) to help me lay out the skeleton. I want to go into extreme detail here, but again I'm trying to do this in as little time as possible.
Before I show you the lined image, let me talk about how I make lines in photoshop.
The tablet is not a good tool. At least my tablet is not -- it is an old Wacom Intuos (yes, Intuos model 1, circa 1997). It works fine, but it has something like 16 pressure levels (modern tablets have 512 or 1024) and just doesn't seem very precise. In this image, the leftmost line was made using the pen tool, which is slow but allows you to edit curves directly. The middle line is my attempt to replicate the left line with my tablet. I just can't duplicate it. My hand isn't shaking -- I could do it with a pencil on paper. The tablet is hard to control. So to get the lines I want, I have to draw lines thicker than I want them, then erase the excess using the eraser too. Almost every line I draw is made using this method. It's slow and tedious. But it also appears to be the way professionals draw using tablets -- this is essentially the same method that the famous Alpha Shade comic creators use in their tutorial.
If I ever do another comic strip, I'll do it on paper and scan the art in. I'm not happy with the difficulty of tablet-drawn art.
Anyway, it takes time, but I can render the lines to make a figure:
From the bluesketched skeleton, I draw the character naked first, with other details to be added later. Sorry this is a rather boring pose -- I just wanted to use a small panel with little happening in it as an example for this walkthrough, and this was the page I was currently working on.
Now that I have the naked line art, I can step back and see where I've screwed up. Right away I can tell that my proportions are terrible -- they are my biggest artistic challenge. The head is way too big, but Skeeter (the character) is cartoony and he's in 'cute' mode right now, so I'll let the balloon head stay. The pencil-thin upper arm, though, has got to change. I can either redraw these screw-ups, or when possible I can use photoshop to edit them:
Here I've taken the arm and warped it into a thicker, more realistic shape. I'll have to go in with a brush and touch up the join where the warped line meets the unaltered line. But in all, this is good enough. And it took about ten seconds, while redrawing the arm would have taken a minute or two.
Stuffing the line art below the dimmer layer, I then work on any character details in new layers of their own. This usually means clothing, special effects, hair, etc. For Skeeter, it means exposed veins. I draw them in using a guide I have (not pictured) of where Skeeter's veins are. I'm not too worried about getting them precise. Clothing gets about the same level of effort, while I'm more careful with hair and equipment. (Hair because it is essential to a character's look and often mood, and equipment because if it is pictured it is usually being used for some reason in the story.)
Now it's time to fill the character in. Most characters are gray so far so far in my comic (they'll get color eventually), but Skeeter is pink. Before I fill the lines, though, I first create a new 'greener' layer, filled with dark green, that I put beneath the artwork. Then I create another new layer ('p3 sk flats', in this case) where I fill in the pink, and yet another layer ('p3 sk veins') where I fill the red veins. I use the fill tool when possible, and the brush for details.
Here's an example of some areas that need to be filled in with the brush, and an example of why I need the green layer. The spots that are not properly filled pop right out. I can change the transparency of the green layer, or duck it behind the dimmer layer, to get the best contrast to the fill color I'm using.
If there are background objects in front of the characters I have two choices -- I can either do those objects in a whole new layer on top of the character, or I can erase the character where the object should occlude it. Here I'm erasing. Note that I've set the flats layer to partial transparency, so I can see where to erase, and I've created a marquee to help me not erase too much. Something else interesting you can see here -- the vein colors are much thicker than the veins themselves. I can get away with this because the pink skin color layer is on top of the vein layer, so the veins only show through where they should. Just another way of cutting corners.
And that's the flat, lined product. Next I do things like highlighting, shading, and special effects.
In this comic, I'm progressing the art in stages. It started with simple flats and lines, and each character I've introduced has advanced the art somewhat. Most characters have sharp cell shading. Skeeter has soft, blurry shades. In the next chapter I'll be mixing the shades up, so characters will have both sharp and soft shading depending on the texture of their clothes and skin -- you'll see that on Friday. I'm using very few highlights so far, but Skeeter has some on his veins. I'm mostly saving highlights for later. And yes, eventually the art for all the characters will converge, but that's based on the plot.
Anyway, we need highlights on Skeeter's veins. Because he's got soft shading, I just splash on a highlight color in a new layer:
Again, I don't care about saying within the lines. That's because I'm going to blur this layer (with either the blur tool or the gaussian blur filter), then make a marquee selection from the vein layer, invert the selection, and erase all the highlights that aren't on a vein.
It's actually very quick and simple this way. Shadings are similar -- I paint them on roughly in a layer set to multiply ('p3 sk mults'), blur them, then erase anything that isn't on the character.
However, I do need to put in some details with the shade, such as over the ears and on some of the veins. I do that with the eraser tool, erasing where I want a lighter shade, then (in Skeeter's case) softly blurring over that area again.
Then some characters get shadows, made the same way as I made the shades.
That's it, that's pretty much done. At this point I create the speech balloon, quickly scribble Foil in, and move on to the next panel.
(Foil is special. I'm drawing him as quickly as I can. Many people have said that my art has improved since I began the comic -- they're wrong. I'm intentionally progressing the art, and have not yet reached the limit of what I can do...although I have reached the limit of what I can do in the time I'm allowing myself. :) For Foil, though, I'm being consistent in how I draw him. If you really want to see how my art is improving, watch how I draw Foil.)
And that's the walkthrough. Any tips or suggestions are welcome. :) In one or two chapters, I'm going to be drawing at the limit of my abilities, so by then I'm going to have to (gasp!) learn more! :)
Here is a walkthrough of how I draw my webcomic, Indefensible Positions.
Those of you who are new to photoshop can take it as a series of tips that might help you. I would not take it as a 'How To', because I am cutting so many corners and intentionally sacrificing a lot of quality. If you want to learn how to draw well in photoshop, there are lots of tutorials out there. At best, this might be an example of how to draw in photoshop quickly.
For those of you who are better artists than I, I'd appreciate hearing any advice you may have. As quick as this method is, I'd like it to be faster, and I'd like to get a better quality finished product. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.
Because my comic is wordy, I start by placing the text in roughly the locations I want them to be. From the amount of text and where it's positioned, I can plan out the panels and make a quick bluesketch of the characters. This is all very rough and usually changes drastically by the time I'm finished -- take a look at the finished page for this bluesketch, and see how much it's changed.
Note that the page size is about four times the size of the finished page. I experimented with working even larger than that, but my PC began to bog down, so I don't think I'll go into much higher resolution for a while.
From here on, I'm going to focus on a single panel. I pretty much do things one panel at a time, replicating the following method for each panel and/or character.
If I'm doing a background, I need to lay out perspective lines. Right now I'm doing very simple backgrounds, with shades or simple textures, but if there are objects visible the perspective needs to be right. The perspective lines are in a different layer and a different color, so I can see them easily and turn them on or off as I need.
Here I've drawn the background in, again very simply. I don't need to respect the borders of the panel at all; I will later select the interior of the border, invert the selection, and erase everything outside of it.
Now I'm preparing for working on the characters, which I will begin in the now-empty layer 'p3 sk lines'. Everything is on a different layer, and I've turned speech and perspective lines off. I then create a 'dimmer' layer that is filled with white and set to partial transparency -- usually between 40% - 80%. This works better than adjusting the transparency of all the layers below the layer I'm drawing on.
At this point I sometimes need to enhance the bluesketch with more detail. Depending on the pose, I may also get a photo model (from a google image search) to help me lay out the skeleton. I want to go into extreme detail here, but again I'm trying to do this in as little time as possible.
Before I show you the lined image, let me talk about how I make lines in photoshop.
The tablet is not a good tool. At least my tablet is not -- it is an old Wacom Intuos (yes, Intuos model 1, circa 1997). It works fine, but it has something like 16 pressure levels (modern tablets have 512 or 1024) and just doesn't seem very precise. In this image, the leftmost line was made using the pen tool, which is slow but allows you to edit curves directly. The middle line is my attempt to replicate the left line with my tablet. I just can't duplicate it. My hand isn't shaking -- I could do it with a pencil on paper. The tablet is hard to control. So to get the lines I want, I have to draw lines thicker than I want them, then erase the excess using the eraser too. Almost every line I draw is made using this method. It's slow and tedious. But it also appears to be the way professionals draw using tablets -- this is essentially the same method that the famous Alpha Shade comic creators use in their tutorial.
If I ever do another comic strip, I'll do it on paper and scan the art in. I'm not happy with the difficulty of tablet-drawn art.
Anyway, it takes time, but I can render the lines to make a figure:
From the bluesketched skeleton, I draw the character naked first, with other details to be added later. Sorry this is a rather boring pose -- I just wanted to use a small panel with little happening in it as an example for this walkthrough, and this was the page I was currently working on.
Now that I have the naked line art, I can step back and see where I've screwed up. Right away I can tell that my proportions are terrible -- they are my biggest artistic challenge. The head is way too big, but Skeeter (the character) is cartoony and he's in 'cute' mode right now, so I'll let the balloon head stay. The pencil-thin upper arm, though, has got to change. I can either redraw these screw-ups, or when possible I can use photoshop to edit them:
Here I've taken the arm and warped it into a thicker, more realistic shape. I'll have to go in with a brush and touch up the join where the warped line meets the unaltered line. But in all, this is good enough. And it took about ten seconds, while redrawing the arm would have taken a minute or two.
Stuffing the line art below the dimmer layer, I then work on any character details in new layers of their own. This usually means clothing, special effects, hair, etc. For Skeeter, it means exposed veins. I draw them in using a guide I have (not pictured) of where Skeeter's veins are. I'm not too worried about getting them precise. Clothing gets about the same level of effort, while I'm more careful with hair and equipment. (Hair because it is essential to a character's look and often mood, and equipment because if it is pictured it is usually being used for some reason in the story.)
Now it's time to fill the character in. Most characters are gray so far so far in my comic (they'll get color eventually), but Skeeter is pink. Before I fill the lines, though, I first create a new 'greener' layer, filled with dark green, that I put beneath the artwork. Then I create another new layer ('p3 sk flats', in this case) where I fill in the pink, and yet another layer ('p3 sk veins') where I fill the red veins. I use the fill tool when possible, and the brush for details.
Here's an example of some areas that need to be filled in with the brush, and an example of why I need the green layer. The spots that are not properly filled pop right out. I can change the transparency of the green layer, or duck it behind the dimmer layer, to get the best contrast to the fill color I'm using.
If there are background objects in front of the characters I have two choices -- I can either do those objects in a whole new layer on top of the character, or I can erase the character where the object should occlude it. Here I'm erasing. Note that I've set the flats layer to partial transparency, so I can see where to erase, and I've created a marquee to help me not erase too much. Something else interesting you can see here -- the vein colors are much thicker than the veins themselves. I can get away with this because the pink skin color layer is on top of the vein layer, so the veins only show through where they should. Just another way of cutting corners.
And that's the flat, lined product. Next I do things like highlighting, shading, and special effects.
In this comic, I'm progressing the art in stages. It started with simple flats and lines, and each character I've introduced has advanced the art somewhat. Most characters have sharp cell shading. Skeeter has soft, blurry shades. In the next chapter I'll be mixing the shades up, so characters will have both sharp and soft shading depending on the texture of their clothes and skin -- you'll see that on Friday. I'm using very few highlights so far, but Skeeter has some on his veins. I'm mostly saving highlights for later. And yes, eventually the art for all the characters will converge, but that's based on the plot.
Anyway, we need highlights on Skeeter's veins. Because he's got soft shading, I just splash on a highlight color in a new layer:
Again, I don't care about saying within the lines. That's because I'm going to blur this layer (with either the blur tool or the gaussian blur filter), then make a marquee selection from the vein layer, invert the selection, and erase all the highlights that aren't on a vein.
It's actually very quick and simple this way. Shadings are similar -- I paint them on roughly in a layer set to multiply ('p3 sk mults'), blur them, then erase anything that isn't on the character.
However, I do need to put in some details with the shade, such as over the ears and on some of the veins. I do that with the eraser tool, erasing where I want a lighter shade, then (in Skeeter's case) softly blurring over that area again.
Then some characters get shadows, made the same way as I made the shades.
That's it, that's pretty much done. At this point I create the speech balloon, quickly scribble Foil in, and move on to the next panel.
(Foil is special. I'm drawing him as quickly as I can. Many people have said that my art has improved since I began the comic -- they're wrong. I'm intentionally progressing the art, and have not yet reached the limit of what I can do...although I have reached the limit of what I can do in the time I'm allowing myself. :) For Foil, though, I'm being consistent in how I draw him. If you really want to see how my art is improving, watch how I draw Foil.)
And that's the walkthrough. Any tips or suggestions are welcome. :) In one or two chapters, I'm going to be drawing at the limit of my abilities, so by then I'm going to have to (gasp!) learn more! :)
