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Webofink - My drawing stuffs.. and more
webofink
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Hi there, I thought I might make a thread to put my art stuffs, and as a way of tracking my progress.
I used to do a lot of drawing and stuff when I was a kid. Loved comics and sketching (judge dredd, yo), but it all got away from me over the years. I just bought a graphics tablet on a whim, and I've really been enjoying playing around with it in the last few days. Mostly I've been hanging out in the Doodle thread, so most of this stuff is in there already.
Without further ado!:
This was the very first thing I sketched on my tablet. Not very good, but fun to start with.
A crappy pencil drawing I did for an avatar for Tef
A better digital version I made later that night.
I hope I'll see some real improvement as I go, it's been a long time since I did anything art related. Was hoping to make a webcomic at some point perhaps, but want to get some practise in first, so this place has been a real godsend for me!
I used to do a lot of drawing and stuff when I was a kid. Loved comics and sketching (judge dredd, yo), but it all got away from me over the years. I just bought a graphics tablet on a whim, and I've really been enjoying playing around with it in the last few days. Mostly I've been hanging out in the Doodle thread, so most of this stuff is in there already.
Without further ado!:
This was the very first thing I sketched on my tablet. Not very good, but fun to start with.
A crappy pencil drawing I did for an avatar for Tef
A better digital version I made later that night.
I hope I'll see some real improvement as I go, it's been a long time since I did anything art related. Was hoping to make a webcomic at some point perhaps, but want to get some practise in first, so this place has been a real godsend for me!
It's dead, Jim.
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Thanks dude!
I just started trialing Paint Tool SAI on the advice of @rfilyaw and the lines look amazing in comparison to photoshop.
The Gronk, a character from Strontium Dogs, part of the 2000AD universe.
Just discovering the paint brush tool in SAI, can get some nice textures. Going to be playing around with this tool a bit.
I agree I need to work on this. I have a really hard time finding shapes I'm happy with, so I tend to just dither about on the edges, resulting in those weak lines. I might head to the local art shop and check out some books related to objects/geometric shapes like you've mentioned.
When I am freehanding in marker, I start with a BG10 Copic ("Cool Shadow," for all intents and purposes a non-photo blue) and do all my unconfident what-iffy lines and volumes in that, then go back in with a darker pen for smooth clean lines that have been "decided" by the lighter color marker work.
The first pic up there shows you know about this process, but try using bulkier lines instead of tiny scratchy ones, and if you're doing it digitally, do the light color layer on a separate layer and turn it off or delete it before you create the jpeg.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Here's an excellent book on breaking down the human body into simple cylinders and cubes:
http://www.amazon.com/Figure-Drawing-Invention-Michael-Hampton/dp/0615272819/
Tapeslinger, working with a light background is definitely something I do. I picked it up watching Gabe
Thanks! Yeah, I remember seeing on PA a few years back some light blue line sketches Gabe did at PAX, with Jerry explaning that this would be scanned in when they returned home, and then a layer added over the top with the completed lines. Then, with the new videos Gabe is doing to show the strip creation, I saw him using the same process, so it's something I try and use now myself. I still get few up at the final lines though, but I just need more patience.
I used this for the Dorf, my Neighbee Totoro, space fart bee lady, and the wimble.
By the time I'd done the beard/helm etc on my dorf, I realised I'd forgotten to do them on a new layer, so they were just scratched straight on top of the blue. I got irritated enough to just leave it and move on.
With layers, I think sometimes I go completely overboard with them. It's a remnant from my days of competing on fark.com's photoshop threads. I layer like an absolute madman, and I never label them, so sometimes it gets confusing. The Shark Knight, for example, is about 8 layers. One layer for the shark outline, one for the knight, one each for the colour, 2 different layers for shading, and at least 2 layers for the background/water. With that much work, it really should have turned out a lot better. I need to concentrate on scaling back and simplifying, perhaps.
Thanks for that link! I managed to find an online version, so that made me happy. I'm ordering some stuff off amazon this week, so I'll be adding a copy of this to my order. Drawing figures is something I really struggle with (I know I'm not alone there), so this will really help me out. I can draw from an image/photograph well enough, but sketching from the minds eye eludes and frustrates me. It will be great to get some fundamentals happening.
I'm going to try and post at least one new image every day, to keep myself working
Thanks everyone!
The idea is that I want to have a hermit crab coming out of a steel gauntlet underwater. I started with a photo of my arm in the pose I wanted the gauntlet, and googled a reference picture of a hermit crab:
Then it was a matter of working on the line layer, and the basic composition:
After that, a quick grey line sketch over the arm, with a basic idea of how I want my gauntlet to look. I ended up tweaking this slightly:
The gauntlet was done pretty much off the top of my head. It's going to look weird, since there's nothing under the fingers of a gauntlet, but oh well, it will at least be realistic.
The next step was inking the lines of the gauntlet:
And then, inking the lines of the hermit crab:
Then, the part I've REALLY been enjoying, colouring and shading! I've only made a start on the crab, and I found the paint brush completely by accident. I had no idea what it did at first, but it didn't take me long to figure it out! I'm really pleased with where it's at right now:
I won't get a chance to work on it again until late tomorrow, so hopefully more updates on this in 24hrs.
Cheers!
I'm working on setting him into a coral ledge now, will update with that soon.
This is really really terrible, both the concept and the execution. It shows me that I need to do a LOT of work on my lines, facial structure, basically everything.
Between working, working, stressing about work, and working, I've made a new friend, and we're making a webcomic together. It's called "Ticket to Ride", and this is the third reboot for it. Paul was having trouble finding a steady writer, so I thought I'd give writing it a shot. The concept is that it's a haunted amusement park. That's pretty much it for now. We're expanding on that theme, and have some story arc ideas we're working on.
Despite trying to get into art and drawing related stuff, I'm actually the writer for this project. As this is my first time ever writing anything, I thought I might post in my thread here to try and get some feedback from you guys? I know a lot of you have your own comic stuff, so maybe you have some good advice?
I've got a couple of months of strips written. We update on Mon, Wed, Fri, and so far we've been going for two weeks, so there's not a whole lot of back catalogue to browse at the moment. Maybe that's a good thing? I'll post the first three here, and I'll put a link in my sig. Hope I'm not contravening any "hey asshole, no advertising your crap" laws =(
I'm scared that people are just going to think "yeah, it's okay, but.. meh". I don't have a good gauge for what is going to keep people coming back for more, so I'm hoping for some feedback from you guys here.
Let me know if I should move this to the writing forum instead, now that I think about it.
I think you're right to be concerned, your opening should capture your reader, not make him groan and the tome of text that's laid before him.
It's not necessary to setup with a lengthy description, you should be attempting to unfold the description in story not in "Oh Hello, here is a bunch of boring text about things"
Open with an explosion, tension or something other than a guy sitting in chair talking to the reader (talking directly to the reader is a no-no in most peoples books, including mine).
Look at squids comic for example -
It opens without a single word of text but what it says is immeasurable and it draws the reader in.
"WTF is going on here? What's the deal with that explosion? AND that flame ghost? Cripes, are the girl and the flamey ghost thing one and the same?"
You need to create that level of excitement in the reader so they'll keep on reading. Of all of squids pages that she has posted the story still hasn't been fully explained, and that's what keeps people coming back. Try to think of story telling like sex, it builds and builds, it never starts off with the orgasm.
If you ever feel like you need to rush through something with a block of text, you need to find another solution.
You should have seen these three openers before they were pared back. I took the "be a writer" thing too literally. Looking at them now, this is a massive wall of text.
I guess I should think of it more as "directing" rather than "writing". After seeing the intros when Paul started to ink them, I realised my mistakes. The next strip, I tried to go keep it simple and have just a setup and punchline:
I'll work on trying to write a strip that has no dialogue. I feel a little bit.. imprisoned.. by the four panel layout, but necessity being the mother of invention, I'm sure it will force me to think around corners.
I remember seeing squid's comic in the forums here previously, that thing is a work of art. Paul and myself are going to be creating a comic "book" for this title, to run parallel to the strip, I'd really love to be able to work something like this into it.
If you guys are way into the four panels, more power to you. I like the art so far.
I think it's going to stay on the 4 panel route. We're planning on story arcs, but I'm trying really hard to make sure that each strip can stand up as it's own thing. Also, I'm trying to make sure the arcs only go for around 2 weeks (6 strips) tops.
In between the arcs will be one-off gag type strips.
I agree on the art, Paul is a pretty talented guy.
After this was inked, I realised I'd completely forgotten to introduce this character by name... it's Eve.
Old gamer reference. You might not get it, I guess it depends how old you are.
Todays strip, I wrote specifically with the idea of "less is more", letting Paul play around with the character expressions to tell the story. He said he's not happy with it (he had to smash it out fast), but I think it looks awesome.
Gah. See, this is what happens when you overwork an idea. That strip went through about 6 revisions before I finally came up with an interaction that seemed sharp. Then I went and fucked it up by putting it in the wrong order. After I read your post, I thought of a bunch of different ways I could have scripted this.
Cheers, it's definitely something I'll be watching out for in the future.
First attempt, star field with a blue opacity layer for depth
Second attempt, replaced the blue layer with a yellow/white one, and tried to create a little solar system
Third attempt, replaced the sun with a lens flare. My version of PS doesn't have the best Lens Flare filter, I've discovered.
Fourth attempt, using Lens Flare on different layers so I can remove the artefacts, making them more star like. The spiral galaxy is a lens flare that I then "spiraled" with the smudge tool, and then used free transform to distort and rotate. Then I adjusted the colour balance on that layer to bring out more red, and finished by putting another tiny flare in the middle of the spiral to give it more of a "centre".
These were all done fairly quickly. If I spent a couple of hours on one (instead of ten minutes) I could probably make something pretty cool. I have no idea what I'd use it for though.
Actually, I might put spaceships over them all.
Yeah, that's the ticket.
Photoshop has a lot of tricks up its sleeves. It would be in your best interest to avoid them.
All of your planets are looking very fuzzy. When you get a really close snapshot of Earth, that light haze of the atmosphere is visible. At a distance, though, the Earth doesn't have that haze around it. Neither do the rest of the planets. The haze looks especially weird when you add in filter effects, because the filters (like lens flare) are always going to look unnatural against hand-painted backdrops (unless you are insanely precise...and even then, it's not a sure thing that the filters just won't knock the entire piece down a notch).
I'd suggest starting from scratch, and hand-painting everything, without any photoshop magic or color-tweaking or tricks. Try to pretend you're using real paint and can't erase or undo or tweak. Try looking up some reference, too. Reference always helps.
Practice equals improvement!
One last hurrah on the Photoshop trickery before I go back to basics then. All those previous ones were made from scratch, experimenting with tools I'm not too familiar with. Using PS properly is almost like being a gifted brain surgeon, there's way too much going on in there for a normal guy to handle. I used a good tutorial to create this planet, which looks a thousand times better than anything I could come up with on my own. I learnt a lot of good tricks though. The tute is here if anyone is interested: http://gallery.artofgregmartin.com/tuts_arts/making_a_planet.html