So first off, I am not an artist. I am a guy who can kinda-sorta draw if he needs to. Wanna get that out of the way.
I'm working on a mixed-media project that includes a few comic strips. I have them penciled and I want to ink them and scan them and touch them up with Photoshop and insert them into a Word file. Here are a couple of samples of what I'm doing, just so you can see what I'm working with. The finished products will be black and white, maybe some gray-scale. No color. These are semi-crappy scans of pencil sketches but they should show you what I'm going for:
Sample one.Sample two.
Anyway, the problem is that I know dick about inking. Part and parcel with that whole "I am not an artist" thing. My goal is to make these look more-or-less professional and competent looking. They need to look nice, but I am not looking to win awards or get acclaim for my mad drawing or inking skills. I want to not be embarrassed. I am not above tweaking the hell out of things in Photoshop to make up for any short-comings in the inking.
My goal is to get a polished looking product with a minimum of work. My question: how do I do that? What tools should I get? Pens or brushes or what? What resources should I used to learn proper technique? Given the choice between mastering a technique the proper way in 5 hours or faking it well for this one project in 4, I would choose the latter. That said, I don't want shitty-looking results. I'm willing to put in the time to make this look good, I just want to minimize that time where possible.
So.
Help?
(Also, the actual content of the comics is not set in stone and there will be edits and art tweaks, but I'm not really looking for critique of my comic-writing skills at this time.)
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The short materials list:
Ink - Inkwell - crowquill pens - sable brushes - and with those you should also set up a cleanng station-- wiping rags and water jars (probably optional for "strip" style comics, but worth investigating)
technical pens (Sakura Micron are popular, I am a slave to COPIC and so I adore their technical pens)
Felt tip pens in general will have some brushlike qualities in terms of stroke size; useful for varying line width and creating depth. White out is useful to have around-- I also experiment with white ink from gel pens, it does some interesting things.
Sharpies are good too, all sizes, depending on your method. Sharpies are hard to white-out, I think it's a solvent in the ink. Useful for spotting blacks and working fast.
I like technical pens best because the stroke sizes are more predictable in terms of range. you can always enhance the line width on lines that are too skinny, but once you have a fat line you have to white it out if you want to fix it.
And actually, for a self proclaimed non-artist, that comic is quite good, fyi.
Uncanny Magazine!
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http://smokinghippo.com/TSOtutes/inking_tutorial.html
Check the Questions, Discussion and Tutorials sticky for more valuable resources.
For reference I do my inks for my comic with micron and copic pens completely, although I use a brush pen for the solid blacks because it's faster.
Personally I use the .08 for the borders, word bubbles, and heavy or exaggerated text, the .05 for the character outlines and regular text, and the .03 for any background stuff or fine detail. I have a heavy hand so I just end up mashing a .01 every time I use it.
edit: the 1.0 is great for borders as well, but it tends to bleed against the ruler if your hand and pen aren't perfectly straight over the paper and when you move the ruler, especially if you're a lefty, it smears.. (at least that's the case with me...)
I've flipped over plastic rulers to get a raised edge too.
Is my layout effective, do my word bubble placements make sense, is my comic effective? ECT ECT.
EDIT- And to chime in on the inking subject, I pretty much use PS exclusively now a days. Traditional inking is great, and the level of control is super, but I find going digital to be way quicker and painless if you have a tablet, and the know how to use it. I just scan in my pencils and go to town on them that way.
INSTAGRAM
It looks like Micron pens might be right for what I'm trying to accomplish, and the tutorial @Grifter posted looks to have a lot of good advice.
Thanks! I guess that's what happens after seven years of "Daddy, draw me a puppy/kitty/dragon/lion/bunny/whale/princess!"
Yeah, Microns are a good workhorse pen-- I use them for handwriting as well.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
awsome, link drifter.
I did traditional art for a while, but transfered over to pure digital a while back, never looked back. Faster, no mess, more flexible, more room for error, ctrl+z and cheaper in the long run. the main benifit for traditional, i think, is the tangible aspect. The people that generaly stay with traditonal are already amazing and effficient at it.
http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?261761-RJbonner-2d-3d-Artist
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=78501
That reminds me... Is there anything special I should worry about wrt paper? I've just been using some cheap sketchbook thus far. I forget the brand but if you walk into a Target and go to the art supplies section and pick up the most standard looking sketchbook, that is it.
bleeding is a huge problem of mine. What brand/style/whateva of bleedproof paper do you buy?
I use strathmore bristol for everything... you can get smooth or vellum, but I can't tell a difference.
I use... Hmmmmm, I will have to look at my paper collection when I get home. There are a few bleed-proof papers I like.
Uncanny Magazine!
The Mad Writers Union
That cheapo sketchbook paper has its place (it can give some interesting texture to pencilwork) but it's wicked toothy and totally unsuitable for inking. As a general rule I'd say the smoother the better with traditional inks, yeah, and second the recommendation for Strathmore Bristol but stay away from the vellums. Honestly though if you don't want to spend the money on a pack of Bristol even laser printer paper will probably serve you better for inking than those sketchbooks.
Is bristol that expensive in other parts of the country, or outside the US?
I pay like $10 for a 20 (or 25, can't remember) pack of 11x17 smooth
This is good too: http://www.fineartstore.com/Catalog/tabid/365/CategoryID/13250/List/1/Level/a/ProductID/11406/Default.aspx?SortField=unitcost%2cunitcost
I was able to pick up some pens yesterday, and I started playing around. (They're Faber-Castells. Pitt artist pens? I guess? There are four of them - S, F, M and B.) Here is my first stab at inking one of the above-posted comics:
So here is where you tell me what I'm doing wrong so I can stop doing it wrong. My process, in case that helps:
I tried wielding all the different pens, but it seems easiest to just use the big one (the B, which is a soft, felt-y sort of thing) and vary the pressure. So all of this is with the B. I used PS to make the pencils cyan and then printed that out at double size and inked over that, then scanned it back in in 1-bit B&W. This is more or less un-touched-up, except for one frame of Charlie that I kinda muffed so I C&P'd from a different panel. (And this is obviously a scaled-down version. The original is 8x10 at 300dpi) I don't know if that's cheating or not. Oh, and the lettering is actually done with the M, which is the second thickest.
The title inking is crap, and I'll probably just do that entirely in PS. I know there's some inconsistency in how the characters appear in each frame, so I'll need to work on that, I guess. Also, the insect in the second panel bugs me. (Ha! Ha!) I also suspect the SPLATs are a little hard to read. Any tips on how to make the letters more clear? I tried them without the shading inside and they didn't seem much more clear. What else should I address? Is there a strong argument to be made for mastering all the different pens? Thanks!
You may want to avoid any excessive line work with effects text though. It can affect how well you can see the text. An example would be the second time the splat occurs. The fine detail of the lines kind make it blend into the background. Without the extra lines, it may push the text forward to give it a good punch.
Of course, this is just an opinion. Got some good stuff in there, keep working at it.
I'm also amused that I'm getting compliments on my lettering, given that my general handwriting is atrocious and everyone always complains that it's completely illegible.