Guess who's back in the ring. . .

 

I might get knocked down, but never out.  My apologizes to everyone for the large amount of time between posts. No excuses, even if valid.  You should have legitimate posts regarding both the comic and the comic process by the end of the week. 

Day 31: Flats (no not women's shoes) [cc/zf]

I've mentioned before that I'm most likely putting out my comic in black and white first, and then color second, when I release it digitally.  The reason for this is that it's cheaper to put out the physical comic in B&W, and honestly I'm not the greatest at color.  But then again this is all about the learning experience so I thought I'd give folks a Valentines Day 'treat'.

When it comes to starting the coloring process, most industry experts will use flats.  And what are flats you ask.  Think of it like a palette for choosing colors, and if you're working with an expert colorist, a way of saving time and heart ache as the the colorist will know what your looking for.  A friend of mine used to do flats for a certain comic company that starts with I, wink wink, so I think I'll try to badger him into doing a much better article than I am.  Also DC Comic's book; Guide to digitally drawing comics, while focusing a lot on creating everything in a digital space (which requires the expensive but awesome tablet interfaces) can be a great help as can 'Digital Pre-Press' for comics.

But I created something for a really basic example, a zombie that for obvious reasons loves turtles:

 Now you may want to look at the lined art.  One thing I personally have a problem with is closing off lines.  What I mean by this is that I don't connect all of my lines, so when I use the paintbucket tool in either Gimp or Photoshop that I flood the entire 'canvas' of the peice.  So this time I tried to keep the shapes simple and basic, and connect every open space.  The result was it took just a few moments to create the finished flat.  Which looks liiiiiiiike:

Now in no way would I consider this anywhere near a finished colorwise, BUT it shows whats great about using flats: I don't like the way the belt buckle looks.  I know to change it.  Also with the color in, I now know that I need to take the right side of the torso and fill that in better.  So in a word, if you're doing a color comic USE FLATS (technically you'd have to in the long run anyway) but use them as a tool to check and see problems about your art and composition. 

Still stuck at work (on Valentine's Day yeesh. My wife's going to be really thrilled) so if I can I'll post so more updates later.

Day 30 (I think) Roughs for covers(ZF and CC)

So thought I had the scanner at work uh, working. . .but apparently I now can't get the contrast to work correctly. As such I'll try to rescan these at a later date.  I'm putting up now, so people really new to the process can see how I approach design from abstracts (which didn't scan at all -was using 4h & 6h lead so no surprise) to thumbs to roughs.  You may see some arrows and such by the notes.  It's how I mark what the intended flow is for the readers eye.  Certain shapes and shape combinations tend to draw a viewers eyes in specific ways across the page. But more on that later.  Here we go.

Here you can see I want the Mikey character (the velicoraptor with a shotgun) leaping into the fray.  I dunno, just seems bad @$$ to me, and that 7 year old view of what's cool and not applies to this kinda comic. . . the upper right corner is where I had the basic blocks out of the form and movement. From there I went to really quick thumbs.

Here's the quick sketch of Mikey. Still playing around with the arrangement of his body, and you can see I'm trying to form a rough idea of where the rest of the focal points, in this case a horde of infected zinos may be placed.

and here you can see I'm trying to work through how I want to place the horde of zombies that will make up a large swoop of the cover.  By setting up a wall of zinos I'm also creating a block that will have the readers eyes hopefully follow the arrow, and therefore see the title.

It's all about the sneaky.

Hope that helps.  I'm still at work and honestly pretty tired so I may come back and edit this a bit more coheriently later.  If you have any questions or comments, please leave the in the (not suprisingly) comments section.  I'll answer all questions as soon as I can. Oh, and sorry about all the typos. Tired.

Day 24: What does a Carnotaurus eat? Whatever it wants (ZF)

Had a touch of writers/artist block last night.  Wanted to work on boards, but most of my warm ups just simply failed.  Did have one that came out okay, which I brought with me to work and scanned there. As such I scanned a color (where you can see the red photo pencil I used) and a black and White copy which came out really sketchy looking (which I like sometimes).

In any even the zino is a dino I discovered yesterday ( I try to keep a substantial visual reference library.  . .you know OTHER than the internet.  Something I really recommend to all comic artists and graphic designers) flipping through a kids book was the Carnotaurus (the name means 'flesh-eating bull'), which might become one of the more dangerous Zinos. Basically a TRex with horns. Let me repeat that a Trex with HORNS >shudders<.  Can't think of anything more frighting of the top of my head. . .

Black and White scan

Color