Scanned and colored try

[Squinky]

Hi, I posted a thread about how I want to create a web comic at some point in the general, and I asked for advice on how to go about it. I've got a few examples now that I went and bought a scanner, and I was hoping for some crits and advice.....
These guys are both prospective characters for my prospective comic....


The first one was, well the first on I tried. I drew it witha ball point pen, no pencil sketching....The second guy I started with a pencil, then inked with a fountain pen, then colored.....I think he turned out a lot better, but then again he took me about two hours total in comparison to the 20 minute guy up top....

I guess I'd just like some general critiques and I really need shading advice....Oh, and anyway to tidy up my lines would be good if anybody knows what I'm talking about....

[MrColossal]

How do you mean "tidy up" as in when drawing them or when scanning them?

If it's scanning then throw it into photoshop and slap a Levels layer on it, and, well here:



scanned art



levels, all the black on the right of the slider bars, that's your grey values which would usually be your paper and any shadow on the paper or texture, slide the white arrow over until all the grey is gone and if you want slide the black arrow over to darken your ink lines



This isn't the best example since it's so tiny but hey, this is what I had laying around from another scanning question someone asked.

What kind of shading advice would you be looking for? What kind of shading do you see on these characters?

Eric

oh and you wanted to see the comic I've been working on, there you go, there's a panel from it, ENJOY! hehe

oh and x 2 I highly recommend to you the Hellboy comics, if you haven't read them already, also if I suggested Tank Girl to you and you bought it then I'm sorry, but I think that was Rode...

But Hellboy is amazing and the art will blow you away and it's a different style of shading that you might appreciate.

[Squinky]

My dumbass forgot my upload info....hence the complete lack of updates....Damn, I guess I'll figure out a quick fix if I can....

EDIT-----!
Bah! Now my reply seems all wacky....Heh

Edit again------

Hey cool, that level thing is sweet ( I had tried the auto-levels thing after reading advice from helm, but obviously this was what he told me about, I just did it wrong) Currently I'm adjusting the threshold and the "curves" which works okay, but when I work on the image at the original crazy assed res the lines aren't clean, there kinda broken up....They look okay when I downsize the image, but I was just wondering if I was maybe doing something wrong.....

As far as shading I was following a tutorial on polycarbon and I didn't really dig the way he shaded (using a gradient, which looked good for him, just not so good for me) The dodge and burn deal don't work well either.....I guess I was just wanting to hear how others do it in the first place?

I will go henceforth and google the hellboy....Thanks for the help so far man, and the sneakpeak...heh...

[Squinky]

Heres another pic I did up in about 3 and a half hours....I tried shading by going crazy withthe dodge and burn tools.....takes awhile, and needs more practice....what do you all think?





I did some wacky stuff in the bg there with blurring and dodge and burn...it looks crappy....I just wanted to test s shading style...got a little sloppy seeing as I've been up all night drawing....

Good times...

[stuh505]

Check out this little tutorial.  I think it's very applicable:

http://sean.sevspace.com/tutorial/tutorial.html

[Helm]

Hello. Try to avoid soft airbrushed highlights, unless the texture you're highlighting calls for it. Most cases, you're better off with stylized sharp 'vectorish' highlights, and a (controlled, good heavens!) grandient here and there. On skin, the soft airbrushes are ok, but otherwise avoid because it makes stuff look like it's wrapped in plastic foil or something. Furthermore, I'd suggest you do not highlight using gray values (that'd be the dodge and burn tools fault), even if the body of colour you're highlighting is gray itself. Natural tints go a long way to make stuff look more interesting.


Edit: and for what it's worth, I really dissagree with those tutorials above and really don't think you should invest much effort into learning to colour like a second-rate Image Comics colourist. Even the mainstream american comics industry has slowly but surely moved away from that sort of work, into more artistic styles of colouring.

[MrColossal]

I must agree that those tutorials are hideous.

But on the new art you posted, the first flat colour is great, the shading, not so much.

If you could work with different colours in the foreground and the background you could get away with flat colour, now it looks like she's sitting on his shoulder because the colours are so similar. Also pick a place for the light and make it very specific, this doesn't apply to ever bit of art but maybe when starting out trying to find your lighting groove it would help to be a little dramatic.

maybe?

[Bernie -logged off-]

You could cell shade and highlight your art and then smudge the shadow/highlight edges to make them smooth. This gives you complete control over the level of softness, that helps a lot.

Anyway, I think your art would look great with cell shading only, too. Maybe you want to give it a shot?

[stu]

i had a go at shading part of your second image.


all i did was make 2 new layers(on top), one for black(shadows), and one for white(highlights). then i just made generalÃ,  lines(brush tool size 3px) of where the highlights/shadows would be, in their respective layers and colours. then i set the highlight layer to 'screen', and the shadow layer to 'multiply' and i wacked the opacity of the layers down to around 10%. i then duplicated those layers and set them to 'overlay', then you can fine tune the opacity's of all four of the layers until you're happy with the colours. i then threw in some gradients here and there to add to what i've already done..


okay, i'm pretty sure that made no sense at all, but good luck with it.
i could probably throw together a little graphical tutorial of what i did to make more sense.. if you want.

[nihilyst]

That would be nice, stu, if you could do this tutorial, since I'm not sure about how to use layers right. A tutorial of what you have done, could pobably help me and other people.

[Al_Ninio]

Here's my tip.
Try and stay away from the dodge/burn tools... Hand picked shades will always... ALWAYS look better...
Also, when you shade, try and shade along the shape of the object.
Here's a quick and crappy paintover...

[nihilyst]

Crappy paintover?

Don't be so meek That's well done. Looks like in a professional comic.

[Squinky]

Heres my latest try....I like it. I used a felt tip for inking and that seemed to be cool. I kinda did stu's example, trying for a cell shaded simplistic look. I just made layers for the shading and one for the lighting, dumped black on the shading layer, dropped its opacity down low and pretty much the same for the lighting....althought the only thing I did for lighting was the gun and that hideous name thing up there....I really really hate gradients, so that might be a rough issue for me to tackle....I've just never noticed any gradients on any anime I watch....



I really attempted to (and still will attempt) al ninio's style (looks great) but I've always had problems with color selection...so I gotta keep working on that I guess...
Please, let me know what you think. All the comments you guys leave are really helpful and I've tried to digest them all....

[Igor]

Squinky, must say i like your simple flat coloring best- no shadows.. nice choice of colors as well! It looks very stylish and would really suit that comic style

Airbrush (or soft) coloring can be very tricky and can quickly ruin your line work if not done right.. The same goes for pure black shading.. I actually think, that type of shading should not be used in colored comics (i know.. it's used a lot in cheap mainstream strips), as the contrast between color and pure black is too big and don't look that good.. it looks fab in black&white comics though..

Also Al_Ninio's edit looks great as well.. What i think really works, is that he didn't simply draw shadows, but made them in the same style as the rest of the line work (a bit sketchy with the use of lines).. cool!

[Squinky]

I tried another one with just flats...It's okay, but I would like to mess with shading still I think.

Anyway, whats the thought on this new pic?
Edit---------------

And another.....

[evenwolf]

Squinky I like Marcus a lot.   I thinkof him as a spiritual descendent of Charles Bronson.


You should think of him that way too.   

[Squinky]

Now that you mention it, there is a weird resemblance....