Tablet FTW

Recently I purchased a new tablet because I heard about a nice little app called Procreate.

Unfortunately I had to purchase an iPad 4 because it was only available in iOS.

You see, I would have much rather gotten an android tablet, such as the Nexus 10, if only because I've already invested in quite a few Android apps.  I also like that there is quite a bit more freedom in Android.

The iPad does have a really good contrast ratio though and that makes it good for this sort of thing. Though not nearly as good as a decently calibrated monitor.

At first I was worried that I wouldn't make much use of it, but fortunately, I now think it was one of the best purchases I've made in a long time.


Because now I can draw anywhere, and draw the way I want to!

Here are some quick sketches done to get a sense of the whole thing.


I did use some other apps as well.  I find that I prefer roughing things out in Brushes or Sketchbook Mobile. So I have been using those apps a lot too.

Dropbox adds functionality...

Things always happen this way.

I joined comicfury.com for a free way to post my book online, and it works well, if maybe it feels a little clunky to me as an end user.

It provides some limited statistics, which is good, because I've been able to see how much traffic has been going there to read the book.  But I think the layout is awkward for the reader, and there are other little things that could use some work.  But there is a community there.

But, originally I just wanted to post it directly to my blog and let people view it from here.  That way, I still have basic statistics, and all the traffic goes through here always.  So, I've been pretty torn about the whole thing, and now even more so.

On December 5th I received an email from the dropbox team to let me know that they have made viewing images much easier through dropbox.

What they've done is nice and simple and it uses a decent image viewing slideshow that is perfect for what I want.  It provides a good "table of contents" page that allows the user to close the existing image and select wherever in the story they want to go to or go back to.

So I've uploaded the first set of images there and I think I will be sharing the link with readers in this way from now on.

EDIT:
I have since removed the images from dropbox as of today March 13th 2013.

Hatching a Grey Plan

So... What have I learned while making this comic?

Well I learned that I needed to set up my comic, in such a way that it would be easy and enjoyable to read.  I spent probably too much time looking for a plugin that would allow me to do that here on Blogger.  Unfortunately there isn't such a thing. At least I didn't search long and hard enough to find out if there was, and besides it looks like Wordpress is the choice for web comic publishing.

I considered setting up a Wordpress comic site using the plugin found at webcomic, but there were problems presented here that I didn't want to deal with any longer.  Primarily, creating a website and paying someone to host it, which in my opinion is a waste of money in this day and age and the free options available.  I wanted a free solution at whatever cost (go figure, and there are costs), and wanted to do it using Blogger, but soon realized that wasn't going to work out.  The images that make up your comic need to be housed somewhere, and then each page needs its own separate html link, or some kind of code that keeps track of the images to post the right one when you click the next button, or the back button, etc.

What to do?

I kept searching, I wasn't about to start dealing with html coding again.  Luckily, I stumbled pretty quickly on ComicFury.

Hallelujah!

I was worried that there would be some things that I would need to agree to that would make using a free site service like theirs unappealing.  Fortunately, so far that doesn't seem to be the case.  And, currently, I think anyone interested in creating a web comic should consider them.  They give you the free hosting, and only ask that you place their personal advertisement on your webcomic, which you don't even have to agree to do. But...  Why wouldn't you help the people helping you?

You are free to advertise there whatever you want on your pages. Obviously within acceptable limits.

I decided to use them almost instantly, and therefore knew that I needed to get my first 25 pages completed to have it up there pretty soon.  And, so I got to work. I needed a cover to place there, so viewers have something to see in the meantime, and created this after whittling down an idea into something that I could use in many ways.

I have always had the intention to print this comic sometime in the near future, and so I had a definite look that I was striving for.


However after spending some time working with a system to speed up hatching - by basically placing a hatched image into the file as a layer, and then masking it to add and remove it from portions of the page - I discovered that it looked kind of poor when shown at a decent web size with a width of 800px.  The hatching just created too many artifacts at that resolution, and these distortions were just too glaring for me. I then fooled around with line width some more and line spacing to see if it cleared it up.  But there seemed to be always problems.  I didn't want to make concessions on the hatching, which would look fine in print, but it looked like I would have to.

I could make each comic page larger, but I think it would ultimately ruin the user experience by forcing the reader to pan around too much.  If this comic were not intended for print, I would use a layout that works better with keyboard navigation, but the intent is to print later...  Anyways...

Later a decent compromise presented itself.  I decided to make the masks themselves different shades of grey and this looks great on the web.  Heck, it even looks good on paper I bet.  What this means is that I have something that looks great on a monitor, and I am sure it either looks just as good on paper and if not I can use the layers to place the hatching when I go to print.  But I am now toying with the idea of making each shade of grey a different color, because it looks great now and has opened some new possibilities.  We'll just have to see.

Here is a little taste of what I partly did to end up with the almost completed page 2 of my graphic novel 

Who Needs the Moon.

Pencilling, inking and painting in MyPaint.

Refining the image.  Once I get this process down, I hope to make better time on later pages.

GIMP for the bridge between MyPaint and Inkscape.  Please fix the GIMP.  2.8 Crashes so often on my rig.

Inkscape to prepare the final layouts and text.

The Screech of the Lighthouse Keeper

So I wanted to practice and work on my inking in MyPaint some more. So I started a quick doodle which led to this...

It ended up as a scene from some kind of teen mystery novel or comic, which I think was influenced by my love of horror films, but probably a likely result of watching Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated a week ago. After working on it some more, on and off over a period of a couple days, I finished with the above cover idea.

Here is the process I used in MyPaint. I made a quick rough - with a brush that I think finally feels like a 4B pencil - that sketched out the composition of the scene. I wasn't all that sure if I would continue to work on it past this point, since it was actually originally intended as a way to get warmed up.

Something in it captured my eye - I think it was my surprise at the way the brush behaved - and so I decided to continue working on it.  I next grabbed one of the ink brushes that I have been tweaking and tried to get a sense of the method I would like to use. I like to add detail with the "ink" instead of working it out in the rough, because I can quickly undo anything I don't like.

My intention was to start spotting blacks, but I realized that this wasn't probably the best choice for the image. Not to say that it wouldn't have worked - it would have ended up looking very different than this though - I just think that at this point I saw it for what it was and felt that it should be treated in a way that befitted it. A teen mystery story cover. So I started instead to block in colours and lighting. I was looking for a moonlit feeling of foreboding. I also thought that I should add in some hard highlights and decided that I would need to paint in some flash lights.

Next step was to tweak the image more by adding more visual interest. I didn't want to over complicate things here.  Which I may have done anyhow.

At this point I once again decided that I should do something that I have been consciously trying to steer myself away from. Post. But once again I felt that the image needed it for what it was. So I took it into the GIMP and cropped it. I then added some new layers that I used to add overlay and multiplied colouring. And it was done. I took it back into MyPaint after this step and drew in the title and cropped it again, because the app likes to add more canvas dependant on brush stroke.

I actually had a lot of fun with this, and learned a lot from it.

Virtual Graph Paper

Anybody need graph paper?

 This is great. Virtual Graph Paper at Garret Bartley's Blog.

The Search for a Solution

With my wife still fighting back breast cancer - and doing very well - I have very little time to work on the graphic novel while juggling care for her and care of our two children.

A few weeks back though, I managed to squeeze out a little time here and there and started to tackle what process I would be taking to complete the book.

I have ruled out ink and paper, and have instead chosen to work in digital completely.  I think it will keep my initial costs down, and it will allow me to easily tweak composition and quickly fix mistakes.

Although I do have more of an affinity with ink and paper - it really just flows better and feels more natural - I think with the tests I have done, I have found a way that should still work well and produce a book that I can be proud of.

It will be created fully and only with FLOSS applications.  In the time that I have spent working in digital media, I have come to the conclusion that creating digital art should not cost a middle class fortune. The prices charged for "industry" software is outlandish, and only suppresses a large group of artists around the world from creating, or instead forces them to pirate the programs.

So, currently the process might be a little troublesome for an artist, because there is a lot of back and forth between programs.  In the long run though I think it will improve with the software and once I figure out a rhythm.

To date, I am still really only in the process of fleshing out the book.  I don't want to waste time with panel ideas and layouts. I just want to spend the time now to map the story out, get a feel for the location and characters and make the dialogue real and the narration have a decent flow to it.

What I have so far, is rough pages on individual sheets of paper in a notepad. I have then taken and entered the text into Libre Office and started to write it out - again each page on a seperate sheet - so I can then print it off, read over it and edit it some more. Each printed page has space where I can then start to layout the pages, panels, composition and dialogue in doodle form.

Initially I was planning on doing a colour book, and I wanted to go for a more realistic approach to the art. But the more indie comics I have read of late have only convinced me that the whole approach of having iconic characters in black and white helps the reader flow better through the book and story. I do not want the reader to stall on an image because they can't figure out what is going on, and therefore break their immersion in the story.

Also I believe it is cheaper for someone like me to print up black and white pages over full colour.  Besides there is beautiful design aesthetic to black and white images. Done right, when I see it in other peoples work, there almost appears to be a perfect balance on the page.  Truly a yin and yang thing.

So below, you'll see an attempt done recently using two fantastic programs, Inkscape and MyPaint to try and turn out what a finished page might look like. I say might, because I haven't even gotten into character designs yet, and I am completely new to spotting blacks. So this MAY be representative of what the finished product will look like.

Based on the template that Scott McCloud made and shows off on youtube, I created something similar in inkscape. Using my doodles on the written rough of the page, I create the layout and then export out a bitmap that I then do the "pencils" and "inks" in mypaint.

I hope to make a worthwhile template that I will share with others when it is completed.

Overall I am pleased with the current result. I do feel like I have a lot of work to do on spotting blacks. It just isn't a natural process for me yet.  Which brings me to the study I did below. I just wanted to see what looks "good".  I wanted to do more, but family duties forced me to put it on hold again.  I think the next exercise I do will require a more complicated scene.

I am waiting to try out the GIMP and Krita for this as well though.  There is something about mypaint that just seems to make it more geared to painting for me and not inking.  I fooled with Krita a bit with doing some inks and really enjoyed the way it seemed to flow.  But my old wacom died, and currently neither GIMP nor Krita work with my new Monoprice 12x9 graphics tablet (which is kickass and cheap), and Krita needs to iron out some interface issues, and the new GIMP was just released, and until it works with my tablet I can't even test it out.

Mypaint does work OUT OF THE BOX with my tablet though - I guess they use their own drivers or maybe its magic - so I'll continue to use it. And I really do love mypaint.

Ink and paper aren't out though. I've decided that I would like to do posters or illustrations a little more traditionally. My eyes need a break from monitors here and there. :)

Break time - Sculpting Digital Clay

So I've recently felt that I needed to give the comic some time to simmer.

If you fool with something too long - as I am wont to do - you can seriously mess twist and warp a good idea into a bad one.

When working on personal projects I have this nasty habit of over tweaking ridiculous details that bring nothing to the table to improve the work in front of me. Later, when I am starting to get pressed for time, I rush things and find myself disappointed with the end result.

I do not intend to do the same thing with any of my projects in the future. I will take the time - sure -  to do it right. But, from now on, I will write things down, make well laid plans and ensure that the end product is hopefully good to someone else other than me.

So anyways, I have been fooling with Sculpting in Blender again. In the future, I will be getting into a few animated projects that I think will have quite a few models and objects that make use of sculpting.  So I plan on using some of my time every once and I while to dedicate to focusing on a few areas in 3D that need practise. Maybe even fool with some film here and there.

Proportionately, these heads aren't very accurate - no reference was used - and they could use some even finer details, which I might add later. Never mind the ears, I almost ignored doing them, focusing instead on the faces.  Mainly, these quick sculpts are meant to make me more familiar with all the sculpt tools  that are now available in Blender.

Currently I am only skimming the surface of the tools, making use of the default settings mainly, but eventually I hope that I have a formula that works well with me that I can use effectively to create great looking models.

In the last few releases, Blender has really improved in the areas of sculpting. Some great features have been added in to the program, and some others just down the pipeline. With Google Summer of Code soon to start it will be interesting to see what else gets added to an already fantastic program.

Monitor Calibration Horror.

I've been trying today to calibrate my pretty cheap monitor.

The worst thing about doing this now, is that the current settings that I have set up right currently, show me that a lot of the past work that I have been doing is pretty poor in contrast.

The previous post's image of werewolves concepts is a pretty good example of that.  Here's the problem, on my monitor before calibration it looks fine.  Obviously, I painted it in that environment. On my smartphone, a Nexus S, it looks fine, ignoring a few problematic high contrast areas.

On the newly calibrated monitor  though -  which I think is better than before, but far from perfect - it is barely visible and hard to make out.  As a test, I brought the image into the GIMP and tweaked the Levels, Brightness/Contrast and Curves as well. It appears better on my screen now, but shows that as a concept piece it is kind of weak.

When getting into an extremely dark piece like this, and this is probably true of extremely bright pieces as well, cheap screens just aren't calibrated properly and give a poor range of blacks and whites.  Graphics people shouldn't cut or skimp on monitors if they can afford not to.

I am going to have to fool with this monitor setup more and see where I can compromise. I just hope this doesn't ruin all my work. 

If you feel that you could benefit from some eyeball calibration of your monitor, here is the link

monitor calibration tips and resource

that I used to tweak my NVIDIA settings.

P.S. to all of you that have viewed my work on a properly or semi-properly calibrated monitor, I apologize.

Sympathy for the Devil

Well, it has been difficult to find time to work on anything related to the graphic novel, let alone any other type of art.

Currently, with my wife working her way through chemo therapy to fight breast cancer, I find that the whole family is strapped for time. Because of this my duties have increased taking care of the house, her and the kids and so I don't have much time for anything else.  When I do have some time at night, I find myself completely exhausted.

Right now I am REALLY tired. I've never been this tired. @_@

For a while there, early into her treatment, art seemed pretty trivial, when faced with the all the things cancer heaps on a family. Naturally I guess I've shied away from it, and so things have been left by the wayside. Probably for the better. I've stewed on design and story ideas.

Lately though, I've been making a more serious attempt to do something... anything. I really want to create this book.

Anyways.

I was never entirely comfortable with the look of the werewolf.  An American Werewolf in London's creature effects has had a huge influence on my design ( I love that film ) but I want to inject my own take and style on it. These concepts come from me trying to nail down something.

The whole character of the wolf needs fleshing out. And the town too.

More to come. I hope.

Spread the Open Source Love

Here is a screenshot of blender in action with work created by me.

So it's come to my attention that I should probably let people know what apps I use.
If you happened upon this blog, you might be under the impression that I use expensive software to get this done. Maybe you think, he should have!

I used to, when I worked for other people. And I imagine, should I get hired on full time again, I'll be using it again.

But it doesn't need to be that way.

I currently work with open source software.

All 3D work I do is done in the amazing program provided by the Blender Foundation.

BLENDER



All digital paint work I do is done with the awesome, MyPaint.

MyPaint



All image manipulation work I do is currently done using the GIMP. It needs help to get to the next version!

GIMP



All virtual lighttable work I do, is currently done using Darktable.

DARKTABLE



Video Editing is done using Kdenlive.

KDENLIVE



Openshot looks promising though.

OPENSHOT

And yeah. I work in a free operating system environment.

UBUNTU

But there are other nice looking linux distros out there that are starting to catch my eye.


Alchemy

Harmony

great sketching tools. Which you may already know about.

The Power of Good Colour Choices

I feel it might be re-hashing a whole lot of stuff that other poeple have gone on and on about over the years.

They've talked about the importance of colour and I have ignored the advice every time.

Recently though I smartened up.

I was going through Nick Cross' Blog reading about his process after watching his fantastic short - Pig Farmer

The Pig Farmer from Nick Cross on Vimeo.

He mentions to, "Never underestimate the value of using gray." It finally got me thinking hard about how I paint and use colour.

So I created a palette with a whole lot of grey values, and threw in more saturated versions and other tones.



It has made a world of difference. Until you start working with greys, you don't realize how colourful they can actually be. What's more, when you add a more saturated value over top, you can start to play light more easily, direct the eye better, make your image more dynamic and create interest.

I, personally feel that it has made a big difference in my paintings already. As I become more comfortable it, I can only get better at it.

My Weapons of Choice

So I thought I'd start things off by showing you what I have been using to make comics with recently.

I've tried quite a few things over the last few years and read about what others are into using.

For me though, this seems to work best for now.

The 3H is used for roughing in the page and figuring out the details.

The Chinese brushes are for any wet ink work I plan on doing. Or maybe if I plan on doing watercolour for illustration purposes.

The Copic Sketch marker is my true work horse, I guess. Pretty much 85% of the line work I do is currently done with it. I love the variable widths I can get with the brush tip. The Copic marker is for borders and any sort of detailing I want to do with less variable width.

The Marsmatic700 is for text and fine details. The Uniballer is for fine details and cross-hatching. I am probably going to replace it with a finer pen tip for the Marsmatic.

And for filling in black areas, I've decided to stick with my Pilot Super Color markers that I use in my fine art work. They stink and it might not be the best for my head, but I love how utilitarian they are.

I'm happy with these right now.