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heysawbones posted:I finally figured out how to drop colors directly over grayscale value studies, instead of starting over. Saved me some time, even if it's only at the very beginning. FTR, it's not that there's not a billion guides out there on how to colorize grayscale images; it's that none of them really drove home just how many layers of one color you have to use in order to get any kind of saturation. Try out gradient maps for colorizing greyscale stuff at least for base colors. 
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Jun 30, 2014 06:03
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SexyBlindfold posted:Although you've been showing improvement, your latest finished pieces still have some trouble when it comes to avoiding empty space. Doing roughs is a good way of fixing this, but most of these have the same problem. You're laying out the panels of your comic, which basically means you're diving your story into rectangles (or hexagons or triangles or shapeless blobs yadda yadda). You need to OWN those rectangles. Now, obviously these are just roughs, but judging by your finished pages you're kind of avoiding to "fill" the panel. A large splotch of gradient-colored wall isn't going to add "breathing space" to the comic, it's just going to make every scene look desolated and boring. Oh wow, thanks for this! The space the characters are in is supposed to be somewhat barren, so I had meant to do some shots set further away, to show that the characters are just in a big empty hall with colourful walls. I'll admit that I'm not very creative when it comes to camera angles! I'll see what more I can do with these!
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Jun 30, 2014 06:25
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typ0ninja posted:Try out gradient maps for colorizing greyscale stuff at least for base colors. I had no idea this was a thing! Thanks, this looks super useful.
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Jun 30, 2014 06:25
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Dass Niemand posted:Great! I love that advice, yeah I thought the top down would be a good establishing shot but it just didn't have the oomph I was going for. And yeah Fairfax is intended to be Aussie, I feel like I'm coming off clumsy and awkward with it. Drop the crazy in front of drongo, most Aussies wouldn't say that, but the walkabout thing is close to how it's used. It might not be technically correct, but it's closer to reality.
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Jun 30, 2014 13:40
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 help guys i have a problem why do i do this to myself
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Jun 30, 2014 16:13
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Operant posted:help guys i have a problem
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Jun 30, 2014 18:23
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Operant posted:
Parable of the Cool Guy and the Young So Operant rose, and opened a new document, and went, And took the tablet with him, and a pen. And as they sojourned both of them together, Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father, Behold the preparations, canvas and color palettes, But where is the drawing for this burnt-offering? Then Operant bound the youth with custom brushes and photoshop layers, and builded sketches and rough drafts there, And stretched forth the pen to ink his son. When lo! an angel called him out of heaven, Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad, Neither do anything to him. Behold, A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns; Offer the Ram of Laziness instead of him. But the cool guy would not so, but drew his son, And six billion background characters, one by one. SexyBlindfold fucked around with this message at 19:58 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 19:56
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The talk about filling up panels and eye flow are really cool and making me look back at some sketches I've made for pages Seeing if I can make them more interesting, especially establishing shots.
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Jun 30, 2014 22:25
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This isn't a full story yet, but I did up a little mini comic for a series I'm planning http://tapastic.com/episode/46958 I have some bigger, less "mini-episode" stories in the works and I'll probably put those up on there too
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Jul 1, 2014 01:41
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SexyBlindfold posted:Parable of the Cool Guy and the Young I swear to god I'm going to quote this every time I feel unmotivated  yes baby can you feel all the sleep loss coming on fill up your panels you bastards, draw those comics coooommmmmmiiiiiiics Operant fucked around with this message at 16:39 on Jul 1, 2014 |
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Jul 1, 2014 16:33
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Operant posted:I swear to god I'm going to quote this every time I feel unmotivated This is beautiful and I love you for the things you do. Does anyone here follow Altcomix on tumblr? He just wrapped up a collab project where you had to take a few sentences and come up with a single page. Nobody was allowed to post until July 1 to make it a creative blind exercise. Anyways, here's what I made.  I need to stop doing all these collab projects that pop up and focus on my own drat comic again. I'm so far behind.
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Jul 1, 2014 19:43
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OK so things kind of spiraled into a weird area for me. I've been trying to get some projects off the ground as you lot know and, on top of my on going bullcrap of Charred and Lightning Brigade which are on hold for the moment, I've also been trying to make an official comic book series from the Indie video game series Colossal Kaiju Combat, which I've explained before. Just giving context here. So I really wanted to write for this book, but nothing was being done to make it a reality. So I tracked down an artist, a colorist, a co-writer/public relations guy, a cover artist, and have just now gotten a letterer. I gathered them all together, got in contact with the owner of the company that makes the game, we made a deal, yadda yadda. I get to work on my script, going back and forth between my creative team, spear heading the community out reach stuff, offering suggestions and approving the added talent, so on, and then it hit me when I was talking with the owner about what my budget for the comic and payment for the team was going to be. Like, on some level, I guess I thought, OK I might get paid for this, I'm just the writer and I banged out a script in one go that was approved on sight and have just been doing busywork. Like I kept distancing myself from what I actually was and was doing. Talking about what the plan was, as far as paying the team and myself, and how to properly budget the comic, I came to a sudden realization. I'm the boss of this group. I'm the guy who pays them. I am responsible for this comic being profitable and ensuring that they get what they deserve. Holy poo poo how did this happen? Everything I've done, I've done as either the head writer or the project leader. Acting as the primary liaison to the owner, planning out what form the comic should take, deciding when and how to address the community, approving and disapproving of talent to bring on. All I wanted to do, all I really thought I would do, was write some stories about giant monsters and try to make them good and entertaining for people who don't know anything about the game. Make it good because it is good. Try to match the quality I know my team can put out. Now it's something else entirely and I have worked out the proper percentage and done the math on how many sales we need to meet Industry Standard, which is our big goal. I'm not sure how I feel. It's weird. The comic is going great- the first six pages are fully inked, the cover is nearly done, the colorist is getting ready to work, the letterer just has to wait til that's done, and our public relations guy has a table at G-Fest to promote the comic with these six pages, and has a printing service lined up and ready to go. And I'm in charge of over seeing it all because I was the idiot who decided to bring this all together. I hope to God I don't let these guys down. For an example of what a good job the team is doing and is capable of? For the colorist and letterer, we had a test. The main artist had done a black and white comic as a commission for IDW or some such, just a short Godzilla tale. So to test the colorist, we had him do the first six pages of the non lettered B&W comic. To test the letterer, we had her letter those six pages using the script of the finished black and white comic. It needs some polish, but these are both only first runs, no edits, and I think it shows the potential of this team:    I guess I'm sharing all of this because I'm so excited about how it's developing and also very worried I'm going to let them down. We're going to focus on digital only sell, and I was wondering if any of you guys had any advice on that topic? Any idea how to get your comic noticed, the best places to put it up for sale on? The best pricing? We're planning to sell it for $3 even, and I have a few places in mind to put it up at, but I would really appreciate any help.
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Jul 3, 2014 05:07
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DrSunshine posted:I wonder what Leonardo Da Vinci would've done had he had access to a Cintiq tablet and Mangastudio/Sai/Photoshop CS6? 
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Jul 3, 2014 06:04
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My sad, daily autobio comic is chugging along really well. I've started talking to people about helping me get the site in better shape so I can start advertising it, which will hopefully start getting me enough of an audience to make finding sponsors, advertisers, and maybe a donation button worth my time. I'm not getting close to my bandwidth or anything, so right now the comic still isn't costing me anything but time and potential dates. The basic format is I do a "real" monthly story and then a daily slice of life. Here's the website for Life and How to Live It and here's the most recent monthly comic, which I'm really proud of.    Obviously the monthlies are more detailed than the dailies, but the dailies seem to get more attention. Which is a little surprising to me. I have a plan to expand the comic into me doing other people's stories, too. One of the most important things I've gotten out of doing this has been the feeling of being heard. So the idea is to do an interview (possibly a podcast?) with people who submit stories to me, gathering all the details about the tale they're telling and finding out about their lives. Then, I go off and make the comic without further input to (hopefully) show them when I have the final product that I truly heard their story and expressed it based on a real understanding of what they were trying to say. Anyway, that's my lofty goal. I hope to start making those recordings and comics by this fall. Though it's summer in Oregon and it's loving gorgeous outside, which makes it hard to want to stay home and make comics.
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Jul 3, 2014 07:35
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Burkion posted:And I'm in charge of over seeing it all because I was the idiot who decided to bring this all together. Most people get up in life by being the one who says "fine, I'll do it myself!". Stop worrying and keep ploughing forward and you'll do no worse than anyone else does at anything. I can't actually see the pages at the moment because work blocks them, but I'm pretty interested in CKC so I'll check them out later.
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Jul 3, 2014 10:13
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Hey, can we submit an animated GIF for the OP thumbnails?
Avshalom fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 10:59
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Burkion posted:Any idea how to get your comic noticed, the best places to put it up for sale on? Generally for digital stuff the best way to get your comic "noticed" is to plug away at it for years and years without many people knowing about it, but that doesn't seem like it'll work for the digital floppybook model here. People on the Internet are very familiar and don't really care to look at things they don't immediately recognize, hence the slow burn of raising awareness over years. The fact that it has the actual Godzilla in it could work in your favor but I wouldn't put all my hopes on it, paywalls on the Internet can be tricky to do right. You can try selling it on Gumroad, they let you set a base price and stick a + at the end in case someone wants to pay more than the minimum, but people aren't entirely willing to pay hard-copy prices for a digital book. Depending on how many pages the digital book actually is you might want to try selling it for $2+ or $0.99+ and not $3, to get more people willing to pick it up at the minimum price rather than putting them off by asking too much for a .pdf. And you shouldn't expect people to just spread the word-of-mouth for you, that's part of where building your own audience comes in and there are other recent companies (who shall remain nameless) who failed specifically because they depended on this where it just didn't materialize. The old floppy book market isn't really the standard anymore, the Internet is a very freemium culture nowadays and no matter how bad you want to get paid you have to work within that context, regardless of what you're selling. You have to remember that whatever you put behind a paywall someone somewhere is probably doing a similar thing for free, that's the nature of the beast.
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Jul 3, 2014 20:52
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One thing I feel like I need to clarify right quick- Godzilla is NOT in our stable of characters we can use. I don't think I made myself clear enough on that, so I'll restate it- those pages were from an earlier job Frankie did. We wanted to see how the colorist and letterer would do with some of his work, so we used that as the test to see how their styles would mesh before the real work started. The actual pages won't be out until next week, in time for G-Fest. I have never heard of Gumroad before, so this is already extraordinarily helpful.
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Jul 3, 2014 22:13
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Burkion posted:One thing I feel like I need to clarify right quick- Godzilla is NOT in our stable of characters we can use. You might have a steeper climb ahead of you, then. Unfamiliar IPs take a bit of time (like years worth) to warm people up to spending money on, and if you want to support a small troupe of creators with an industry-standard living wage you might be in a bit of trouble meeting your goals.
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Jul 3, 2014 23:46
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Reiley posted:You might have a steeper climb ahead of you, then. Unfamiliar IPs take a bit of time (like years worth) to warm people up to spending money on, and if you want to support a small troupe of creators with an industry-standard living wage you might be in a bit of trouble meeting your goals. We know *THAT* is quite unreasonable, the earning an industry standard wage. That's just our absolute best case scenario. Our aim for it to be actually successful is a fair bit lower than that. We just need to make enough to justify its existence to ourselves and push forward with it. I ran the numbers. With the payment system I have set up, we would need to sell, at 3 dollars, ignoring the cut taken by whichever service accepts our book (which I noticed Gumroad handily includes a built in calculator to account for that) 3400 copies. That is a ridiculous number to expect to be able to sell, especially for a comic that uses the universe of an indie game that's only just hit the alpha stage and isn't widely available yet. How this first issue preforms will tell us where we should adjust from here.
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Jul 4, 2014 03:33
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Alright, so I finally managed to get a few pages done and set up on the site, so I figured now would be a good time to ask for some early feedback. Work out all the kinks I can, as early as I can, ya kno'. By this point I've been starin' at these pages long enough to become blind to 'em, and I haven't shared them with anyone else yet, so this would be a good time to get an 'outside perspective' to it. I'll just link the site, since posting the pages individually would take a whole lot of vertical space and really wouldn't convey what I kinda wanna go for with the way I set the pages up. So if ya'll kind folks wanna take a peek and maybe spare two cents: We the Shades I've still gotta work on my art, both in the traditional improving sense, and in the sense of juggling between trying to produce good-looking pages but in a reasonable amount of time, given my little spare time. I'm still in the process of kinda finding my 'style'. Anyway, thanks in advance for any feedback, it's much appreciated.
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Jul 4, 2014 19:56
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Robohobobro posted:Alright, so I finally managed to get a few pages done and set up on the site, so I figured now would be a good time to ask for some early feedback. Work out all the kinks I can, as early as I can, ya kno'. By this point I've been starin' at these pages long enough to become blind to 'em, and I haven't shared them with anyone else yet, so this would be a good time to get an 'outside perspective' to it. I'll just link the site, since posting the pages individually would take a whole lot of vertical space and really wouldn't convey what I kinda wanna go for with the way I set the pages up. So if ya'll kind folks wanna take a peek and maybe spare two cents: First off, I really like the formatting and the creative use of paneling (especially the panel featuring the tree). The overall painterly look seems to also fit with the subject matter you are going for. I think the part with characters talking around the gunned down man could use more varying contrast in the grays. While you do have a few spots of blacks, most of the panels are just kind of a mid-tone gray, which tends to bleed together after a while. Also, the last part, while still has the painterly look, seems a little bit more rushed than the above parts. Also, I would like to say, that I just finished the first story arc of my comic Old Bones & New Meat. I would love some feedback, if possible- first page is here- Haunted Painting. Page 1 AAAND here's a page for my new chapter- 
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Jul 5, 2014 01:22
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Sidulus posted:Also, I would like to say, that I just finished the first story arc of my comic Old Bones & New Meat. I would love some feedback, if possible- first page is here- My only comment is on navigation: please either have buttons below the pages as well, or have it so clicking the comic page advances to the next page .
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Jul 5, 2014 03:14
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Mercury Hat posted:My only comment is on navigation: please either have buttons below the pages as well, or have it so clicking the comic page advances to the next page Yeah, I've been trying to work on that comic navigation widget. For some reason it's been giving me issues. :/
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Jul 5, 2014 06:21
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Sidulus posted:First off, I really like the formatting and the creative use of paneling (especially the panel featuring the tree). The overall painterly look seems to also fit with the subject matter you are going for. I think the part with characters talking around the gunned down man could use more varying contrast in the grays. While you do have a few spots of blacks, most of the panels are just kind of a mid-tone gray, which tends to bleed together after a while. Ah, thank you! You're right about the contrast, the brush I use (SAI's acrylic brush), has a blending effect to it. So when I worked on that page panel a time, picking colours from the previous panel, the colours kinda gradually blended closer to each other. I'll revisit the page and add some contrast to it. Also yeah, I kinda rushed the last part, I tried a different approach with it, tried to work on a page as a whole, systematically. Working panel-by-panel works better for me, it seems. One thing I'm still iffy about, is the font. It's actually a font I made myself (except one part where I used Ale & Wenches), and I'm not sure about it's readability/looks. Does it work, or should I go for an 'actual' font from Blambot or such? If so, any font suggestions? I'm not too familiar with fonts.
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Jul 6, 2014 10:30
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just going to drop this here warning this picture is large 3rd big splash page I've finished, I'm getting slightly faster at these but still not fast enough
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Jul 6, 2014 17:56
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Operant, I appreciate the toil you undertake just to see these pages. I love seeing all that detail and so many unique character designs in one place!
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Jul 6, 2014 19:03
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Operant posted:just going to drop this here Ok so [obligatory statement about how awesome this is with a jealousy undertone]. Saw this pop up on my Tumblr feed and had to reblog. One way I enjoyed this page was to use it like a Where's Waldo page by finding the people in the inset panels in the splash image. Fun! How long did these used to take you compared to now? Also what hardware/software do you use to draw? E: Also, did you sneak Dhalsim in there? 
Dass Niemand fucked around with this message at 02:16 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 6, 2014 19:05
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Dass Niemand posted:Ok so [obligatory statement about how awesome this is with a jealousy undertone]. Saw this pop up on my Tumblr feed and had to reblog. One way I enjoyed this page was to use it like a Where's Waldo page by finding the people in the inset panels in the splash image. Fun! MAYBE I use photoshop CS4 and a wacom intuos. These kinds of pages used to take me 30-40 hours and now its in the 20-25 range. I will make an effortpost about my process sometime like the coloring tutorial I posted earlier in the thread. Jealous of kaiju comic guy by the way..
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Jul 7, 2014 10:30
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Ok, completely unrelated but I took some time today to work on this idea I had to help me a bit, then I worked it on a bit more then I should have Its basically a WIP map of all combat operations that transcribe in the first chapter of the story. ITs ought to help me a bit as its quite hard to keep track of things by simple notes, plus it looks cewl and poo poo. Also, the work I did for my handwriting is begining to show, manage to whip those up relatively quick and with no hussle. Im going to ink the remaining stuff and color the main map with light colors to give a hint of a heightmap, even if for the most part the map will be of the operations.
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Jul 9, 2014 03:16
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OK I've knocked out two more pages of my penguin comic. What happens when you end up enjoying a peripheral character more than your main character?   Don't ask me how a penguin manages to tie a slip knot.
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Jul 9, 2014 05:13
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Saw this linked on Facebook and thought it was really interesting. http://thegeneha.tumblr.com/post/91150446121/how-to-sell-comics-at-a-comic-convention It's Gene Ha talking about the different ways people sell comics at comic conventions. I finally finished page 26, and am now working on page 27. I'm hoping I can figure out some more dynamic panels for it. Only 4 more pages left!
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Jul 9, 2014 15:51
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I don't exactly know to preface this, but I will try to explain it as hard as I can (and apologies but this is the only place I thought this was appropiate). This is a recent excerpt from a thing I am writing, its the script for the first page of my comic, a relative work in progress. Ussually what I do is write the dialogue in Greek, then translate it into English. I have a hard time visualising dialogue in English, so for the most part I have to translate and revise it again so that it sounds as close to natural as I can. So, the thing is, I am not sure if this is working exactly. I don't have any native english speaker around me at hand to show this too, so I believe I am stranded to posting in this thread hoping with a better grasp of the language can help me here. Any comments and critiques over this are appriciated. For context, three characters, Oron, Archipelagia and Apotheus, outdoors, have had good food and watered down wine for themselves when Archipelagia brings up a discussion about a plot point came up. After a long monologue ( said monologue for people interested http://pastebin.com/9vpGZRp1 ) the following covnersation takes place. quote:Apotheus: Look, you’ve been here stationed for two years almost, and every day I learn something new about you.  And not to leave the post pictureless, this is a WIP I am working on that show all the equipment used by one faction in my story.
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Jul 10, 2014 23:45
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I have a money question. I’m working with a suite of artists on a small anthology set in a major city. The book is off to the printers soon, and we’re looking to sell it at conventions in the fall. The purpose of the book is to get our names out there as talented creators; so it functions more of a portfolio piece than a profit motive. Many of us would like to work in the industry, but need some paper to our names before we’re taken seriously. So, the question is - how much do we charge for the book? Print costs were covered by the writers involved, and the heroic artists worked for free, so even if I burnt the books in an alley we’d break even. Any profits we do make will go into reprints / convention tables to further promote the book and its contributors. The book is 80 pages of comics from 8 writers and 11 artists. It’s going to be a 8.5” by 5.5” book with a boss glossy cover. None of us have names you'd recognize, but we have some very talented up and coming artists on board! Here’s some samples!      So... what would you suggest?
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Jul 11, 2014 00:10
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TheGreekOwl posted:I don't exactly know to preface this, but I will try to explain it as hard as I can (and apologies but this is the only place I thought this was appropiate). This is a recent excerpt from a thing I am writing, its the script for the first page of my comic, a relative work in progress. This is the first page? TOO. MANY. WORDS.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:17
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I dunno. It could work if he's making it an enormous, Euro-style folio comic.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:21
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Squidster posted:I have a money question. Really? Everyone involved just sort of ate the bullet for the book? Well if it's all printed and nobody is looking towards making any money off it, I wouldn't go over $10. It may be underselling yourself but most people probably don't know who you guys are and you want to get your comic in that impulse zone where someone is willing to drop the money without thinking.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:23
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al-azad posted:Really? Everyone involved just sort of ate the bullet for the book? To be clear, I have rough sales prices and costs worked out, for use with resale at comicbook shops and so on. But that's all theorycraft, and I'd like to get some strangers input on pricing.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:26
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Squidster posted:I have a money question. Rule of thumb is whatever your manufacturing cost is, triple it and you have a sale price. At conventions it helps to round to the nearest $5 just because people show up with $20s and it's the easiest to make change. If it cost you $6 a book to print, sell it for $20.
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Jul 11, 2014 00:41
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$12-15 would be about what I would do. Is the book perfect bound or saddle stitched? What's your quantity?
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Jul 11, 2014 01:18
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