TWCL

fjunxs · Joined: 08 Jan 2013 Posts: 6

I typically use pens and paper to draw my comics then scan them and edit them via GIMP. I tried a drawing-tablet and also iPad, but didn't like either too much. For me, nothing beats old pen & paper.

amaryllis · Joined: 09 Feb 2013 Posts: 25

I start by hand drawing, scanning in those images and fine tuning in photoshop. I used a Bamboo Create once I've got the images on the computer. Love it!

rocketpig · Joined: 20 Dec 2010 Posts: 404

I've been experimenting with different workflows for my new comic. The drawing/inking portion stayed pretty much the same (pencil on bristol board, inked with quills and brushes) but the coloring portion is now a Photoshop/Painter hybrid. Painter gives the oil paint feel I'm looking for and Photoshop provides a software platform that doesn't lag so horribly and I can detail the pages, adding highlights and shadows to the work.

Then, as always, I letter in Illustrator.
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Lo (Aquapunk) · Joined: 09 Oct 2009 Posts: 44

I use non-photo blue and plain red for penciling, and for the past 3+ years I'd done my inking with a number of different pen nibs and inks. It was becoming way too time consuming and I started to dread the inking process, so I switched to using a Pentel sign pen which has the weight and fixed line thickness I'm looking for. (I'd use a rapidograph but I've heard nothing but grief from people about their maintenance lol.) All this is done on 14x17" bristol board with a live area of 10x15". Coloring and formatting is done in Photoshop.

wrathborne · Joined: 26 Mar 2011 Posts: 25

I'm a digital artist who uses Adobe Flash for my stuff. Course since I've been a flash animator for a decade its a bit conflicted as in a comic, you can have empty space...not so much in animation.

Chris-V981 · Joined: 27 Apr 2013 Posts: 11

just a simple pencil and paper.

The Hat and Fat · Joined: 12 Apr 2013 Posts: 30

I use a combination of Microsoft paint and sketchbook pro, plus a wacom tablet. I put up my panels and some background stuff with MS paint and then finish it off with shading and details with the tablet.

lethalhippo · Joined: 30 Apr 2013 Posts: 14

I use gimp and my mouse... Basically my entire style revolves around creating paths -> editing the setting on ink -> inking the path, and if I need objects I find them online and turn them into an inverted high contrast image, which seems to be working out nicely for me: http://alienintervention.thecomicseries.com/

MindChimera · Joined: 03 Feb 2013 Posts: 104

I took some pictures because pictures are fun:

An old Wacom Graphire 3. The center square is the actual drawing area, with my hand for a comparision. The drawing space is really small, but I got used to that a long time ago; it's only limiting if I want to do broad strokes while zoomed in.

It's somewhere around 10 years old, but it's been in storage for a bit, so it still works as good as ever. I'm not expecting to replace it anytime soon.

As for software, my comic is completely digital, so I use Manga Studio EX 4 for everything.

I hadn't used Manga Studio before starting this project, but I decided to try it for a few reasons.

The program I was using at the time was Paint Tool SAI, which doesn't have a text tool. I'd have to draw my dialogue by hand and I'm not confident I could fit this much text in so nicely.
The only version of Photoshop Elements I own isn't compatible with Windows 7.
GIMP drives me insane.

I'd actually tried to start my comic a few years earlier, drawing/painting it in Paint Tool SAI and lettering it in Photoshop. But I hate exporting to other programs to finish up. If I find a mistake in the drawing, I have to go corrected, re-export it, and put it back in the lettered version. And with how many mistakes I notice late, it's really frustrating to do this constantly. So when I decided to come back to this, and I couldn't use Photoshop Elements even if I'd wanted to, I had to come up with another option.

That aside, even if I'd managed to do the whole thing in GIMP or Photoshop, Manga Studio has a tool specifically for dialogue bubbles and panels. Not that I couldn't do those in other programs, but it cuts down the time significantly.

nsanelilmunky · Joined: 12 Nov 2012 Posts: 107

MindChimera wrote:

[*] GIMP drives me insane. [/list]

Here here!

I'm currently using it and it's driving me batty. Luckily that will be taken care of in a few months. Between my summer job and the student discount, I'll have a MacBook Pro and Photoshop cs6 by the end of the summer. If I make more, I'll even upgrade to an Intuos tablet.

topjimcomics · Joined: 10 Sep 2012 Posts: 58

For those of you that scan an inked drawing, what software do you find best to use for getting that into a clean image? Or is it just foolish to scan an inked drawing, and rather you should ink it in software?

I'm completely new to the digital world, and I am using a Samsung ATIV 500T to do my comics. It runs Windows 8, and I am using Sketchbook Pro (completely digital). I like it because it has a Wacom digitizer. However, I'm just not sure the right way to color/shade. I don't quite understand how to use layers properly with "flats" and the layer modes...
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mcmasters · Joined: 28 Jun 2012 Posts: 289

What I've mainly done until recently was draw in pencil until I had for the most part what I wanted, then trace over in ink with a lightbox or light-tracer (I'm such a dinosaur but the damned thing has served me well). The reason I wasn't inking on the drawing was because I never could pencil lightly. I admire that when I see detailed pencils that are so light you can easily erase them, I on the other hand pencil like I'm holding a carving knife. So my pencils were too dark and messy to fully erase and the scan picked up all the excess garbage. That was pre-GIMP; now after scanning I load it in GIMP and erase excess marks.

That was a long-winded answer that may not have answered the question...I try to scan clean images to start with, then use the erase tool for final cleaning.

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www.mcmasterscomics.com

iaviv · Joined: 03 Sep 2011 Posts: 257

Inking on a separate piece of paper (on top of your pencils) with a light table makes the image clean before you even scan it. That's how I do it with my non-digital work. I still clean the scans a bit because somehow there's always cat hair in it - invisible until scanned! I could get it out and scan again, but it's faster to just clean it up (i.e. - erase unwanted detail) in Photoshop.
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ttallan · Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 12:50 pm Post subject:

I can usually erase my pencil lines well enough before scanning, but I always end up doing more clean-up in Photoshop. Partly this is to get rid of stray pencil marks, but also to fix inking mistakes (which, in my pre-Photoshop days, I would have fixed with white-out).

The next step is also important to getting your scanned art nice and crisp: use the Threshold adjustment, which turns all the greyish pixels around the edges black, so your image ends up pure black and white. You can set the threshold (how dark those greyish pixels need to be before PS considers them "black") to whatever level suits your art.
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Casual Notice · Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 2:11 pm Post subject:

Before I went fully digital, I found that scanning my inks (after erasing my pencils with a frictionless eraser) worked better if I did it in black-and-white mode at it's highest sensitivity. That gave me crisp lines that could be easily smoothed by reduction, later.
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