I still do it the old fashioned way. But I might change my mind later.
on August 20th, 2009This looks like it might come in handy:
Artists! Gain incredible superpowers…with the help of your computer! The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics shows how to give up pencil, pen, and paper and start drawing dynamic, exciting comics art entirely on the computer. Author Freddie E Williams II is one of DC Comics’ hottest artists and a leader in digital penciling and inking—and here, in clear, step-by-step directions, he guides readers through every part of the digital process, from turning on the computer to finishing a digital file of fully inked comic art, ready for print. Creating a template, sketching on the computer, pencilling, and finally inking digitally are all covered in depth, along with bold, time saving shortcuts created by Williams, tested by years of trial and error. Step into the digital age, streamline the drawing process, and leap over the limitations of mere physical drawing materials with The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics.
On my Facebook page, Dean Olson wonders why I can’t just digitally ink my pencils and save lots of time. There is a function called Live Trace, and if Live Trace can trace, can’t it just trace my pencils and save me the hassle of inking?
No.
I don’t do full pencils anymore and haven’t since sometime in 2003. I only do full pencils when I am inked by other artists and I don’t let other artists ink me anymore.
There’s a term “think in ink” which refers to people like me who draw directly in ink without tight pencils.
Not only is Live Trace kind of dicey for getting a clean, finished line suitable for using in a comic, but there would be nothing of my pencils to trace. I sketch in perspective lines and loose figure drawings, and that is about it. On a very complicated page, I may do a portion of architectural rendering, allowing the lines of the buildings on one half of the drawing to sit in for the perspective grid on the other half. Since some of the paper I use is opaque, I can’t sit my paper on a light table over a perspective grid. So, I have to make sure my perspective lines are solid early on in the process.
I could scan some of my doodles and pop them up here and say “I ink directly from that”, but then you might not believe me anyway.
It takes longer to do an architectural rendering in pencil tight enough to be suitable for the live trace feature than it would for me to just do the drawing in ink in the first place.
Sometimes as I go along on a page, I realize I need more guidelines and do some more sketching before final inking. But I conceptualize most things in my head. Composition is taken care of in the thumbnails.
I work with Deleter Neo-Piko Line2 markers, which are lightfast and waterproof, and started using the Faber Castell Pitt Artist Pen about two weeks ago, which uses real India Ink. The Faber Castell pens have a slight chisel point which I don’t like quite as much, but if the ever come out with a very fine point to match the Neo-Piko Line2 .03, I will dump Deleter. They are hard to get, expensive and wear out fairly quickly. I buy out the inventory of every supplier I find.
Some Faber Castell pens also come with a brush tip. Since that is India Ink in there, you can travel with your work and leave the jars of ink at home.
I used to use nothing but crowquills. But there is no advantage to them, as they are messier and harder to handle, and don’t travel well. Sealed, brand new jars of ink leak while on planes, and my favorite pen tips are no longer being manufactured. The Japanese tips are OK, but there was a Hunt point I preferred I can’t find anymore.
I doubt I will ever completely switch to computer inking, and not all things computer are better. No original art, obviously. And I don’t find inking figures on a computer is any faster than by hand.
I have never seen anyone pull off the inking technique on computer I am using on Gone to Amerikay. The A Distant Soil technique has less fine rendering, so that’s something I could do on computer if I wanted, but no. There’s too much value in the original art, and those sales finance the book.
Backgrounds are easier on computer, but I haven’t mastered them yet. I don’t think a lot of other people using the computer have mastered them either: generic and characterless.
A simple computer drawing aid that can’t be beat: perspective lines.
I use my computer to make grids. I print them out as needed and save the ones I have already used for other shots. I plop them on a lightbox and start drawing right on top of them. It’s wonderful to not have draw orthogonal lines, or to suss out the spacing and worry about my cone of vision. I can choose an angle, manipulate it a bit, print it out, and there it is. I don’t even have to worry about my page slipping and losing my vanishing point, which is often somewhere on the other side of the drawing table.
Even if I eventually learn to do everything on computer with ease, I will not give up original art entirely.
I spoke with a very well known illustrator the other day who mentioned that cheap computer art has driven down the rates paid to many artists. The only real money she makes now is on the sale of her spectacular originals. But a bad economy has scared away many of her collectors. I have one of her drawings, but can’t afford her paintings. Her oil glazing technique is magical.
All these how-to posts have brought several publishers to my door, wanting more how-to books from me. That’s nice. But not now. And they really need to add another zero to that check. Just sayin’.
Also, my art auctions continue on ebay. Sandman, Tori Amos, A Distant Soil, more. I will continue to sell art for a few more weeks, and then it’s back to the vaults.
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Live Trace — BWAHAHA! Oh man, that’s a good one. *wipes tears of laughter away* Live Trace, with its bazillion nodes in the vector art it generates that will choke EPS output; its wacky posterizing, and its lame threshold settings. I’d rather scan in pencils done by a third-grader on a sugar high, darken them, and then laboriously clean up the lines pixel by pixel with the pencil tool. Or just jam an X-Acto under my fingernails. Either way.
Painter does have some decent inking brushes as defaults. If you learn to tweak the brush settings in Photoshop and micromanage them (and you have a decent tablet and pen), you can get some cool ones there, too. But it can easily kill a day or two, as you futz with them.
LOL! OK, good answer! Should have let you write this post!
I’ve used Live Trace on REALLY simple stuff. REALLY simple.
You’re right: you’ll get better results out of a tweaked xerox.
I have Manga Studio, but I have never taken the time to use it much. Some people swear by it. And there’s a “line smoothing” tool, which is supposed to be all that, but I don’t know why I would need it. My hand drawn lines are smooth enough.
Are you sure there isn’t a fine tip Faber Castell black ink pen?
Ah!
Black, Fineliner Set of 4 — Includes one Black pen in each of four sizes, including Extra Fine, Superfine, Fine, and Medium.
http://www.dickblick.com/products/faber-castell-pitt-artist-pens/
I usually do my blacks with my rapidographs, so I didn’t get the black fine tips when I bought a slew of the colored Faber Castells early last spring.
I already have those.
When I am talking about a fine tip, I am talking about a finer tip than Faber Castell manufactures. The Deleter has the tiniest little point EVAH. And it has a slight give so you get a line variance when you ink with it. Quite nice. The older version of that pen tip was better, though the ink wasn’t as fine quality.
I used to use Rapidographs, and they now sit here gathering dust. I do not miss all those clogged pen tips.
To make the point (so to speak,) the Deleter point is so sharp and fine that I have permanently tattooed my hands after accidentally stabbing myself with it on several occasions.
I want a pen I can stab myself with!
LOL! Okay.
I have a subcutaneous tattoo spot like that myself on my left index finger — I stabbed myself with my … 00 rapidograph nib, I think it was.
But I can understand the Search for the Finest Line.
LOL! The Faber Castell’s are actually quite nice and I do use them, but I can’t use them for this hatching technique I am doing now. They aren’t delicate enough.
Yeah – I’d be screwed.
http://coppervale.livejournal.com/230730.html
I have a bag full of old rapidographs and tips left over from hands-on retouching of duck and mouse story stats. Lots of memories tied up in those things!
When I was still doing hand work for manga lettering and retouch (as recently as 2003), I used Sakura pens for line retouch on stats, and Alvin pens for bigger stuff. These days it’s all digital (thank you Wacom, people.) But I love using the pens for sketching and drawing my own stuff.
I was just looking at some original comic art by V.T. Hamlin and Don Newton. I’m a curmudgeon–I can’t imagine anything that beautifully drawn being done in a program. There’s a physical relationship between the artist and the art that comes through in hand-drawn work.
Wow, I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been doing all that retouching by hand! Holy cow!
And it wasn’t until last year that Mr J got me a Cintiq that I began to get any facility with the computer art. I don’t know how people did it with a mouse.
I’m in agreement with you about the hand-drawn thing. There are some things best done on computer, and some things best done by hand. I like being able to get oil painting effects on the computer, but being able to do an oil by hand is even more interesting to me. I realize the benefits of doing things by computer, but will not stop doing hand work.
There is nothing like seeing original work. It seems like magic.
I guess I feel the same way about handmade furniture, or a quilt, or home made Christmas ornaments.
It IS magic. When I was first waffling about whether I really could draw comics, given how little training in pen and ink I actually had, I found two pages at a dealer’s booth at a con which opened up the world to me. One was drawn by Dan De Carlo, one by Steve Rude. The De Carlo page had so much corrective paint on it it looked like a topographic map of Arizona, and yet we all know how sleek it would have reproduced– Betty and Veronica always had every hair in place. The Rude page was so perfect it looked like it had hatched out of an egg that morning and never been touched by the hand of man. Except for a teeny wee spot of white gouache about the size of a comma down low near a pretty girl’s eye. A stray lash, perhaps. But it made it abundantly clear that anybody can fix things, so screwing up didn’t matter. The clouds broke open and the angels played banjos and I bought a big tube of white paint and went home happy.
WE DID IT BY HAND, BY GORSH, WHICH WAS THE FASHION AT THE TIME
Yeah, for me, the physical connection to the artwork is very important. A pencil feels different from a pen; one type of pen feels different from another. The differences in feel affect the way I use them, too. One pen connects with the paper in a way that feels similar to me like a pencil, and I end up using it that way. It’s an interesting aspect of how the medium ends up meaning everything of the physical process.
I’m not sure that computer art will ever be big for me. But then, I don’t intend to make a living from my artwork – that’s mostly for my own satisfaction. But, even so…. I’ve started considering getting and learning to use a 3D landscape modeling program — because I want to better visualize the landscapes of my fantasy novel. If I do go that route (and it’s possible, I’m just doing research right now), what I’d do in the program would probably be a bit on the crude side, because it would only be for references for “hand art”.
But I have to admit, once the idea occured to me, it has grown in attraction. There are places in my fantasy world that I really would like to “see” better.