In order to give some of these pages better display, I’ve cropped them and will post in pieces. This gives you the full image you can’t see in the book, shot directly from the original art. Check back tomorrow for the second half of this page.
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I’m careful not to sell any art or post it here without making sure it’s in the digital archives. Recently, I found more than 100 pages of originals from ADS which have never been digitally archived. This page, as well as 6 other originals from this back issue were a happy discovery.
Do you photoshop the patterns into those blasts? Or do you achieve that some other way?
Great question!
Those are old-fashioned, hand-applied Japanese tone sheets. All of the effects on A Distant Soil use this method. I intend to finish all of A Distant Soil by hand, and have been hoarding tone sheets in case they stop making them before I finish the book!
And I love the way this looks without the cropped image. I may try to redo the way this page appears in the next edition of the book.
Thank you for the quick answer! I think I’m perhaps turning into a grumpy old fan, but I much prefer the look of these effects than some of the very digital looking newer effects in comics. I shall have to track down tone sheets…
I like the difference a lot also. I was comparing the images a little while ago. I’m glad you thought to do this for this image. It definitely pops out so amazingly this way.
Thanks! I think the web press printing with old fashioned tone sheets looks better, cleaner, and more organic. Digital scanning can bring out tiny flaws in the tone sheets that the web press does not.
Digitally applied tones have a cold, mechanical quality, IMHO. When I finally get the hang of digital tones, I am not going to try to go gonzo with effects, but to use them to enhance the line work.
I went overboard with tones when I first got them, but I think I have a good handle on them now.
I wish I had thought to crop more pages online like this before.
You can buy tone sheets from Deleter online. I get mine direct from Japan, and if you order in quantity, the shipping charges are reasonable, because you do not pay US retail markup. I also buy my ink and pens from Deleter.
http://deleter-mangashop.com/index_en_usd.html
I fully agree about the cold/mechanical quality of digital effects.
I think it’s pretty normal to go overboard with new techniques when you first pick them up. I recently discovered how cross-hatching adds depth to images and have ended up going overboard with it. A lot of the stuff in my “Cross-Hatching Phase” will probably make me cringe later down the road but right now it’s all about the lines.
Thank you for this link. I’m in art-geek heaven…
I guess it never occurs to Niniri that Seren has been brain-zapped by so many of the Hierarchy so often that he might actually be able to withstand such attacks. Not that they wouldn’t be painful, obviously. But he apparently can endure them more than others would.
But now. He’s their little Rag Doll. Even though his psi-wards are stronger than any others she’s encountered, she still thinks he’s her (and the Hierarchy’s) punching bag. I long to see the day when he really surprises her.
“But NO…” not “now”. Sigh. Oh, to edit!
