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Okay, so the picture I was stressing about so much is actually finished.. I managed to fuck around in flash long enough to make something decent. I'm actually kind of proud of this one!
The Hare.
(came out a little lighter than expected, though)

Feel free to comment.

That.. Wasn't exactly helpful, but okay. If you're referring to that previous image of my little piece of 'comic'.. It's not meant to be soft and standard hatching. You could have the feeling it doesn't work of course, but non the less, that was the style I was going for.

It's a pretty cute drawing, and good use of shading for a first. Tiny little lego-hands add to the cuteness.

At 4/25/11 09:26 PM, Kumakun4 wrote:

At 4/25/11 06:05 PM, YellowisCOOL wrote: my shitty printer won't let me scan it onto the computer

...what.

Yup I think we found the problem there.

Saw this thread and couln't resist..

The best pin-ups are the slightly flawed ones.

.. Jesus fucking assfuck. I am very tired, very frustrated and very disappointed in myself. I best leave the full rant for in my blog or something, but for a tiny taste: For the umpteenth time I have tried to become a smooth and clean drawing that resembles or is a vector drawing (a fucking easy drawing at that) and I've failed horribly. I started out in Photoshop, then went over to Flash, then went over to Illustrater and now I went over to bed and am trying my best not to bite my toungue too hard.

Long story short, I could just really use some advice or maybe a link to a good tutorial for either drawing in Flash MX (the biggest problem there was with the sketch I imported) or Adobe Illustrator CS (the biggest problem there was how the brush worked, wtf was that) or maybe even Adobe Photoshop CS. The drawing I include should become the underlying drawing over which I'll draw the clean version.
The FFFUUUU is added for better mood setting. Honestly, the only thing I want is the shit that's now coloured black, to be redrawn in a solid, clean, full black drawing. I don't even care about the background. I can't understand how something like that could be so difficult..

Anyway, thanks in advance.

Okay, this has gotten boring. Burp.

About the comic: it's fun and actually better than I expected at first. Some things are a little childish, but I guess it works with the genre. The main thing you should work on is anatomy, perspective, page layout and some refinement in the way you draw (ink), although you're pretty creative with the layout already. That's good. Still, buy some books on anatomy, manga and comic-making, it can only help.

And now for the bad news: If that's the way your comic is going to look as a final result, there is no way it's going to get published. Even if you ink it in and still retain the same layouts and style of characters and background, it's not going to happen. That doesn't mean that you should give up so easily, but making a comic that's good enough to get published (or be succesful when it's self-published) is very hard, and yours is simply not good enough. Visually and story-wise.

Yes, I'm putting this pretty bluntly, but I don't really understand why you would want it published in the first place. That's a pretty professional step, you know. I have the feeling people see this as something that's just the next logical step after you drew something comic-like. To put it in perspective, wanting to get publsihed with a spare-time comic is like thinking you'll get into pro league when you go play soccer wednesday afternoons..
What you always could do is print your comic a few times and get it bound in a cover for your own pleasure first, that's what I'm planning to do when I have enough material. If people (probably family members first) appear interested, invest some money in printing and binding a larger amount. That's how you start. Don't expect it to grow big though. It's probably best if you just keep this a personal pleasure.

I don't know where you live, but I live in a country where we have highschools that specialise in art and music. They have less and generally easier theoretical hours and a lot of practical hours in drawing, designing and whatever, based on what class you're in. You'd think the people that go to those schools are pretty good artists from the start, but a lot of them are 'dropouts' from ASO (the 'standard' highschool system with hardly any practical lessons and a lot of theory) and just like to fumble a bit with pencils etc.
In those schools a lot of the work is still a little 'colouring and glueing' but you do learn in those years, even if it doesn't show when you're there.
Also, I'm talking a little bad about 'ASO dropouts', but a good friend of mine never exactly was an artistic talent, we were in the same class throughout highschool, but she's going to be an art teacher now and she's made shitloads of progress. Mostly in college, though.

Anyway, highschool is highschool, you'll forget almost everything the moment you get out of there, so don't get too hung up over that part of your schooling.
..
Not saying you shouldn't work for it though.

I'm pretty confused-amused by all this. I'm honestly just coming here to see what everyone but GameMasterShania is making.

I am the master of unfinished work! Again, quick sketch of a part of a comic series I was working on. The words roughly translate to "It's a mess. It's a mess, that head. That head of mine."
It's a story applied to the messed up situation very different people are in, sort of a mental overlapping monologue of being-slightly-fucked-up.

At 4/19/11 06:15 PM, MasterMerol wrote: Hot! Reminds me of Gollum. Maybe a female gollum?
Pretty awesome new drawings.

Hehe, a lot of people have said that about that drawing. And thanks.

I miss working with ink.. I should buy a new bottle sometime. Tiny drawing from a few months ago.. I was planning to make a comic in this style.
But then I didn't.

Against the Wall.
Yup.
I'm a little tired of drawing in photoshop, wanted to have more feeling with my drawing again.

(also, new portal submission)

Oh hey, fresh new sketch again. I felt like drawing one of those adverture-type girls. You know, the ones with a lot of belts and pouches and a gun only a trained weightlifter could use though she has the arms of a fitnesschick, often encountered in a difficult situation in which she's hardly holding ground, and then the hero (you, if you're playing a game) comes in to save her, but instead of thanking him she goes "I can take care of myself" and punches him in the face, swears (because she's totally hardcore and a strong female figure) and then they both still go in the same direction after a little more squabbling.
You know, that kind.

But she actually turned out a little more original than that.
I hope.

Honestly, the first thing I do is draw a quick sketch with regular pencil and paper, then I scan in it, put a new layer over it in photoshop, colour that layer white, set the opacity of that layer to around 50, make a new layer above it again, and in that layer I start doing actual linework with my tablet in photoshop. You have a good sketch to start from and you can erase as much of your photoshop linework as you like without losing that.

Depends on the effect or kind of drawing you want, I guess?

You could also use coloured pencil which turns into watercolour when you brush a wet brush over it. Conté has those pencils.
A problem you'll always have is that your linework is going to lose a lot of flair when you colour over it. Something you might be able to do is take a lightbox, place your drawing under a white sheet of paper, and do the colouring on that new sheet. That way you could scan both the images and bring them together in something like photoshop, with your linework covering the colours. That way you can keep both those things clean.

I'm only suggesting something so elaborate because I really like your linework and it would be sad if it got lost by colouring over it :D

Okay, it's been a serious while since I've been here (for my doing.. which is about 10 days), but I've been le busy. Anyway, I'm kind of here to update for the sake of updating. I haven't had time to work on my lovely Gnoll, but there might be an update this weekend..
So, here! A nice and pretty lady that had the sad misfortune to be born in the middle ages with a psychological problem. Luckily the good people of the mental institution have kindly taken care of her, as you can see.

At 4/7/11 09:17 AM, BlackAssassiN999 wrote:

D

digital with mouse in corel painter 11

Haha, that's one cute owl.

At 4/5/11 11:42 PM, Spac3case916 wrote: the inks got out of control.....
oh well
SUPER hi-res

WOAH
That's fucking awesome!

Maybe I'm posting too many bits and pieces of this.. Oh well! Another part!
I wasted some serious time on this today.

At 4/5/11 11:38 PM, Spac3case916 wrote: great work!!
awesome to see the development of this too

I like seeing the development too, so I'm posting another wip, but only a part, otherwise the details are completely lost.
This is the first time I ever shaded and coloured something this way.. And it's taking a hellovalotta time. And I don't even know if I'm doing it right, argh. But so far I'm relatively satisfied... It's far from finished, though. Any possible (practical) help would be appreciated.
I'm planning on using colours too, eventually.

At 4/5/11 05:22 PM, ClassicWiseguy wrote: Here is an original peice I just did right after my last post.

I actually like your original more than your first one :D More natural.

Hm, so that took less time than I expected. Here's the lineart for now!

Okay, so I chose to actually do something with my Gnoll druid. I thought It wouldn't hurt if I posted a WIP.. so here is a tiny little foretaste.

At 4/5/11 02:16 PM, MasterMerol wrote: That looks amazing!
What is D&D?

Dungeons & Dragons :D

So... I was uh, sitting on the toilet, reading my D&D Player's Handbook, when I stumbled onto the Druid again and immediatly thought of a Gnoll. I always had a soft spot for hairy humanoids and Gnolls are a good combination of awesomely strong and wild, and a little klutzy and awkward.
Druids are just mostly awesome.
So here, a Gnoll Druid.

I want to colour it in or at least shade it.. but don't know how yet.

Mexico!
Though obesety could be funny.. but it seems so limited.

To be honest, I don't like the shading. It's messy, and stripey. Stripey can be cool, when it's consistent, but when you constantly shade in different directions it becomes messy and unclear. There also isn't a lot of contrast, so everything kinds of blends into one stripey shade. So, if you want to keep shading in lines instead of in (semi-)solid surfaces, try making them a little more consistent and adding more contrast. I bet there are a lot of tutorials on hatched shading.