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Well, I'm back from camping and even found a hole in the time/space continuum where my internet was up and working. I'm trying to get some more fan art uploaded before the connection completely dies. If the internet goes down again hopefully I'll buckle down and sketch out a new page ... although chances are that I'll just play Odin Sphere until I have to go to work. Heck, I may even get crazy and post a couple camping pics.
Anyway, there's an art preview on the "about" page of the Skipping Tomorrows site.
*Disclaimer: the following is going to be just me rambling about boring digital art stuff, you may just want to click away while you can, don't feel obligated to skim-read if you don't want to - it has nothing to do with the Skipping Tomorrows story.
LINE ART:
So I'm stepping away from thick line-art for at least the remainder of Skipping Tomorrows. This is for a couple different reasons, 1 (and the biggest reason) I have no way to clean up my line art and put it into vector format. I was using an ancient PC version of Adobe Streamline on my elderly PC, but during one of my moves this past year "ye olde PC" was mistaken for a dead computer. To a geek, dead computer means one thing - donor machine! Yeah ... when I finally found my senile Hewlit Packard, he was nothing but an empty husk - just a case and a cracked motherboard. Upon some inquiries, I discoverd that my RAM, disc drives, and hard drives all went to deserving, young machines with their whole lives ahead of them. -_-
I've been playing with alternative options - testing out various other programs that have tight raster converters. Illustrator was so incredibly fun to work with, but my time trial ran out and I wanted to try other programs before throwing money at my problem. I'm currently (and by currently, I mean running in the background) messing with Inkscape. There are other free options (even one browser based converter) but I'm limited to mac programs and I'm picky. So (at least vectorized) thick, bold line art for me is not an option for me right now. As much as I enjoy digital painting, I would rather chew on a handful of thumbtacks than utilize digital inking.
Reason #2 for no bold line art is simply that I kind of like the soft, sketchy look. I think it feels more like "mine" if my scanned page looks like it will still smudge if I drag my thumb across it. Maybe this is my inner organic artist fighting my digital side. It's much, much harder and tedious to paint with wispy lines, but I prefer the overall look of it.
PAINTING STYLE:
No more cell shading! This is actually kind of a bummer to me because I prefer cell shading in a colored manga. I guess it helps keep the "anime" feel to it. Monochrome needs to be screentoned and color needs to be cell shaded. So why am I breaking my own preference based rule? Because cell shading is bold and strong with defined edges - my line art is not. For those of you with slower connections, you will notice a considerable loading time difference when the new pages start going up - they're almost triple the file size. Because I will be doing more shading, blending and shadowing, there's so many more color varations. While they don't show up on web-crunched images, I'm also using some textures for fabric and what-not. Heck, I've even begun to care about light source continuity. o.O
DETAIL:
I've always been a very detail oriented person. If I ever had to rush-finish something, it was probably because I was obsessing over miniscule details that no one but me would ever care about. Because my line art is so much thinner now, I've been able to go nuts on details. Things like double seams, button holes, earrings, and wood grains will now be visible. While this might take a little bit of extra time, it seems to even out with the amount of time I would take to ink over a sketch.
BACKGROUNDS:
They will be there. Gone are the days of me using a gradient fill behind EVERYTHING. While I know what Shawn's apartment looks like, I have failed in a huge way to communicate the location to you guys. I'm also done using the five-year-old-coloring-on-a-resteraunt-menu approach to outdoor scenes. If this sounds like me beating myself up, I'm not - I'm apologizing. If I so badly wanted people to read my story, then I should have taken the time to at least tell it completely. Backgrounds aren't part of the script, but they give important information. You may not even conciously look at them but they're used a foundation piece to most panels. So I'm sorry that I was lazy with the character enviornments and I'm making a big effort to not let that happen again.
Wow ... I think that was an official rant. Bravo to you if you read it all - you're probably an artist too if you made it to the end. Hopefully it all made sense. I'd also love input if you feel so inclined. Maybe when I post the first new page I could ask those of you who care for your opinion of the new style. Thanks so much for reading this and the comic!
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5 comments:
Awesome i cant say im surprised as your tag pics have been heading towards the new art style for a while now, it really looks pretty sweet though. it may eventfully be more complicated with detail and lighting effects, but it really does have more character to it, not that the cel shading doesn't but its defiantly more individualistic to the moods your characters will emote; at least i think so. i also think you look at your work too critically. while background detail would be awesome i dont think the simpler color fields distract from the story, and after going back and reading alot of old comics this week your writing and story line are defiantly easy to follow and non-distracting which is defiantly one of your strong points.^^ btw i dont know if youve ever been to this site but its pretty sweet. http://drawn.ca/ especially their comic artist interviews and how to's
The new art style is excellent! ... although with only one sample? Do we get more to judge by shortly?
I'm really liking the new art style! (Well, of what the preview shows, anyway, lol). Thick lines and cell shading do have their place, but I think thinner lines and softer shading is beautiful too. It gives it a realistic feel while still being in the anime style (if that makes sense, lol). I'm definitely looking forward to seeing the comic in the new style :) Keep up the great work!
Whoa...the new art definitely took me by surprise. I have to say that I like it, though. Not better than the old art--I really found the "thick lines" and cell-shading to be unique among the comics I've been reading, but I definitely like this new stuff, too. I think it definitely shows your maturity as an artist, too; I notice that your hands and fabrics and things like that are much, much more detailed.
By the way, I have lots of walls to send you, I just don't know where to sent them. Email me at kalligraphia [at] gmail to let me know.
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