can haz artz?

[darthneko]

I'm practicing the actual professional version of how to color comic book style, which involves photoshop and NOT painter, and speed over painstaking painting, and excessive use of your lasso tool and brushes set on multiply and screen. Ideally, one should be able to knock out a whole page in this style in a few hours

Comments

[niqaeli]

Okay, I have to say I am impressed! I didn't really like this picture when you first posted it without coloring; it was good but it just didn't resonate with me, you know? Which is totally a personal thing and all, of course, but my point is that I love it this pic now with the colouring! The muted scheme really makes it *feel* wintery and I love the snow, and I love that he's wearing khaki and green, and the magic is *neat*.

[darthneko]

Yay! Thank you. ^___^ I was okay with the lineart - it's better than anything else I've done recently - but yeah, the color sort of makes it for me.

Deleted and reposted, because that question was unclear...

[lady_ravenlocke]

Yay! More Ghosts art! And of the boy who sucked me into your journal to begin with! [/Fangirling...maybe]

On the more technical end of things, I really like the colors here, as well as all the different textures. And that sky! And the magic effect! All of that is gorgeous!

Question: Just how did you get the magic effect in Photoshop? I do post-production work on some of my digital rendersin photoshop, but I've never done anything like that.

Re: Deleted and reposted, because that question was unclear...

[darthneko]

Heee! ^____^ Thank you!!

As to the effect, I point you at a tutorial - making custom fractal brushes in photoshop. I have a whole collection of these things now and will be using them shamelessly for effects. More specifically, it's a fractal brush done in white on a separate layer, and then outside glow in pale blue is applied to that layer and the layer mode itself is set to either overlay or hard light, I can't remember, and faded out a bit.

[fleurrochard]

Rose. It is July. And while it has gotten cooler for the last few days it is still summer and I'm sitting here in a tank top and I shouldn't be shivering.

Aka: wow, does that ever look like winter!
And I love the sky (a real winter sky!) and the magic is just cool!

[darthneko]

Yaaaay! I'm so glad everyone's saying the winter feel works. I was agonizing over it - "can it look wintery if I'm using warm colors? There's no accumulated snow on the ground! aaah!" I'm thrilled it worked! Thank you!

[adifferentdrum]

...............you knew i was going to say something didn't you? XDDD

And it's the TINEST easily fixable thing. XD You might want to dull out those two lone trees that are fully rendered in the BG as they're the same saturation of his hair and kinda compete a bit. Make a copy of the image and set it to greyscale. You should have a full range of values in there instead of too much of any part of the value range. :3

I still think you went a little too over rendery but it's ALWAYS better to OVER do and pull it back. :D It's not that it took you forever because you didn't know what you were doing is that you overworked it. :3

However for a pinup man that be sexay~

[darthneko]

Ahhahaha! Thank you. I was cross eyed by that point and couldn't figure out how to knock those back properly. No prob. still got the psd with all the layers saved, will adjust it tomorrow at work. ^___^

It's totally a pinup/cover, so I stand by my overworking. ^___^ (I figure I do this first, and then a bunch of little panels will be a piece of cake in comparison for how much less detail they have in them. See my logic!) And it was going ALOT faster by the end - the trees went zip for the actual rendering, then another hour spent tweaking shades to make them not too distracting. Ditto for reworking the sleeve of his coat, which was a million times faster than it was the first time around. I'm learning!

[adifferentdrum]

Yeah. I can not count the number of times I make myself cross-eyed with my own colors. @_@ That's why I HATE doing them.

I approve of your logic then! :D But yeah... it kinda looks like these two little mini trees floating in the darkness of these blacked out tress. Maybe try a color layer with that brown tone to tie them together and show 'Yes. This is a tree and belongs with these trees.' instead of being... yenno... a car air freshener. XD

GOD. I need to get back to inking on 10-9. I've been dorking on the internetz all damned day. X_X;;;;;

[darthneko]

I always forget that red/black/dark green are basically the same tone/weight, technically speaking. So the tip about coverting to greyscale is a good reminder.

I totally figure plunging in to do proper pages, after I work out my more limited palette of colors, will be a cinch after this. ^___^ (now if only I didn't have bits on pages that need to be redrawn, I would be doing that right now. damn you, murphy and your law!)

[nothingtoregret]

That looks like woah, although I have to say that I think it's as much your lines as the colours. That's not to say that I don't like the colours, mind, as they're awesome. :3

I can spot you used a fractal for the magic, but really there's not much you can do with fractals, so I think you've got the best use right there.

I love those trees... it reminds me of being at school, and my last job where I could see a row of birches from my window. They're a real sod to draw too.

Ultimately, I need someone to hand me a fork so I can eat your brains. I'm hugely envious, but completely in love with that whole picture too.

[darthneko]

Hee! Thank you! And I figure, since the magic is mathematically based, what better FX for it than a fractal? ^___^

Birches are totally ass to draw, but it's by far the most easily recognizeable tree short of pine trees, and pine trees are equal amounts of ass to draw close up. So I guess I picked the lesser of the evils. [g]

Alas, I'm afraid after this I don't have much brains left. x_x