22/test

[egypturnash]

I dunno if I'm going to follow through on doing all 22 panels but this was a good excuse to thrash out my methodology for Five Glasses of Absinthe. I'm getting a handle on how I'll stylize it all, on how much detail I should put in the pages, and on how much narrative I legibly can fit in this space.



The rules that seem to be emerging:
- There are two colors in any particular page, plus black and white. One of them dominates the page; I'm referring to this one as the 'primary' color of the page, even though it's almost never likely to be a pure, primary color.
- "Grey" is perfectly acceptable as a color! As an experiment I changed this to slightly-blue grey with red-orange as the secondary, and it became bleak and ominous. The whole thing could even go grey at some point, with no secondary color; it's all about what emotional note I want to hit.
- Black is only used for the pupils of the eyes. Pupils of the eyes: 100% of either color, overlaid with the same color at 100% multiply.
- The gutters are filled with the primary color.
- The lettering scan is in the primary color.
- The texture is also in the primary color.
- Gradients may be used, but they may not cross colors - only between tints of a color.
- mixing of colors can be achieved via transparency, but it's discouraged.
- lettering is usually backed with a solid 75% opaque white balloon; no outlines on this. 50% opaque white outline to blur it a little.
- there needs to be at least one serious background on every page, to remind readers how weird this setting is (and to tell new readers about it!).
- it might be a good idea to drop the characters to mostly-silhouette at least once a page, for economy and contrast. flat dark, flat light, flat contrasting color... I can vary it, and vary how many little details avoid silhouetting. Absinthe was going to be a mostly-silhouette in the 'One Big Object' panel here, but her pose was too cramped to work.
- the pen tool is available for the occasional inorganic object, but should be avoided as a rule. Fast and loose shapes with the pencil.

There's only one scan involved, for pencils and lettering. Lettering is inked and may have pencils erased behind it before scanning; it needs to be crisp and have white space around it. The pencils, however, go through the usual process of halftoning. The scan is saved as a 1-bit tiff so I can tone it in Illustrator.

The scan's included twice. Once in the usual fashion as my rough, and on another layer to be masked off and used as the lettering.

I think I need to try Eddie Campbell's method of positioning the words first; some of these were really awkward to place because I drew the image first and didn't leave room for text. One word I can cram in; actual dialogue will not be possible.

This all took maybe two or three hours to put together, which is not too bad. It will go a little faster once I work out a few more rules and internalize them. There's a few contrast issues I really should clean up, but I'd rather let it lie and go on to the actual comic sooner. I think my two colors need to have a bit more value contrast than the ones I used in this page...

Absinthe's white hair is a powerful tool to draw attention to her - if I let it be pure white against a midtone or dark bg, she becomes the most important thing on the page. Which is just how she likes it, of course, since she's pretty narcissistic. Having the white dialogue balloons tempers this effect somewhat (and maybe I should make them a 50-75% overlay instead?), but she's got a lot of contrast going on around her eyes no matter what! I dimmed her hair out in most of these panels, maybe a little too much.

Comments

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I admit, I haven't read the entire post. However, WOW. This is amazingly cool. The -only- problem I have at all is the black. To me, it sticks out and floats above all the rest of the page and, as a whole page composition, it draws my eyes right to that spot and gives them nowhere to go. The texture seems to be missing from the black as well, which adds a contrast or plasticity that's a little jarring. How would the pupils look in the main color?

This style is a winner, Peggy, all around. It's enough to make me hang up my brush right now! More later as I read the post, which I should probably have done first.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I've tried the pupils in the main color, but they just vanish. I might consider doing them as (color + color @100% multiply) - this is essentially what's going on in the deep purple in the middle of the 'frame' panel here. Doing them as just 100% of the color they're in a face of is not enough; they vanish into the eyelids, lashes, and the face.

The post is mostly me making notes to myself. *grin*

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

OK, a little more. I LOVE the two color choices here. I think your reasoning on how to work with them is very sound. They work wondrfully together and add an otherworldiness to the whole feel of the strip, as if the atmosphere itself is composed of some odd gas.

I think the second panel is the most successful as it has the greatest level of contrast. The last panel is a favorite visually though it's a little harder to read without greater value differences going on.

TWO HOURS?!! I think I shall have to kill you now.. :"D

I can see why you'd dull down her hair a little. On the other hand, it gets a little lost in the swirls of the sky. There's lots of room to play with here. You've written some amazing rules and have obviously thought a LOT about this, which is good. Don't let them strangle you, though.

Whatever you end up doing with the word balloons, the one thing I'd suggest is to not make them the same tone as anything else in the panel. I don't think they need to be a consistent color or shade (as is the norm), but I think it helps to separate them if they're not quite the same as her hair, or the 'whites' of someone's eyes, the bottle's label, etc.

Please pardon if all of this rambling is unwanted or annoying. What you're doing is exciting and I only look to help. You know a LOT more about this stuff than I do.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the last panel has shitty value contrast. I could probably fix it by just throwing in another landmass behind her or something.

Maybe more like 3-4, I'm not sure. I did the pencils a couple of days ago, scanned and did most of the AI yesterday, and finished it when I got up this morning. Not inking helps a lot, and having a deliberately sloppy style helps too. The texture layer makes up for a lot of little mistakes!

Doing this page confirmed what I'd realized while doing the cast page image about Absinthe's hair. She has the most contrast around her face of the entire cast, which makes her visually the center all the time. She's the main character so this is mostly okay.

I played around with the balloons in AI - the stark white is a little loud for me, too. I think I'm going to go with 75% opacity white, maybe with a 50% opacity white border, for most dialogue. They'll be a little ghostly, as suits their nature. (And I should put the appearance style for these in the template, too.)

These rules are there to build on, not to constrain myself! This is what the bulk of the comic will look like, but there will be moments of other looks. Full(er) color, chaotic 'painterly' stuff, high-contrast b&w, who knows? Whatever fits the story. I want to make sure the main look is something I can do repeatedly and quickly without getting bored - or without having to spend a day on every panel.

(reload the image, I fucked with the eyes and balloons and knocked back the sky in the last panel.)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

oh, and the other pair of artistic eyes willing to comment and pry are a good thing - especially when most of the issues you're raising go along with the things I see as a little off when I look at it!

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

I try to offer crit when I can as I know how rare it is to get any. Mostly it's just trying to figure out who actually wants it and who doesn't. Last thing I want to do is alienate someone, especially a friend and a talented one at that.

[kamenkyote.livejournal.com]

The eyes look a lot better to me. No only are they not as contrasty, but there's a sense of the overall texture to them as well. Her hair in the last panel, too stands out better while not glaring. Did you play with the opacity on the word balloons as well? They look more airy and I like them better. If not, they.. look great! That's what I meant!

Getting bored over a long period of time is an issue. Seems to me you're going to alleviate that problem with what you draw and not how you draw it. Very very cool stuff. I'm enamored of the skill it took to draw that first panel. I don't think I could draw any of my guys upsidedown. I'm really looking forward to this.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the word balloons are at 75% instead of 100% now.

Know how I drew that first panel? I turned the paper around! This is why I'm starting in the real world. I couldn't draw her upside-down either!

I figure the content should be fun to draw for a while. This whole thing is designed with that in mind; the characters are varied, the world is just total eye-candy, and it's got room for me to stick in crazy visuals.

[abirritate.livejournal.com]

Mm, pretty, and yeah. the contrast (lack) is giving me a headache. Frame makes me very, very happy. :]

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I botched the color choice on this one. Gotta remember to check that there's value contrast between them when I run them at 100%.

Most of what I've made in this so far is a little low-contrast, including some of the art I did a couple years back that this is building on. To some degree I think I just need a pastel-y, low-contrast, dreamy feel to this. I'm drawing on the duotone art that decorated the insides of a lot of L. Frank Baum's books, I think...

[normanrafferty.livejournal.com]

In Understanding Comics, McCloud observed that four-color newsprint comics had a very limited palette, so colorists were obliged to use fewer, contrasting colors -- but since the superhero's outfit had the same colors in every panel, it gave the character a repeating visual imagery.

Since your comic is of a limited palette, you run a strong risk of characters getting lost ... but you've already addressed that issue by giving the characters signature design elements. Your strong sense of design is also helping. I really think you've got something here and I'm looking forward to it.

How do you do the faux tissue paper texture? Is that an Illustrator thing?

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm aping some stuff I've seen in even more limited palettes - a lot of the interior illos in, say, the Oz books would have been duotones. I'm very much aiming for that sort of dreamy, odd-colored feel. The characters are signified by their repeating value imagery, rather than color - no matter what color the page might be, Absinthe's face is always going to be a strip of dark across a midtone, surrounded by white.

The texture is all in AI, but using some of the bitmap effects. You could do the exact same trick in pretty much anything nowadays: make a rectangle that covers the whole image (I usually use 50% grey, but here I'm using the 'primary' color at 100%), run the 'mezzotint' filter on it (or any other quick and easy texturizer; nothing too complicated), then play with the opacity. I usually end up with either 'soft light' or 'hard light' at 5-20%. You could also just scan some real paper and drop that in the same way.

(and hey, that icon looks kinda familiar! *grin*)

[robocoon.livejournal.com]

I've only seen the revised version, but this is just getting more and more interesting. I especially love the transparency on the word balloons and the overall mood that this scheme creates... and the Inspector's cylindrical head 8) (kidding, hee~)

The only things that throws me off are the changes in thickness on the gutters... something about each one being -close-, but a little bit off from each other, is making me get eye wiggles, especially the verticals between panels 1 and 2 and panels 2 and 3&4.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Hey, the Inspector's cylindrical head is part of the fun of drawing him!

Yeesh, I dunno how I got the gutter like that. The right side of the second panel is nowhere near the guide it should've snapped to. I'm going to have to keep an eye on that in production!

[mutleyjames.livejournal.com]

I have little critical to offer - your interpretation of this 22 panel project has completely blown me away.
I flicked through the linked entries and found them to be limited exercises. What you've done is taken it, shaken it and completely owned it.
*love*

I'm too afraid to take the challenge now... you've raised the bar....
:^)

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

I'm probably not going to FINISH the 22 panel project, though! I just picked a few at random to fill up a page with. A sort of narrative lorem ipsum - here's my template, now here's some placeholder content. I can't say I've followed through with the intent of the project, which is to internalize these solutions by doing them yourself...

[mister-wolf.livejournal.com]

So... methodical. I don't put that much thought into whole narrative arcs.

Also, sexy, sexy art.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

What can I say? It's a way to put off actually starting. Plus I just work this way - I play around until I have something that "feels right", then I analyze what makes it "feel right" so I can do more of it.

I mean, I'm going to be posting this thing in my own personal variant of an image gallery package that I've added webcomic functionality to. With my own style of archives, forwards/backwards links, and whatnot. I get lost in fractal details of implementation all too easily.