How. Does. She. DO IT? *Amber's Coloring*

[Tapewolf]

I do have a question, Amber, when do you add text and speak bubbles?(before or after resizing) and do you have a  special font for the comic?.. I have use default fonts and they seem to get out of focus by the final stages.

She uses 'Pasteris' and adds the speech bubbles afterwards.  I don't know exactly how, or what parameters she uses for the font (I've never quite been able to get it to look right)

Oh, and Masked?  I think that's a perfectly decent rendition of Fa'Lina, and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

If TalonR doesn't add anything to the thread herself, you might want to ask her how she works - she's pretty close to Amber's style (always thought she'd make a good guest artist).

[Nino]

See, all this talk makes me glad I do 80% pixel art. I don't have a scanner, don't have photoshop, but that's not even what I'm talking about.

What I mean is that my work is colored at the same scale as when it's finished so I don't have to bother with working with huge filesizes. I do zoom in to color though, which is kind of the same thing, but no strain on my compy =)

[Kasarn]

I do have a question, Amber, when do you add text and speak bubbles?(before or after resizing) and do you have a  special font for the comic?.. I have use default fonts and they seem to get out of focus by the final stages.

She uses 'Pasteris' and adds the speech bubbles afterwards.  I don't know exactly how, or what parameters she uses for the font (I've never quite been able to get it to look right)

You pretty much have to use Photoshop to add the text as every program handles anti-aliasing differently.

[GabrielsThoughts]

hmm... I'm thinking it would take 3 to 10 hours of digital work, to get that kind of detail.

[Amber Williams]

The issue with DPI is that once it hits the internet, it will automatically crunch to 72 DPI, regardless of if you resized in your program to keep it at 300 DPI.  So there isn't really an active action to shrink DPI for me: When I want to print, I keep it at a large 300 DPI, when I put it online, I shrink the image and then it will automatically convert to 72 DPI.

Honestly I like the large-sized colouring. I used to do the digitial pixel-by-pixel art and it was in some parts a hassle making sure every pixel lined up and there was not a single white speck.  But that's different strokes for different folks I guess.

As Tapewolf mentioned, DMFA's font is Pasteris.  Font and word-bubbles are one of those things that I really can't offer much help on since it usually is better for the artist to come up with a method they find works best for them.

[Turnsky]

Font and word-bubbles are one of those things that I really can't offer much help on since it usually is better for the artist to come up with a method they find works best for them.

definitely, having a large library of fonts tends to help, too..
for the folks who don't already know, these are good places to grab fonts.
Http://www.blambot.com
http://www.dafont.com
http://www.1001fonts.com

and so on.

DMFA's speech bubbles appear to be a rather curved rectangle, with a line tool in use, simple, but rather effective and prolly would save amber the headaches of using the lasso tools like i do.. =p

[superluser]

definitely, having a large library of fonts tends to help, too..
for the folks who don't already know, these are good places to grab fonts.
Http://www.blambot.com
http://www.dafont.com
http://www.1001fonts.com

I think I've downloaded every font from the standard Gentoo library (they have a *ton*).

I would also recommend the HP Lovecraft Historical Society.  They have a lot of historical-style fonts, which can be helpful when you're trying to do things like make something look like an old telegram.  (Also, OCR-A and MICR are nice for making things look like they're supposed to be machine-readable, but that's rare)

[MaskedRetriever]

Oh, and Masked?  I think that's a perfectly decent rendition of Fa'Lina, and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Aw thanks!   

This is actually some of my better ink work; I just got to the coloring stage and realized that Amber was way better at coloring than I bargained for, and as such my inks (which are pretty good) are going to kind of get shown up by Amber's godly coloring, which admittedly I coulda gotten closer to if I'd gone with a higher-resolution paint job.

[xHaZxMaTx]

What really helps make your colouring look more professional without much extra effort is colouring the ink outline to match the fill, usually a little darker.

[MaskedRetriever]

What really helps make your colouring look more professional without much extra effort is colouring the ink outline to match the fill, usually a little darker.

*rattles cane*

D'yew see any colored outlines on Amber's work outsidea the Warp Acis?

Why back in my day we didn't have no fancy colored outlines!  There was black, and there was grainy fill color!  We liked it!  We loved it!  We--

Okay honestly I just figured out how to do it in photoshop, even *with* the anti-aliased brushwork which kept me from doing a hi-rez version.  However the primary weakness of this one is the lack of attention to detail in the wings.  Most of the smooth surfaces came out almost reasonably.  The wings just look like they were colored in MSPaint with the spray tool.

[Azraelle]

Interesting that Amber doesn't use the anti-alias feature EVER.  I on the other hand ALWAYS use anti-aliasing.  I keep my outlines on a separate layer, and if I have to color them, I just blob the brush over them.  Helps to make sure "Preserve Transparency" is on though.  That way, any pixel in the layer that has any opacity to it at all keeps it, and you don't add anything to the layer.

For scanned line art, I make it its own layer (background copy), invert it, copy the whole layer to clipboard, make a NEW layer that's filled-in black, then make a mask for it.  I then paste the clipboard contents into the new mask channel, and delete the background copy.  Tada, perfectly recreated lineart without any re-draws.  Heck, it could be made into a macro action.

Anyway, it's all up to the artist what they use, what they are comfortable with, and so on.  I just like learning how other artists do their tricks so I might learn something new.  Mainly I'm looking for shortcuts and time-savers, but anything that might improve my art quality is very nice to know too.

[MaskedRetriever]

I actually hate anti-aliasing but painting directly in hard-edged brushtrokes gets irritating.  Scanned lineart is WAY easier to work with, but to get it I have to use a brush which takes for EVAR to clean.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

definitely, having a large library of fonts tends to help, too..
for the folks who don't already know, these are good places to grab fonts.
Http://www.blambot.com
http://www.dafont.com
http://www.1001fonts.com

and so on.

One thing to be aware of is that windows doesn't deal well with -extremely- large font libraries in use. So keeping your "in use" folder to a minimum, but having another folder somewhere with all of them in it, is probably better than having ~2-3,000 fonts in your system fonts folder.

Bear in mind, if you have a font in there, it'll have to load it every time you boot. If you're not using it every time you boot, you're wasting time. Not very much, but a little...

[Cvstos]

If you're on a Mac, Comic Life from Plasq/Freeverse is an excellent application for applying comic word balloons and "sound effects" - it looks damn near professionally-done, and is very flexible!

http://plasq.com/comiclife

However, as of now it is Mac-only.  I'd imagine they use Core Image to aid in it's rendering. (Core Image is a Mac OS X technology.)  The application won an Apple Design Award in 2005 for Best New Mac OS X Product!

[Madd the Sane]

And I think it's included on every new Mac.

[Turnsky]

If you're on a Mac, Comic Life from Plasq/Freeverse is an excellent application for applying comic word balloons and "sound effects" - it looks damn near professionally-done, and is very flexible!

http://plasq.com/comiclife

However, as of now it is Mac-only.  I'd imagine they use Core Image to aid in it's rendering. (Core Image is a Mac OS X technology.)  The application won an Apple Design Award in 2005 for Best New Mac OS X Product!

doesn't seem like it can do much beyond somebody proficient in photoshop can do.  but in reality a separate program to do speech bubbles and sound effects is a little redundant to me, mind you, if one wants to use it, i'm not gonna hold it against them, but if most photoshop users are like me, they'd prefer the ability to fiddle around with the layers, the styles of font, and how that font is used. 

[Azraelle]

I prefer doing my own speech bubbles in Photoshop as well.  It's just that one special step that I think every comic artist has that's a unique part of their style.  Is the pointer straight or curved?  Are the balloons squarish or round?  How do you connect multiple bubbles from the same speaker?  How do you show extremes?

Most people don't really think about it, but speech bubbles are a very personal part of a comic.

[ChaoSynergy]

What I'd really like to know is how you manage to ink the lines so straight.  Whenever I try to do something like that, they're all wobbly and wriggly.

[xHaZxMaTx]

Steady hand.

[Cvstos]

If you're on a Mac, Comic Life from Plasq/Freeverse is an excellent application for applying comic word balloons and "sound effects" - it looks damn near professionally-done, and is very flexible!

http://plasq.com/comiclife

However, as of now it is Mac-only.  I'd imagine they use Core Image to aid in it's rendering. (Core Image is a Mac OS X technology.)  The application won an Apple Design Award in 2005 for Best New Mac OS X Product!

doesn't seem like it can do much beyond somebody proficient in photoshop can do.  but in reality a separate program to do speech bubbles and sound effects is a little redundant to me, mind you, if one wants to use it, i'm not gonna hold it against them, but if most photoshop users are like me, they'd prefer the ability to fiddle around with the layers, the styles of font, and how that font is used. 

Well, if you're proficient in Photoshop... keep in mind that just about any still image manipulation you want to do, it can be done in Photoshop.  Which means that apps like this are, by default, superfluous.  IF you know and can afford Photoshop.

That having been said, for those of us NOT proficient in Photoshop or who cannot afford that monster program, this is nice for what it does.  In addition, it's just about as easy as you can get.  Photoshop is powerful but damn intimidating and complex.  This program is not.  In fact, in about five minutes of playing with it I had some nice bubbles and effects loaded onto a test sketch.  And I'm no artist.  STICK FIGURES give me trouble.  I mutilated them so badly they sued me and won a restraining order.  But I can use this program with no troubles.  So forgive those of us with no graphical artistic talent for liking things a few orders of magnitude less complex then Photoshop.   

[AndersW]

For seeing someone proficient in Photoshop make a comic, I would recommend this video.

It demonstrates sketching, inking, coloring, and shading very well.

[Azraelle]

What I'd really like to know is how you manage to ink the lines so straight.  Whenever I try to do something like that, they're all wobbly and wriggly.

If you're talking about inking digitally with a tablet, that can be tricky, because the tablet's surface by default is very smooth.  It's like drawing on glass, almost, so the pen stylus does tend to slip and wobble for someone who's never used one before.  What someone suggested for me, is to tape a piece of regular paper over the surface of the tablet, so it has a more familiar "bite" to it.  That, and I zoom in reeeeeally close to the line I'm inking.  That way any wobble is represented on-screen by maybe a pixel's width; hardly noticeable.  That, and doing the standard drawing technique of using the whole arm in a stroke, rather than just the wrist.

Inking on paper, however, is not something that I really know how to do, since I tend to work digitally, start to finish.

[Gabi]

Thanks for the tips, Amber and llearch! I guess it will take me a long time, but I'll probably learn eventually.

How long does it normally take to color a strip?

[Amber Williams]

What I'd really like to know is how you manage to ink the lines so straight.  Whenever I try to do something like that, they're all wobbly and wriggly.

Honestly, it's probably one of the few things I likely take for granted.  I guess between years of practice and just having naturally smooth hands, I've just been lucky in having a steady drawing hand.  So I can't really help anyone out on that point.

How long does it normally take to color a strip?

Foreeeeveeeeeer...
Really it depends on the strip.  I've had colouring take 3 hours to having colouring take 7-8.  Normal fare tends to have me start colouring around 5-6 and as some people who keep track of when DMFA updates can tell, the time updating usually varies from 8-3AM.

[Turnsky]

What I'd really like to know is how you manage to ink the lines so straight.  Whenever I try to do something like that, they're all wobbly and wriggly.

Honestly, it's probably one of the few things I likely take for granted.  I guess between years of practice and just having naturally smooth hands, I've just been lucky in having a steady drawing hand.  So I can't really help anyone out on that point.

you lucky sod, here i am cursed with a generally shaky hand =p

How long does it normally take to color a strip?

Foreeeeveeeeeer...
Really it depends on the strip.  I've had colouring take 3 hours to having colouring take 7-8.  Normal fare tends to have me start colouring around 5-6 and as some people who keep track of when DMFA updates can tell, the time updating usually varies from 8-3AM.

this, i can attest, once upon a time a comic took at least 10 hours to complete.

also, i thought there were summoning circles and souls involved? 

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

... as some people who keep track of when DMFA updates can tell, the time updating usually varies from 8-3AM.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I just naturally remember numbers, it's not my fault, please don't beat on me... *cower*


*grin*

[MaskedRetriever]

On the topic of speech baloons, I recently found a way to duplicate Amber's style baloons pretty effectively: draw rounded rectangles with thick (3 pixels or more) lines for pointers, all in white, then duplicate the layer, select the lower layer, and go to adjustments -> inverse, then filter -> gaussian blur.