[comic] Gabriel, pg.6 [02-08-'10]

[Turnsky]

*Glances up* Man, I have to stop posting when I'm tired.

Anyway.

DSOF #36: If you keep doing that, it'll stick like that.

The inking for this page was done entirely in Photoshop. *Sigh* After all that fuss with learning ink...

I love working on paper, I love pencils, and I love ink. I really love ink. But it just so happens that I really suck with ink. So, until I get better with it, I'm going to have to ink in digital. Blarg.

Again, main bone of contention, is that it really shows that you've rushed this.. i've seen your reasons above "i suck at inks" and so forth, but truth be told, you only suck because you haven't put the patience into doing the inks -properly- and instead rushed to a deadline, in all honestly, you really oughta try taking a little longer to complete each page, even to the point of 'getting it done when it's done', it may stick in the craw somewhat, but in the end you'll release a better product.

[WhiteFox]

Ah, an inter-clan squabble.

Not unless Beings have clans too, all of a sudden.

[Tapewolf]

Not unless Beings have clans too, all of a sudden.

He's holding a book which seems to have a 'Cubi clan symbol on it, as per Amber's note about 'Cubi literature.  He has what appears to be black tattoos on his face, and in the penultimate panel, wings.

Now that I reread it, it looks like you're implying that Theo has morphed into him for some reason.

[WhiteFox]

Now that I reread it, it looks like you're implying that Theo has morphed into him for some reason.

Bingo.

I'd explain a few other things, but that'd ruin the surprise. #37 has a few answers, tho.

[Turnsky]

been sifting around for a little bit, if you have a tablet (i forget whether you do or not), this may be of use to you.

http://www.farlowstudios.com/content/view/14/28/

also, the trick is to work big, 300dpi or so, your standard pages (or anybody's standard for that matter) sits at 72 dpi, if you wanna know what size your comic workspace oughta be(hint: mine's at 2503px × 3294px), a neat trick is to open up a published page in any image editor, and change the image size up to 300dpi, this has the added benefit of helping hide those hand tremors you seem to be so self conscious about, too.

[WhiteFox]

also, the trick is to work big, 300dpi or so, your standard pages (or anybody's standard for that matter) sits at 72 dpi, if you wanna know what size your comic workspace oughta be(hint: mine's at 2503px × 3294px), a neat trick is to open up a published page in any image editor, and change the image size up to 300dpi, this has the added benefit of helping hide those hand tremors you seem to be so self conscious about, too.

You told me about that about a year ago, in chat.  I scan the image at 9x7 in, 300 DPI, to begin with, then reduce it to 25%, or 75dpi. That's close enough to 72dpi that the page comes out looking right.

I do have a tablet: an Intous3 6x8 that I got for a great price.
(I have one of the pen buttons set to bring up the brush window, while the other switches the foreground/background colors. It's very slick.)

As for the pen tool, well... I bought a tablet so I wouldn't have to work with vectors (Pressure sensitivity. Yum). I wont deny it gets great results, but I just don't like working with it.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

You told me about that about a year ago, in chat.  I scan the image at 9x7 in, 300 DPI, to begin with, then reduce it to 25%, or 75dpi. That's close enough to 72dpi that the page comes out looking right.

Before or after you work on it?

As I understand it, reducing it should be the very last thing - or almost the last thing; you may put text on it afterwards, if the scaling messes with the antialiasing...

[WhiteFox]

Actually, scaling down is the DEAD last thing I do. It took me a while to figure out that I should Save As the file as a .jpg BEFORE scaling it down. Photoshop would anti-alias all the layers individually, and the color and ink layers would be slightly mismatched. White jaggies would appear on the edges of the lines, since I rarely colored under the ink lines. Flattening the layers (or saving as a .jpg), before scaling down fixed this.

Sometimes I'll save the file as a .jpg, but forget to scale the comic down before uploading it.  Then I get to watch my browser choke when I see how it looks online. 

[WhiteFox]

Again, main bone of contention, is that it really shows that you've rushed this.. i've seen your reasons above "i suck at inks" and so forth, but truth be told, you only suck because you haven't put the patience into doing the inks -properly- and instead rushed to a deadline, in all honestly, you really oughta try taking a little longer to complete each page, even to the point of 'getting it done when it's done', it may stick in the craw somewhat, but in the end you'll release a better product.

I didn't notice this post for some reason: probably because it's the first post on this page.

The top half of the comic was specifically drawn to look... fluid. Indistinct, sorta. It could have been done better, but it was my first attempt at drawing such a thing. I'm going to assume that's not the part of the page you're addressing.

There are a few spots with problems, but most of these are my inability to figure out how to draw certain things: Mr. Anonymous' sideburns, for example. However, I think this page is a significant improvement over previous attempts.

I am also well aware that certain previous faults do not go away depending on the medium. Slowing down is still a concern that I am trying to put my foot down on, but it's a habit that's dying hard. If there are any particular areas that seem substandard, it would be helpful to me if you were to point them out.

Plus, I just noticed that Theo's shirt isn't shaded in the second panel. Crap.

[Tapewolf]

Actually, scaling down is the DEAD last thing I do. It took me a while to figure out that I should Save As the file as a .jpg BEFORE scaling it down.

Oh, that made me cringe.  JPEG should be your final output format, not an intermediate file.  Remember, JPEG has generation loss and it's not designed to work with lineart anyway (the damage is more apparent with lines).  Each time you do a load/save cycle in that format you're damaging the picture.
While it's probably not going to be that noticeable with the subsequent reduction, it's a bad habit.  Better to save it as PNG and only convert to JPEG as the absolute final step.

[Arcalane]

Better to save it as .png and keep it that way.

[Tapewolf]

Better to save it as .png and keep it that way.

Well, yes.  I'm assuming he's got very limited server space or bandwidth or something.

[Turnsky]

Actually, scaling down is the DEAD last thing I do. It took me a while to figure out that I should Save As the file as a .jpg BEFORE scaling it down.

Oh, that made me cringe.  JPEG should be your final output format, not an intermediate file.  Remember, JPEG has generation loss and it's not designed to work with lineart anyway (the damage is more apparent with lines).  Each time you do a load/save cycle in that format you're damaging the picture.
While it's probably not going to be that noticeable with the subsequent reduction, it's a bad habit.  Better to save it as PNG and only convert to JPEG as the absolute final step.

PNG would be a more viable option, but if you're going the filesize war here, 75-80% compression on a JPEG, the lossiness is barely perceptible, it's there, mind, but normal eyes can't see it all that much. also this tends to foil some thieves as it also gives diminishing returns. 

i've been considering going over to PNG for the longest time, but eh, old habits die hard.

[Arcalane]

Better to save it as .png and keep it that way.

Well, yes.  I'm assuming he's got very limited server space or bandwidth or something.

That must be a tiny amount of server space, seeing as I can get a fairly 'noisy' 1024x768 screenshot from Sword of the Stars into a less-than-100kb png.

Oh well, at least they're not bmps.

[Tapewolf]

i've been considering going over to PNG for the longest time, but eh, old habits die hard.

That would be nice if you do.  An interesting tool I've recently been playing with is OptiPNG, which recompresses them by trying a variety of different strategies in the DeflateX stage.  It is very computationally expensive, but it often shaves off 10-25% of the Project Future images with no loss in quality.

[Turnsky]

i've been considering going over to PNG for the longest time, but eh, old habits die hard.

That would be nice if you do.  An interesting tool I've recently been playing with is OptiPNG, which recompresses them by trying a variety of different strategies in the DeflateX stage.  It is very computationally expensive, but it often shaves off 10-25% of the Project Future images with no loss in quality.

i'm taking into consideration that not everybody has high-speed broadband just yet.. and for the most part i've been keeping each page at around 250k, if i can switch over to PNG with little or no impact to that, all the better.

[WhiteFox]

I started out using .png, but switched over to .jpg. All the colors would lighten a little when I used .png, and it drove me nuts.

I've never seen a significant drop in quality when I convert to .jpg and reduce to 25%. I could Flatten Layers, reduce, and then convert to jpg. That would solve the white-jaggie problem, and avoid data loss.

[Tapewolf]

I started out using .png, but switched over to .jpg. All the colors would lighten a little when I used .png, and it drove me nuts.

I've never heard of that.  Either the PNG codec you're using is buggy or you're doing something very weird there.

Offhand I can think of a few possibilities:

1. IIRC it is possible to set the gamma correction level within the PNG file.  If you've accidentally set it to something strange and you've found some software that actually honours that setting, that might do it.

2. If you're saving it as an 8bpp file instead of 24bpp it will mess up the colours.

3. If you've editing the whole comic in CYMK format that could do interesting things when you convert the colours.

4. If you've somehow given it a translucent alpha layer that might do it.


Actually, I'd be interested if you could do that, just to humour me - doodle something and save the file in both formats.  I've had numerous problems with the way JPEG works, but I've never seen a PNG file go wrong.

[WhiteFox]

(Ruffles through old files)

Here's DSOF #3 as a jpg:
http://www.northernelectric.ca/~whitefox/comics/dmfa/gallery/03.jpg
Here's DSOF #3 as a png:
http://www.northernelectric.ca/~whitefox/comics/dmfa/phparchive/comics/dsof3.jpg

It's only a slight shift on my monitor, but the .png is definitly a shade lighter then the .jpg. There's a good chance I was using CMYK back then, and I may have set it to 8bpp. I compared the images in a few different applications, and every time there was a slight shift, so I don't think it's the correction level.

Next time I publish, I'll poke at the settings.

Geh. If I switch back to .png, I'll have to re-upload all the pages and get my brother to tweak the archive script. Not looking forward to that. At least I kept all the .psd files.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Heh.

Both of those are jpg.

the first one is 404, though, and present as a png...

[Tapewolf]

It's only a slight shift on my monitor, but the .png is definitly a shade lighter then the .jpg. There's a good chance I was using CMYK back then, and I may have set it to 8bpp. I compared the images in a few different applications, and every time there was a slight shift, so I don't think it's the correction level.

That is bizarre.  They're both 24bpp, no alpha channel and no correction that I can find.  PNG is lossless, using the same compression algorithm as ZIP files.  If I bought Photoshop and it did that kind of damage, Adobe would find it returned very quickly as not-fit-for-purpose.

[Turnsky]

It's only a slight shift on my monitor, but the .png is definitly a shade lighter then the .jpg. There's a good chance I was using CMYK back then, and I may have set it to 8bpp. I compared the images in a few different applications, and every time there was a slight shift, so I don't think it's the correction level.

That is bizarre.  They're both 24bpp, no alpha channel and no correction that I can find.  PNG is lossless, using the same compression algorithm as ZIP files.  If I bought Photoshop and it did that kind of damage, Adobe would find it returned very quickly as not-fit-for-purpose.

i can honestly say that's never happened to me, there must be some issue with his color settings.

[Tapewolf]

i can honestly say that's never happened to me, there must be some issue with his color settings.

All things considered, that's probably the case.  PNG is one of the three main graphics formats for the web, so a fault in that shouldn't be able to slip through the net.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

I'd say the "working in CMYK" thing. It'd be worth looking into how the png's work now, now that he's working in RGB...

FWIW, getting php tp use png if there's no jpg is trivial; a one-liner, if the code is done well.

[WhiteFox]

FWIW, getting php tp use png if there's no jpg is trivial; a one-liner, if the code is done well.

Tweaking the code? Ten minutes. If that.

Getting my brother to stop playing CoV, or coding his own games, long enough to do it? Two, three weeks. And he'll ask where are the spaceship sprite graphics I promised him.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Heh. You know, you don't have to use him...

[SpottedKitty]

That is bizarre.  They're both 24bpp, no alpha channel and no correction that I can find.

Something else for the "bizarre" column — I see the lightening when I view both versions in Firefox, but if I save them locally and open in Irfanview... both apparently identical. Presumably some people here are using Firefox, some IE, and maybe one or two something else? Wonder how this would affect any colour shift...

[WhiteFox]

New comic. Yay.

DSOF#37: More Flashback, and exposition.

[edit] I should probably mention: NSFW.

Enjoy. Comments and critiques appreciated.
(Jade's wings are missing in the second last panel. I couldn't draw them well enough on the tablet, and reworking the pencils would have been more work then I could take)



If you're wondering why I havn't posted in a month and a half, It's because I:

• Completely revising my shading methods. (Example Also NSFW)
• Relapsed into my videogame addiction by playing EVE for a while.
• Completely revising my shading methods, again.
• I went to Chicago for a week, attended a Wordpress convention and saw family.
• Got cought up in some paying work (which ended up not really paying all that much) for a few days.

In conclusion, real life is a pain, and I'm gonna get back to drawin'.

[Suwako]

Second last panel.

Killed people I had kown for years 

The heretic looks a ... bit deformed in the last panel. 

[WhiteFox]

Ty: Crap. Made his head too wide.

New comic. Anyone wanna play spot the guest characters?

DSOF #38: Felix's sum-up and break-down.

Comments and critiques appreciated. If you were cameo'd and you'd rather not have been, please let me know.

[EDIT] New forum avatar too. Bout time I drew my own.