Status on comic so far...
Number of rough drafts finished: 10
Number of pages inked: 10
Number of pages cleaned: 10
Number of pages finished: 10
Number of pages uploaded: 10
Done. For now....
Check out the "finished" product: Fortune Faded. It's not a conclusion or even an end to the current arc, but it is 150 hours (give or take) of my time that I put into getting this comic off the ground.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Monday, May 5, 2008
Status Update 2
Status on comic so far...
Number of rough drafts finished: 9
Number of pages inked: 9
Number of pages cleaned: 9
Number of pages finished: 9
Number of pages uploaded: 9
Comments...
I have uploaded some of the pictures of me working on various comic pages in various stages of production onto my photobucket account. They are in a subalbum titled "Photographs." The link to my photobucket account should be in the link section of the side menu, but here's a direct link to the subalbum anyways: Photographs. I couldn't get the images in proper order unfortunately, but the stages are pretty self-explanatory so there shouldn't be any confusion as to what order they occur in. If there is, simply refer back to where I outlined the process several posts back.
Here are a few samples of some of the better pictures (Scripting, Layout, Sketching, Mentor, Inking, Scanning, Cleaning, and Dialog):
Number of rough drafts finished: 9
Number of pages inked: 9
Number of pages cleaned: 9
Number of pages finished: 9
Number of pages uploaded: 9
Comments...
I have uploaded some of the pictures of me working on various comic pages in various stages of production onto my photobucket account. They are in a subalbum titled "Photographs." The link to my photobucket account should be in the link section of the side menu, but here's a direct link to the subalbum anyways: Photographs. I couldn't get the images in proper order unfortunately, but the stages are pretty self-explanatory so there shouldn't be any confusion as to what order they occur in. If there is, simply refer back to where I outlined the process several posts back.
Here are a few samples of some of the better pictures (Scripting, Layout, Sketching, Mentor, Inking, Scanning, Cleaning, and Dialog):
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Supplies I Use
What I use to make a comic page...
Notebook--I use a 70 sheet college ruled notebook, nothing special about it, for planning out the dialog and jotting down comic ideas or character personalities, background, bios; things of that nature.
Paper--I use standard computer paper (8 1/2 by 11) for my rough drafts
Mechanical Pencil--I draw with mechanical pencils (.7mm) so I can save time by avoiding the need to constantly re-sharpen my pencil as well as to keep my line thickness constant. Keeping the line thickness constant helps a lot with inking. Also, you might thick that I wouldn't save much time not having to sharpen my pencil but the pencil sharpener in my house is in another room (its the kind with a fixed base so I can't just bring it back to my room with me) and I press down so hard that I need to sharpen the pencil every forty minutes or so.
Eraser--Most people would expect me to say I used some sort of kneaded eraser. I didn't. Thing is with those, you can't draw as darkly as I do and have them work all that terribly well. When I can remember to draw lightly I could use the kneaded eraser I have, but most of the time I needed a stiffer eraser. So I ended up using a standard run-of-the-mill pink eraser. Only problem with those is you have to be careful you don't lose the edge too much on them or it can be difficult to get into smaller areas.
Tracing Paper--I had to be careful with this because I have three different pads from three different makers and two of them have a tendency to smear the ink and one of those two has a nasty tendency to roll up on me. The one I like the best and use the most for my inking is made by Foray. It's called Velium and they use the term "White Translucent Paper" instead of tracing paper.
Archival Ink--Any sort of marker-like pen that will give you a smooth, constant dark line (unlike the one a normal ballpoint pen will give you) would work. I need a bit of a darker line so my scanner will properly read the pages I scan, so the archival ink pens work well for me. I currently am using Pigma's Micron Archival Ink pens (08.05,03,01) though I had a Zig (05) that worked really nicely before it died. If you're going to go for the good stuff, get a Zig; fair warning to ya though, it's like five bucks a pen for a Zig. High quality stuff. I went with the Micron cause for that much money I can get three pens instead of one. Usually AC Moor's has a coupon (sometimes as good as 1/2 off) in the Sunday paper so you can save a lot of money whichever kind you go for.
White Out--I've been using PaperMate's Liquid Paper Correction Pen. I thought it would be easier to use than the old brush style white out and quicker to boot. It isn't. The white out flow is hard to control and sometimes flows onto sections I didn't want it to. It also might have helped kill my first batch of archival ink pens.
Scanner--Got to get those pictures into my computer some how right? I have a ScanJet 3300C, and ancient relic from many, many years ago (only like 5 but still...).
Computer Programs...
GIMP--File manipulation program that you can download for free. It'll like the ghetto freeware version of photoshop. I use it mainly for the text feature it has, though I still add the text in with Paint. I sometimes use it to blur certain things in a page, like reflections and the like. If I ever get to the stage of doing my comics in color then I could foresee myself using this program a whole lot more.
Microsoft Paint--This is where I do all my cleaning and I create and add the dialog balloons in this program as well. This is mainly because I have more familiarity with this program than any of my other image manipulation programs.
Microsoft Office Word 2003--For WordArt, which I use to create the sound effects. I don't use this for the dialog because with Gimp I can overlay the text on my picture so I can get an idea of how many lines I should split the dialog into and the general placement of the dialog on the page.
Firefox FTP (or FireFTP)--This is my File Transfer Protocol program I got through Firefox. I use it when uploading my comics to the hostsite.
Microsoft Office Picture Manager--I use this for compressing my images into the size they go onto the web as. This is done before dialog is added but after cleaning.
Notebook--I use a 70 sheet college ruled notebook, nothing special about it, for planning out the dialog and jotting down comic ideas or character personalities, background, bios; things of that nature.
Paper--I use standard computer paper (8 1/2 by 11) for my rough drafts
Mechanical Pencil--I draw with mechanical pencils (.7mm) so I can save time by avoiding the need to constantly re-sharpen my pencil as well as to keep my line thickness constant. Keeping the line thickness constant helps a lot with inking. Also, you might thick that I wouldn't save much time not having to sharpen my pencil but the pencil sharpener in my house is in another room (its the kind with a fixed base so I can't just bring it back to my room with me) and I press down so hard that I need to sharpen the pencil every forty minutes or so.
Eraser--Most people would expect me to say I used some sort of kneaded eraser. I didn't. Thing is with those, you can't draw as darkly as I do and have them work all that terribly well. When I can remember to draw lightly I could use the kneaded eraser I have, but most of the time I needed a stiffer eraser. So I ended up using a standard run-of-the-mill pink eraser. Only problem with those is you have to be careful you don't lose the edge too much on them or it can be difficult to get into smaller areas.
Tracing Paper--I had to be careful with this because I have three different pads from three different makers and two of them have a tendency to smear the ink and one of those two has a nasty tendency to roll up on me. The one I like the best and use the most for my inking is made by Foray. It's called Velium and they use the term "White Translucent Paper" instead of tracing paper.
Archival Ink--Any sort of marker-like pen that will give you a smooth, constant dark line (unlike the one a normal ballpoint pen will give you) would work. I need a bit of a darker line so my scanner will properly read the pages I scan, so the archival ink pens work well for me. I currently am using Pigma's Micron Archival Ink pens (08.05,03,01) though I had a Zig (05) that worked really nicely before it died. If you're going to go for the good stuff, get a Zig; fair warning to ya though, it's like five bucks a pen for a Zig. High quality stuff. I went with the Micron cause for that much money I can get three pens instead of one. Usually AC Moor's has a coupon (sometimes as good as 1/2 off) in the Sunday paper so you can save a lot of money whichever kind you go for.
White Out--I've been using PaperMate's Liquid Paper Correction Pen. I thought it would be easier to use than the old brush style white out and quicker to boot. It isn't. The white out flow is hard to control and sometimes flows onto sections I didn't want it to. It also might have helped kill my first batch of archival ink pens.
Scanner--Got to get those pictures into my computer some how right? I have a ScanJet 3300C, and ancient relic from many, many years ago (only like 5 but still...).
Computer Programs...
GIMP--File manipulation program that you can download for free. It'll like the ghetto freeware version of photoshop. I use it mainly for the text feature it has, though I still add the text in with Paint. I sometimes use it to blur certain things in a page, like reflections and the like. If I ever get to the stage of doing my comics in color then I could foresee myself using this program a whole lot more.
Microsoft Paint--This is where I do all my cleaning and I create and add the dialog balloons in this program as well. This is mainly because I have more familiarity with this program than any of my other image manipulation programs.
Microsoft Office Word 2003--For WordArt, which I use to create the sound effects. I don't use this for the dialog because with Gimp I can overlay the text on my picture so I can get an idea of how many lines I should split the dialog into and the general placement of the dialog on the page.
Firefox FTP (or FireFTP)--This is my File Transfer Protocol program I got through Firefox. I use it when uploading my comics to the hostsite.
Microsoft Office Picture Manager--I use this for compressing my images into the size they go onto the web as. This is done before dialog is added but after cleaning.
The Creation Process
My process to create a comic page...
Step 1: Write the dialog for the page as well as note any important actions in the scene.
-When I get stuck or am having difficulty coming up with dialog, I will sometimes list out the purpose of the page, what I am trying to convey to the reader, and if I'm still stuck I'll write out a brief summary of what happens in each panel. I haven't needed any other techniques in case the other two don't work....yet.
Step 2: Set up the panels, loose sketches to determine placement, posture, etc.
Step 3: Draw the rough draft.
-Although step 2 and 3 are generally done simultaneously, there are times I am forced to separate the two. This process is usually about +6 hours for each page, though that's probably a minimum that I've only begun to achieve in the last page or so as I become more familiar with my characters and the process.
-I had tried to combine steps 3 and 4 but I draw too darkly for that to ever work. I also tried to cut corners by printing out the page with the panels preprinted on them so all I'd have to do was draw what was IN the panels (When I still tried to use the "gutters" I'd waste 20 minutes or so with a ruler trying to get the panels straight). Well, turns out my printer prints the panels at slight angle on the page. Not a big deal you'd think, what's an 1/8 of an inch away from being straight on the page? Wait until step 5 and I'll tell you.
Step 4: Ink the draft
-I'll tape tracing paper over the "finished" rough draft and trace over the pencil lines with archival ink. I generally use a number 05 (.45mm) or 03 (.35mm) pen for normal lines while I use the finer number 01 ( .25mm) pen. I used to use a number 08 (.50mm) pen for the panel outlines, but I've all but eliminated that from the actual inking. I generally end up using a bit of white out to fix lines I mess up.
-This is the step where I do the most experimenting; trying different types of tracing paper, size pens, or lines to see that will save me the most time in the cleaning step. Some of them work well, the biggest one being the fact that I'm only marking the end points of the panel boxes and just adding the lines on the computer, while others not so much. The biggest failure was when I tried to use the lighter tracing paper and it wasn't ridged enough and the edges curled up on me. Enormous pain in my --- to continue inking on, took forever and the ink smeared. Nightmare to clean.
Step 5: Scanning the inked copy
-Pretty self explanatory no? Well not with my scanner (ScanJet 3300C). The edges of the scanning area are curved. It's impossible to get something perfectly 100% straight in there. So when you're page is scanned your lines are converted into pixels and these little square boxes don't do smooth angled lines well, not until you start playing with resolution and compression and that doesn't fix it, just makes it less noticeable. So when you take something that is already crooked and make it more crooked....it becomes a mess. Took some trimming and tweaking of the physical page to fix that problem...for both the first and second pages (I didn't notice until the second page that the main problem was with the panels being crooked to begin with).
-My scanner also tends to merge lines that are too close together into a mass of black pixels, so that's where the cleaning comes in.
-I scan my pages on the "black and white or text" option at a resolution of 150 DPI.
Step 6: Cleaning
-I use Paint to clean up my comic pages because GIMP and Macromedia Fireworks aren't the most user friendly programs when manipulating simple black and white pictures. If I ever moved into color however....that would be a completely different story. I could get around the pixel problem with Macromedia Fireworks but I have very little experience with and knowledge of that program (other than a few "make-my-picture-look-cool" buttons). GIMP I have even less experience with since I only recently acquired it.
-I probably spent 2-3 hours on the first two comics and then the number spiked to 5-6 hours for middle two comics. These last two comics have dropped back down to 2-4 hours cleaning. It all depends on how OCD I am about minor flaws or how much my scanner screws up the page.
-I make two save files during this process, the original uncleaned file (00#) and the cleaned version of the file (00#a).
-After the page is cleaned I compress the cleaned version to a size viewable for the web which is about 640 by 480 (pixels? I have no idea what that's measured in).
Step 7: Adding dialog (and sound effects)
-Word art is amazing for sound effects. WHAT?! It's simple but it works.
-I use GIMP to figure out the word spacing and where I need to 'hit enter' so the dialog will fit in the panel. Also I like the text options better in GIMP than the other programs. After I figured out the specifics I save the text lines in a blank file (usually called 'text' or something) and I import it into paint. ^^ I abhor Paint's text feature, but creating text bubbles and placing them is still easier in paint than the other programs, so that's how I do it.
-This is when I create my final save file (00#b) and send a copy of the finished page to my "Fortune Faded" folder where I can rename it to uploaded.
Step 8: Uploading the finished page
-This is the step that involves the most swearing cause it always takes about 10 minutes to log into my account to upload my comic. The password and account name are both case sensitive, and when you have as many variations on Dark_Sky13 (my normal user name) as I do, it takes a while. I am getting faster now, it was mostly the fact that I'm not used to the underscore "_" being absent between the two words.
-There is a method to use FTP to update my comic manually but the tutorials are not the clearest on how to do that so I tend to avoid that method so I don't screw up anything.
Step 1: Write the dialog for the page as well as note any important actions in the scene.
-When I get stuck or am having difficulty coming up with dialog, I will sometimes list out the purpose of the page, what I am trying to convey to the reader, and if I'm still stuck I'll write out a brief summary of what happens in each panel. I haven't needed any other techniques in case the other two don't work....yet.
Step 2: Set up the panels, loose sketches to determine placement, posture, etc.
Step 3: Draw the rough draft.
-Although step 2 and 3 are generally done simultaneously, there are times I am forced to separate the two. This process is usually about +6 hours for each page, though that's probably a minimum that I've only begun to achieve in the last page or so as I become more familiar with my characters and the process.
-I had tried to combine steps 3 and 4 but I draw too darkly for that to ever work. I also tried to cut corners by printing out the page with the panels preprinted on them so all I'd have to do was draw what was IN the panels (When I still tried to use the "gutters"
Step 4: Ink the draft
-I'll tape tracing paper over the "finished" rough draft and trace over the pencil lines with archival ink. I generally use a number 05 (.45mm) or 03 (.35mm) pen for normal lines while I use the finer number 01 ( .25mm) pen. I used to use a number 08 (.50mm) pen for the panel outlines, but I've all but eliminated that from the actual inking. I generally end up using a bit of white out to fix lines I mess up.
-This is the step where I do the most experimenting; trying different types of tracing paper, size pens, or lines to see that will save me the most time in the cleaning step. Some of them work well, the biggest one being the fact that I'm only marking the end points of the panel boxes and just adding the lines on the computer, while others not so much. The biggest failure was when I tried to use the lighter tracing paper and it wasn't ridged enough and the edges curled up on me. Enormous pain in my --- to continue inking on, took forever and the ink smeared. Nightmare to clean.
Step 5: Scanning the inked copy
-Pretty self explanatory no? Well not with my scanner (ScanJet 3300C). The edges of the scanning area are curved. It's impossible to get something perfectly 100% straight in there. So when you're page is scanned your lines are converted into pixels and these little square boxes don't do smooth angled lines well, not until you start playing with resolution and compression and that doesn't fix it, just makes it less noticeable. So when you take something that is already crooked and make it more crooked....it becomes a mess. Took some trimming and tweaking of the physical page to fix that problem...for both the first and second pages (I didn't notice until the second page that the main problem was with the panels being crooked to begin with).
-My scanner also tends to merge lines that are too close together into a mass of black pixels, so that's where the cleaning comes in.
-I scan my pages on the "black and white or text" option at a resolution of 150 DPI.
Step 6: Cleaning
-I use Paint to clean up my comic pages because GIMP and Macromedia Fireworks aren't the most user friendly programs when manipulating simple black and white pictures. If I ever moved into color however....that would be a completely different story. I could get around the pixel problem with Macromedia Fireworks but I have very little experience with and knowledge of that program (other than a few "make-my-picture-look-cool" buttons). GIMP I have even less experience with since I only recently acquired it.
-I probably spent 2-3 hours on the first two comics and then the number spiked to 5-6 hours for middle two comics. These last two comics have dropped back down to 2-4 hours cleaning. It all depends on how OCD I am about minor flaws or how much my scanner screws up the page.
Step 7: Adding dialog (and sound effects)
-Word art is amazing for sound effects. WHAT?! It's simple but it works.
-I use GIMP to figure out the word spacing and where I need to 'hit enter' so the dialog will fit in the panel. Also I like the text options better in GIMP than the other programs. After I figured out the specifics I save the text lines in a blank file (usually called 'text' or something) and I import it into paint. ^^ I abhor Paint's text feature, but creating text bubbles and placing them is still easier in paint than the other programs, so that's how I do it.
-This is when I create my final save file (00#b) and send a copy of the finished page to my "Fortune Faded" folder where I can rename it to uploaded.
Step 8: Uploading the finished page
-This is the step that involves the most swearing cause it always takes about 10 minutes to log into my account to upload my comic. The password and account name are both case sensitive, and when you have as many variations on Dark_Sky13 (my normal user name) as I do, it takes a while. I am getting faster now, it was mostly the fact that I'm not used to the underscore "_" being absent between the two words.
-There is a method to use FTP to update my comic manually but the tutorials are not the clearest on how to do that so I tend to avoid that method so I don't screw up anything.
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Status Update
Status on comic so far...
Number of rough drafts finished: 7
Number of pages inked: 7
Number of pages cleaned: 6 and 1/3
Number of pages finished: 5
Number of pages uploaded: 5
Comments...
I managed to get a lot finished between now and the last time I posted, though the cleaning for page 7 might slow me back down.
I was looking through the tutorials provided by ComicGenesis and there is one on linking a blog to your website, but it was under the advanced users section and I was in a bit of a hurry so I didn't stop to look at it. I might be able to be able to link a blog to my comic sooner than I thought! That'd be nice.
All my comic files for each page have been uploaded to a photobucket account RyanLetzter (Fortune Faded alternatives were all taken). I'm gonna try to get all the images loaded onto this site but for now you can view the images there. Each picture has comments telling you what stage the image is at (Before cleaning, After Cleaning, Finished) as well as other things of possible interest. A quick run down for everyone, the file names follow the form I mentioned in my next post, with 00# being the Before Cleanings, while 00# with a letter at the end (ex. "a" or "b") is the image after it has been cleaned or completely finished (i.e. dialog and sound effects).
I'm thinking of putting up the comic scripts as well but I'd have to type those out and that might take awhile. So for right now I'm still just playing with that idea in my head.
As a side note I apparently wasn't supposed to start the blog this early. ^^ Oh well.
Number of rough drafts finished: 7
Number of pages inked: 7
Number of pages cleaned: 6 and 1/3
Number of pages finished: 5
Number of pages uploaded: 5
Comments...
I managed to get a lot finished between now and the last time I posted, though the cleaning for page 7 might slow me back down.
I was looking through the tutorials provided by ComicGenesis and there is one on linking a blog to your website, but it was under the advanced users section and I was in a bit of a hurry so I didn't stop to look at it. I might be able to be able to link a blog to my comic sooner than I thought! That'd be nice.
All my comic files for each page have been uploaded to a photobucket account RyanLetzter (Fortune Faded alternatives were all taken). I'm gonna try to get all the images loaded onto this site but for now you can view the images there. Each picture has comments telling you what stage the image is at (Before cleaning, After Cleaning, Finished) as well as other things of possible interest. A quick run down for everyone, the file names follow the form I mentioned in my next post, with 00# being the Before Cleanings, while 00# with a letter at the end (ex. "a" or "b") is the image after it has been cleaned or completely finished (i.e. dialog and sound effects).
I'm thinking of putting up the comic scripts as well but I'd have to type those out and that might take awhile. So for right now I'm still just playing with that idea in my head.
As a side note I apparently wasn't supposed to start the blog this early. ^^ Oh well.
Recap of what's happened so far
Status on paper...
My paper was on Comparing and Contrasting American Comics and Japanese Manga and it is DONE. Finished. A dim memory. Got a 96 and I'm satisfied. No more research, no more notecards, nadda. Anyways...on to the fun stuff.
Status on website...
I've gotten a website from ComicGenesis to host my webcomic, Fortune Faded, on and I have started uploading my comic strips to the site. I did a quick HTML and CSS generator to create a simple format for my website, its a dark grey on a light grey scheme. I wanted to try and link a blog onto the website so I could leave comments about the comic on the actual site but I couldn't figure out how to do it on the generator site. *shrug* Once the project is over I should get some free time to experiment and teach myself CSS so I can create a better format for my website.
Status on comic so far...
Number of rough drafts finished: 6 and 3/4
Number of pages inked: 6
Number of pages cleaned: 5 and 1/3
Number of pages finished: 4
Number of pages uploaded: 4
Comments...
I should be on rough draft number 9 or something, but there were some delays after Tizon's death. Not that I'm making excuses, it's just that my whole plan of updating every Friday was pretty much shot to pieces during those two weeks I was preoccupied by the funeral. I'm catching up to where I was supposed to be, though it might be a bit of a crunch there when we get into May 'cause I'm getting a bit more ambitious with my comics, leaving the "safe" confines of the standard 6 panel comic and the "static" character poses.
In more recent news, I finally got everything back on my computer after having to wipe my hard drive to kill the spyware that had built up. Caught a nasty one Saturday and I had to do a complete system re-install (after pulling my comics and other essentials to the safety of CDs) on Sunday when in an attempt to shut down the spyware long enough to delete it I accidentally set up all .exe files to open as code in Microsoft Word >.<
My paper was on Comparing and Contrasting American Comics and Japanese Manga and it is DONE. Finished. A dim memory. Got a 96 and I'm satisfied. No more research, no more notecards, nadda. Anyways...on to the fun stuff.
Status on website...
I've gotten a website from ComicGenesis to host my webcomic, Fortune Faded, on and I have started uploading my comic strips to the site. I did a quick HTML and CSS generator to create a simple format for my website, its a dark grey on a light grey scheme. I wanted to try and link a blog onto the website so I could leave comments about the comic on the actual site but I couldn't figure out how to do it on the generator site. *shrug* Once the project is over I should get some free time to experiment and teach myself CSS so I can create a better format for my website.
Status on comic so far...
Number of rough drafts finished: 6 and 3/4
Number of pages inked: 6
Number of pages cleaned: 5 and 1/3
Number of pages finished: 4
Number of pages uploaded: 4
I should be on rough draft number 9 or something, but there were some delays after Tizon's death. Not that I'm making excuses, it's just that my whole plan of updating every Friday was pretty much shot to pieces during those two weeks I was preoccupied by the funeral. I'm catching up to where I was supposed to be, though it might be a bit of a crunch there when we get into May 'cause I'm getting a bit more ambitious with my comics, leaving the "safe" confines of the standard 6 panel comic and the "static" character poses.
In more recent news, I finally got everything back on my computer after having to wipe my hard drive to kill the spyware that had built up. Caught a nasty one Saturday and I had to do a complete system re-install (after pulling my comics and other essentials to the safety of CDs) on Sunday when in an attempt to shut down the spyware long enough to delete it I accidentally set up all .exe files to open as code in Microsoft Word >.<
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