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Creative Output
Nov. 20th, 2009 09:51 pmI received by post this morning my very own copy of "The Illustated Guide To Sheltie Grooming," 134 pages of awesoomely arcane, meticulous and detailed insanity. My perfectly resonable mistake seems to have been assuming that I kept a tiny sheepdog who bears striking resemblance to a frothy dessert, when in fact he's actually something of a living topiary. So that's what I need to be doing to his ears. This is going to be so fun. Coba, stop slinking off under the bed...
Much of this information should be applicable to collies as well. I have such plans.
Four new pages of 'The Bone Shard' are now uploaded for your perusal, starting here at Page 20. Things are beginning to heat up between Danielle and Russet now that Hazyl and Travis are otherwise occupied. These pages contain nudity and may not be worksafe.
I am becoming more comfortable with my comic, now that the preliminaries have been taken care of and the plot is starting to happen. I am now lettering with a fountain pen and grey ink, and so far I'm pretty happy. Lettering was my most pressing issue for this project, and really one of my least favorite things. I am lettering directly onto the art and drawing the baloons into the pages at the sketch level, though traditionally many comics aren't done that way. I don't have a letterer and don't want to do it on the computer for a number of reasons, and my desire to actually finish this project some day and not dread a major portion of it has led to this technique. Getting to use my pens makes it more fun, which can only be a good thing.
My problem was that black ink looks dark and intrusive against the greyscale watercolors, watercolor was messy and imprecise, and the dark pencil letters didn't look finished. Abraxas gray matches the watercolor pretty well in terms of value, and, as it's a very translucent ink, looks not unlike watercolor itself---just controlled. I will eventually go back and reletter the whole comic so far, though I won't rescan until it has its own website. I don't know that I'm quite ready for that yet, but I will freely own that many of my scans are crappy and should be redone anyway. In 24 pages, I've gotten a little better at scanning greyscale watercolors, but it really should all be redone at some point. Consider everything posted to date a gigantic WIP, since that's what it is. I'm happy to have fixed a big problem with it, though.
Do you guys think the letters look better? Shame I can't get better penmanship out of a bottle, or channel my great-grandmother's ghost to letter my comic for me.
Much of this information should be applicable to collies as well. I have such plans.
Four new pages of 'The Bone Shard' are now uploaded for your perusal, starting here at Page 20. Things are beginning to heat up between Danielle and Russet now that Hazyl and Travis are otherwise occupied. These pages contain nudity and may not be worksafe.
I am becoming more comfortable with my comic, now that the preliminaries have been taken care of and the plot is starting to happen. I am now lettering with a fountain pen and grey ink, and so far I'm pretty happy. Lettering was my most pressing issue for this project, and really one of my least favorite things. I am lettering directly onto the art and drawing the baloons into the pages at the sketch level, though traditionally many comics aren't done that way. I don't have a letterer and don't want to do it on the computer for a number of reasons, and my desire to actually finish this project some day and not dread a major portion of it has led to this technique. Getting to use my pens makes it more fun, which can only be a good thing.
My problem was that black ink looks dark and intrusive against the greyscale watercolors, watercolor was messy and imprecise, and the dark pencil letters didn't look finished. Abraxas gray matches the watercolor pretty well in terms of value, and, as it's a very translucent ink, looks not unlike watercolor itself---just controlled. I will eventually go back and reletter the whole comic so far, though I won't rescan until it has its own website. I don't know that I'm quite ready for that yet, but I will freely own that many of my scans are crappy and should be redone anyway. In 24 pages, I've gotten a little better at scanning greyscale watercolors, but it really should all be redone at some point. Consider everything posted to date a gigantic WIP, since that's what it is. I'm happy to have fixed a big problem with it, though.
Do you guys think the letters look better? Shame I can't get better penmanship out of a bottle, or channel my great-grandmother's ghost to letter my comic for me.
