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Post by chaosmagex on Jan 24, 2012 11:17:33 GMT -5
Hello. I return after the previous college semester and my part time job combined sucked away all my free time, leaving me little time to even read web comics, let alone comment on them. Anyway, this is a basic Q&A thread about the process in which each page of this comic is made, from start to finish. So, I'll start breaking out the questions. Depending on the complexity, about how long does it take to draw a page of the comic? Is the comic drawn and inked physically or digitally? If physically, on what size paper is it drawn? What drawing implements are used? Again depending on complexity, how long does it take to color a page of the comic? What is the software used to color (and maybe also draw and ink) and what "brushes" within that software are used? What software is used to add the panel borders, speech bubbles, and other comic elements? What fonts are typically used for the speech bubbles? Is a draft of the comic elements of a page, including rough sizes and shapes of panels and the placement of speech bubbles, made before the actual comic art is made? Or does it start out as a simple textual script and/or rough storyboard sketches? Is there a buffer for the comic? If there is, how many pages are typically in the buffer? How far ahead are future story arcs planned/written/story-boarded? Finally, color notwithstanding, has the comic always been made with this process, and if not, how has the process changed over time? I would like to thank in advance the creators of this wonderful web comic for taking the time to answer all of my questions. If I think of any others after these are answered, I'll just add them to this post or another one in this thread.
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Post by darkwingdork on Jan 25, 2012 12:37:10 GMT -5
Well, that's a lot of questions! Yay!
Okay, first off, as this comic is a joint operation (three people have a hand in its creation) I'll limit my responses to questions that pertain to my part of the process.
I use GIMP, which is the poor man's Photoshop, to do coloring. Nothing fancy, just the basic stuff.
I write the scripts and give general elements I want to see created. Brooke is free to fill in the details as she sees fit.
Plans? Plans? Oh my little friend, if you only knew...
Seriously though, stories are planned out well in advance. It's not unusual for scripts to be written months before the strips they reference are finally uploaded.
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Post by formaldehyde on Jan 26, 2012 23:52:31 GMT -5
Hello, comic-artist Brooke here! I'll answer what I can as well. Depending on the complexity, about how long does it take to draw a page of the comic? Somewhere between 1-4 hours. If I need to look up something, such as a reference, if I am unsure of what something should look like, if I want to make sure I get cameo characters right, or if I just don't like how a page is coming out, it could take longer. Sometimes, I have to send the sketch to DD first for his approval if I am unsure of something. Both, actually. I draw the comic out in pencil first, scan it, and then ink it in Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7. I just use plain old copy paper you stick in your printer, so it's 8 1/2" x 11". Occasionally, I'll use sketch paper. Again, I use Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 to do the borders. Cubist does the speech bubbles, onomatopoeia and effects. Typically, I just skip thumbnails and storyboards and dive right into drawing what will be the sketch used for inking. I usually roughly set-up the panel borders with an idea in mind. It depends. Sometimes, we'll have months worth of pages stocked up. Other times, we have absolutely no pages in queue. In the beginning, the comic was done completely by pencil and lettered by myself in Macromedia Fireworks MX. Later, Cubist came along to help me improve my lettering and, eventually, took over lettering for me entirely to lesson my workload. The comic wasn't inked digitally until page 27 of the chapter No Quarter (AAL page number 175). Thank you for your interest in our work!
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cubist
Fairly Active Member
Trust me. I’m an editor.
Posts: 66
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Post by cubist on Jan 30, 2012 0:08:37 GMT -5
Cubist here with a two-part Mega-Post. I handle the strip's lettering, a task which covers word balloons; captions (the few that are used); and sound effects (ditto). In the pre-color days, I did the grayscale tones, including 3D-ish shading effects. Then and now, I clean up the artwork a little (see also: visual 'noise', lines that extend a wee bit farther than they ought, that sort of thing). I also tweak the dialogue—mostly because I'm an arrogant SOB, arrogant enough to think I can unilaterally meddle with Darkwing's prose. Fortunately for me, Darkwing is way the heck tolerant of my inexcusable meddling; only rarely has he made me undo my edits…
I do everything in Photoshop 6.0. Yes, this is 10-year-old software, but I run it on a 7-year-old laptop, so it's all good. In the olden days of black-and-white, I got the B&W line art. I put a second Layer over the artwork, and did all the art-cleanup "white out" work on that layer. These days, with colored strips, I still use a separate Layer for corrections; it's just that the 'white out' can be whichever appropriate shade of 'blue out' or 'green out' or whatever other color. And when I notice a region in the art that should be colored but isn't, I add the missing color to that region. I separate the individual panels out into Layers of their own. Why? Because this way, I can ensure that the gutters (= white space in between panels) are consistent at 18 pixels; that the panel borders are, themselves, consistently 3 pixels thick; that the strip proper is exactly 600 pixels wide; and that the total art-plus-borders-plus-gutter(s)-plus-outside-margins width is exactly 660 pixels. The strip's height varies from strip to strip, but that's okay. Vertical scrolling is good, or at least tolerable; horizontal scrolling is an invention of the Devil.
Word balloons: The default word balloon shape is a sorta-kinda "inflated" ellipse (tip for Photoshop geeks: start with an Ellipse, select the right & left control points & give 'em a 130% vertical stretch, then select the top & bottom control points and give them a 130% horizontal stretch. you're welcome) with a singly-curved stem. The default typeface for dialogue is Comicraft's Astro City font, with Bold Italic for emphasized words. For captions, I take a 130%-'inflated' Ellipse, 'inflate' it again by 120% (which means the total percentage of 'inflation' is (130% x 120% =) 156%) to make it even closer to rectangular while still being clearly round, and give it a Horizontal Skew of -11°. The text within this shape is Astro City Italic, with, again, Bold Italic for emphasis. Each individual line of text in a caption has its margins adjusted to accommodate the -11° horiz-skew of the caption 'box'.
[end of Part the First]
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cubist
Fairly Active Member
Trust me. I’m an editor.
Posts: 66
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Post by cubist on Jan 30, 2012 0:11:07 GMT -5
[beginning of Part the Second]
Word balloon variations: I try to give each species a distinctive style of word balloons for dialogue spoken by its members. Ideally, the word balloon alone should tell you whether a given line was spoken by a Dragon or Enchanter or what. If it's a default-shape ('inflated') balloon with the default typefont (Astro City), the speaker is an Enchanter or a mundane character. The simplest variation on the default word balloons belongs to Calpurnia. She's a friggin' dramaholic, compared to most Enchanters, so her dialogue has two levels of emphasis (baseline Italic, and Bold Italic), and her word balloons have stems with two curves. Dragons have two styles of word balloon, because I hadn't quite thought things thru when Kaige and Kiley first showed up. My bad. Kaige's balloon-shape is a rounded rectangle with shallow 'notches' cut out of each side; Kiley's is an octagon with its top and bottom sides extended as needful to enclose all the words. Both style of dragon-balloon use thew Comicraft font Comicrazy, and both use long, narrow triangles for stems. Since K. and K. are male and female, feel free to assume that all male dragons speak in Kaige-type balloons, and all females in Kiley-type balloons. Trolls use the Bark style of Comicraft's Bithead font. Trollish word balloons are assembled out of a bunch of small polygons, and so's the stems of said balloons. Creating these balloons is more labor-intensive than I'd prefer, but I have only myself to blame, so… [shrug] Temujin speaks in an Adobe font called Lithos, with Lithos Bold for emphasis. The enchanted riddle-door in DEER WITCH PROJECT (later seen in GAMES MONSTERS PLAY) uses New Century Schoolbook font with the default balloon-shape.
Hmmm... I use a separate font for whispered comments. For the default font (Astro City), the whisper-font I use is Caflisch Script. For Temujin's Lithos, the whisper-font is Comicraft's Pulp Fiction.
Sound effects, I use whatever font seems appropriate at the time. I generally make them partially transparent, so you can see the art 'under' them, and mess with Layer Style, frequently invoking the LS options of Inner Glow, Outer Glow, and Stroke, among others.
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