Metruis wrote:And... yeah... even though I agree 'different strokes for different folks', I entirely disagree that 'Photoshop can emulate any other drawing tool'. No, it can't. (Photoshop is equally a pain in the arse and it takes forever to figure out how to get the effects of different medias and the right brushes for these, anyway. ><) There's a distinct look to digital art and it can NEVER, never replace traditional. If you've ever spent time with watercolors or pencils and loved them, you'd understand. Photoshop can simply not replace the look and feel of using your hands to create art. It can create some damn good art, sure. It can create a lot more variety than my choice for inking, which is the same as yours. But it can't emulate everything, and not with the same detail and gritty and accidental colors mixing together and spilling ink and ending up with cool blotches chaoticness of traditional art.
Whether digital is hard to learn is individual. I find Photoshop easy to use. I read the manual.
Like McDuffies said, you can in fact make digital art that, when printed or presented online, is indistinguishable from the "real thing". It's a matter of skill.
Digital is just another tool in the toolbox for you to use or not as you please. It's by far the most versatile tool available, but whether you'd want it to replace something else is optional, of course. I have worked with pretty much every traditional medium there is - brush/ink, pencil, coal, oil on canvas, acrylics, watercolour, linocut, collage, etc etc etc. Liked most of them, sometimes still use some of them. Except watercolour, which I found really bloody annoying. I'd much rather do a watercolour imitation in Photoshop or Painter than have to mess with the real thing. Different strokes etc.
Metruis wrote:And when it comes to convenience... a paper can't crash. And corrupt your save. >< Whooops.
Again, like McDuffies said, lots of things can go wrong with paper, too. Here's a strip a I drew a few years ago. Ink bottle tipped over:
splat.gif
Incidentally, If anyone would like to make comics entirely digitally, I'd recommend using Manga Studio. Here's what you can do with it.
Yeowch! That hurts!
Makes me glad I grind my own ink on a flat, untippable inkstone. I make just enough ink for use each time and can control how black I want it to be. I am never going back to india ink again.
Phalanx wrote:Makes me glad I grind my own ink on a flat, untippable inkstone. I make just enough ink for use each time and can control how black I want it to be. I am never going back to india ink again.
And grinding the ink really puts you in the mood to ink. It's a weird psychological effect.
Ooh, I've been in a room with one of those things once... very cool. Although I doubt I'll use my "real" brushes again, now that I've gotten used to a Pentel brush pen. Can't make as fine lines as a proper brush, but for some reason I find the brush pen much more relaxing to use.
Wow, I didn't realize there were such expensive, luxurious tablet available.
I bought a fairly inexpensive Wacom tablet a while ago; it's pretty fine, though it took me several tries to get used to it. I still can't draw the outline with the tablet alone. I just do the coloring.
I find doing all the basic outlines by hand easier and more comfortable. The only annoying thing is that I have to scan every page individually. Irk. X_X
"I just want to draw cartoons all day. Just stay in my room and draw to my heart's content. Instead I'm stuck here in a classroom learning academics. LIFE SUCKS."
I just upgraded from the Bamboo Fun to an Intuos3 9x12 this past week and the difference is phenomenal. Although the Intuos3 line is more expensive and definitely requires a committment to continual use, I needed something better and bigger for my comics and webdesign work... and this has delivered in both areas phenomenally. If you don't like using bigger/broader strokes and like sticking with more wrist drawing styles this is definitely not for you though.
So, I got my birthday presents a day early and lo and behold, I now have a tablet. As such, I'll probably be playing around with it tomorrow after I finish up next week's comic page. It's a Bamboo with an area of 5.8" x 3.7". My only concern is the packaging keeps describing some of the nifty features for Windows Vista... and my comp runs XP. I'm presuming there won't be a problem, but needless to say I'll try to keep the packaging in good shape.
Quote of the Moment: “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” ~Criswell~
Oh man, I tried india ink shading. It....didn't go as planned. It's good for filling large black spaces, though.
As for digital drawing...I guess I use my tablet more for 'painting' than sketching. It's just too small and it's hard to have line control with it. Maybe if I had a tablet PC or a Cintique it would be different, but for now I just prefer to do it the old fashioned way and draw it by hand. I'll still use the computer for coloring and lettering and the like, though.
For anyone looking for a cheap tablet, I saw some for $20 here. I can't vouch for the product, but the pricetag caught my eye.
I've got to say, maybe this'll get better with time, but I'm not quite getting how pressure sensitivity is supposed to make my life (or art) that much better, unless you already have control of the dang thing. I need my black lines to be solid so when I select them and invert them for the colors, I don't accidentally fill in half the page with a single color. What should I be focusing on first as I work with the thing?
Quote of the Moment: “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” ~Criswell~
Pressure sensitivity allows one to vary the line width in a single stroke, which helps to make one's art look more dynamic and visually interesting. You may want to go with a dead line weight for certain things, but it's nice to be able to do both.
Joel Fagin wrote:I stick to fixed-width lines for my artwork but pressure sensitivity is brilliant for colouring.
Are you kidding?
No. But about which bit, exactly, are we talking? I stick to fixed width lines because my pen is a felt-tip 0.2 pen. I also find it suits my drawing style but whether the chicken came first there or the egg, I don't know.
And for colouring, pressure sensitivity is great. You can draw shadows that trail off to points for folds in clothing and ease off on the pressure when you get close to a line you're meant to stay inside.
I mean, the issue of line weight is stressed so often that I thought everyone was bored by repeating it by now. Without it, it's very hard to achieve any dynamism or perspective depth. Colour can distract from this some, but you'll want your comics to be looked at, not glanced at.
Felt-tip can achieve a level of thickness variation though, often not very noticeable, but you most likely vary pressure and angle with which you hold your hand even unknowingly. It's not like you're drawing on tablet with pressure sensitivity off. Though simply adding a 0.4 to your repertoire would make such difference that it's wrong not to jump at the oportunity.
But I guess if you insist on this approach, you should study Herman Hypen closer, and see how much he had to labour to get something from such line.
McDuffies wrote:Felt-tip can achieve a level of thickness variation though, often not very noticeable, but you most likely vary pressure and angle with which you hold your hand even unknowingly. It's not like you're drawing on tablet with pressure sensitivity off. Though simply adding a 0.4 to your repertoire would make such difference that it's wrong not to jump at the oportunity.
I have a 0.4. I just always forget to use it. I tend to ink whatever catches my eye so I don't think in terms of doing foreground and background but rather just lines.
I'd forgotten, actually, but with a very old picture I did - and one of the very few which wasn't coloured - I did feel the need to thicken some of the foreground lines (in post production in this case). However, I've never perceived the same problem in anything else of mine so I think colour makes it unnecessary. Or all but, anyway.
Joel Fagin wrote:ween_worlds/fanart/artwork/regardingdestiny.gif]old picture I did[/url] - and one of the very few which wasn't coloured - I did feel the need to thicken some of the foreground lines (in post production in this case). However, I've never perceived the same problem in anything else of mine so I think colour makes it unnecessary. Or all but, anyway.
- Joel Fagin
Colour actually takes away a lot of the need for line thickness and variation.... but only if you do detailed shading of the coloured areas as well. For example, my avatar on the left was done with no line thickness variation, but you can't really tell.
Remember, the reason for the line variation is to give the impression of depth. This is useful especially if you are sticking to just plain uncoloured line art. If you use some other means of giving the art depth however, you can get away with the same line thickness as the colour and shading overrides the line thickness.
Without the shading the end art still looks like someone just went to the town with the Paint Bucket tool and left it unfinished, though.
and War.... that rocks
The Jaded - Action. Adventure. Danger. For Hire. Lonely Panel - Explore. Travel. Comics.
Damn you, alcohol, for preventing War from finding the magic tablet! Funny stuff, War, but why from behind do I look like Bob in a hat? O.o
In any case, I know the tablet won't magically make me a better artist, and I actually have come to realize that a stroke where it starts thin and gets thicker and all actually would help me with folds in capes and clothes. I'm still experimenting in using it in small pieces of a page coming out tomorrow, but I have penciled a pic that I'm going to use as my total testing ground for the tablet, inking the entire thing with it. Plus it was recommended to me to try playing solitaire with it to get a better feel for how to control it, so I've been trying that.
Quote of the Moment: “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” ~Criswell~
Line width variation is good for everything, not just clothing and folds on capes. One of the major problems with your rendering is the lack of life in the line.
Derenge wrote:Line width variation is good for everything, not just clothing and folds on capes. One of the major problems with your rendering is the lack of life in the line.
...Like, how do you mean?
Quote of the Moment: “Greetings, my friend. We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” ~Criswell~
It's good for filling large black spaces, though.
