by Tyler Martin on Tue Dec 12, 2000 11:33 am
<B>The Following Statement May Revolutionize The Internet Comic Industry As We Know It:</B><P>Hey Steve, let's not do anything drastic here, slow down, take a breath, think things out...<P>Kang, on the question of load time you mean the GIF taking longer than the Flash? Steve's color Flash comics tend to run under the size of that black and white Gif comic.<P>Steve, the hand drawn actually does look like better drawing quality. I suppose that is to be suspected. I personally hate drawing with my tablet and constantly change techniques with my art. With my comic though, I think it is good to be somewhat consistent, but if you get bored or see something that will improve it then you go for it.<P>I've been looking into different ways of doing PB Galaxy too. Mainly because I spend enough time in front of the computer. The technique now is to sketch it out, then do the lines and coloring in Flash. I use the basic lines not the pressure sensitive ones to chop the file size way down. This does take away from some of the artistic quality. Sometime I almost just want to post my rough sketch as the comic cause it seems to have more depth and what not.<P>I've thought of black & white, but this is the internet, not a newspaper, and color is great. Even if it takes longer I think I would rather do less strips before sacrificing the color. It can almost make up for a gag not being that funny. A little eye candy if you are into that sort of thing.<P>Some alternatives:<P>You can ink it on paper, scan it in, then trace it in Flash. Tweak the Trace Bitmap settings to get something that looks good but not so tight that the file gets bigger than the GIF would be. Now that it is in Flash you can color it and add text.<P>Another option, if you don't like how the trace feature is working for you, would be to scan it in, leave it black and white or color it in photoshop as you say. But break the frames apart into seperate pieces and leave out the text and balloons. Now bring those final frames into Flash and pop them onto different layers so that the comic loads like it should, frame by frame rather than top pixel down like GIF's, then add your text balloons and text, and you take advantage of Flash's small file size for these objects.<P>Both of these methods I am considering for the future, mainly because I like ink on paper and I want to be off the computer more. Sometimes drawing on the computer gives me this virtual sickness feeling, like I am using a robotic arm to draw, can't grab my drawing, touch it, taste it or pass it through my lower intestine...<P>Tyler Martin
<A HREF="http://pbgalaxy.keenspace.com" TARGET=_blank>PB Galaxy</A>