Processing Time

The latest page of The Word Smith is not quite done - it's in the process of being coloured (nearly finished!) and should be up sometime this weekend, but in the interim, I thought it might be interesting (for some definition of interesting) to talk a bit about my comic-making process, such as it is.

It all begins with a script, or something like one, anyway.  I do, in fact, have the entirety of The Word Smith planned out, in point-form, at least.  Before I start actually drawing an episode, I write that episode up in detail, on a panel-by-panel level.  Sometime I'm a bit lazy with dialogue and don't finalize it until I need to start actually putting it on the actual comic, which is a bad habit that I need to try to avoid.  Anyway, the script stage is all just typing into a word processor so I'm not going to dwell on it.

The first actual drawing that happens is creating thumbnails.  My thumbnails are pretty rough and (usually) drawn four pages to a single piece of (scrap) paper, like so:

Pages 5-7 of Episode 8.  The last quarter shows a couple of alternate ideas for page 6 - in particular it shows the composition I ended up using for the first panel, which was different from my original idea.

There are some artists out there who do pretty detailed thumbnails, but I keep 'em simple mainly for two reasons.  One, I'm lazy.  Two, as this is just a hobby and I try to get things done in a timely manner, I prefer not to spend too much time on something that's just going to get redrawn anyway.  Even so, I do view thumbnails as an important planning tool.  Sometimes I do change the final layout from the thumbnailed version (as shall be seen), but overall, I don't think I'd want to attempt drawing the actual final page without some sort of plan in place regarding how I'm going to do it.

After thumbnails, I move on to the actual page.  I draw pages on pieces of bristol board which measure approximately 28cm x 35.5cm.  My current batch of bristol board (which I started using as of page 2 in episode 8) is also made of partly recycled material, for what it's worth.  I start by drawing the panel borders, usually measured out using a ruler, though occassionally (as with page 7 below) I just draw them in roughly.  I do this if I'm not entirely sure what proportions some of the panels should be or if I'm still a little unsure on some parts of the layout.  By just drawing in a rough sense of the panel borders I feel freer to draw outside of them, if need be.

Rough pencils of episode 8, page 7.  Note the layout of the lower right corner has changed from the thumbnailed version.

After panel boundaries are in place, I do the rough pencils.  In theory, I actually put in any dialogue/text first so that I know that the text will all fit and I don't waste time drawing stuff that's just going to get covered up by word balloons; however, this doesn't always happen, especially if I haven't gotten around to finalizing the dialogue yet and sometimes it comes back to bite me.  Fortunately, I did everything in the correct order for this page.

Once dialogue is in place, I draw everything in pencil.  I generally start out fairly rough and then refine it.  For instance, I'll often use rough shapes (boxes, mainly) to position and size characters in relation to each other before getting too caught up in the details; some of those guidelines can be seen in the above pencils.  I currently use a mechanical pencil for the pencilling stage, mostly because I don't have to worry about sharpening it constantly.

When pencils are done, I ink everything using a set of inking pens (one brush pen and a set of pens of varying widths), erase all the pencils, scan it in and colour everything in Photoshop.  Colouring could really be its own post so for now it'll suffice to say that there's several annoying things about it.

Anyway, that's an overview of everything up until the colouring stage, at any rate.  Perhaps in some future post I'll go into the details on colouring.

Until next time,
Freak Out,

-TfitC

To the Poit

New page.  Go read.  The end.

...

Ok, so there's actually a bit more...   it may be a few weeks before the next page as I've still got to finalize some of the script details for this episode (bad Freak, finish script before starting drawing) and I may take a bit of time to build up a couple pages of buffer so that the rest of the episode will hopefully be posted in a more regular manner than it has been so far.  I'll probably try to do some interludes in the meantime; I really should do more sketchbook drawing anyway.

Freak Out
-TFitC

P.S.

Post title is not a typo.  Just thought I'd mention that.  Narf.

Word Smith Resumes

As promised last week, the title page for episode 6 of the Word Smith is now available for your viewing pleasure - it's very literary.  Will page 1 follow in a timely manner?  Tune in next week to find out!

I was going to post the pencil version of the title page for comparison, but I seem to have forgotten to copy it over to my laptop so it'll have to wait until next week.  Instead, here's a bored freak:

Now back to preping (read: procrastinating) for today's lab tech talk.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

In Progress

There is, alas, no new Word Smith page this week (gasp!) due to the fact that I seem to find myself stage managing a one act and with auditions last week, I was rather busier than normal.  Due to said business I also decided to forgo an interlude as well.  I know, I know, I've let down the internets, but such is life.  However, in order to salvage my honour and avoid having to commit harikiri or something else equally unpleasant, here is some work-in-progress stuff for page 6.

This is the thumbnails for page 6.  I'm experimenting with a different approach to my thumbnails for this episode by using Adobe Illustrator to create the layouts and initial text placement rather than doing that by hand.  The idea was inspired by how Allison Bechdel approaches the task, as described in the book Mastering Comics.  It sort of combines thumbnailing with script writing which seems sensible for a visual medium like comics.

And here are the pencils for page 6 (some panels a bit more rough than others).  Not all the dialogue has been finalized yet and, of course, it's not inked and coloured so be sure to check back next week for the finished version of the page.

Anyway, that is all for the nonce.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

The Lot of You

Beyond all odds, it would seem that the penultimate episode of The Word Smith's fourth episode has crawled its way onto the internets and can be found here.  The page ended up being a bit busy and may have worked better being spread over two pages, but, well, them's the breaks, I guess.  Something to bear in mind for the future.  Stay tuned next week for the episode's stunning conclusion.

And here are the thumbnails for pages 8-11:

If one were so inclined, or had nothing better to do, one could easily find some differences betwixt the thumbs and final pages, notably page 11 (my not completely illegible hand writing at the bottom of the page 11 thumbs is basically noting intended changes for the final page).

And last week I totally completely entirely forgot that I was going to post a scan of the pencils for page 10 since I hadn't posted any page pencils for a while so, here they are:

There are also some fairly obvious changes between the pencils and the final page.  Most notable are panel 3 (I redid the pencils for the two characters in the lower right between when I scanned this and when I inked it) and the last panel (I sometimes draw in background elements after inking foreground stuff).

Anywho, that is, I think, all there is for this week.  And  next week is... next week.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Googly Eyes

The next page of The Word Smith is up.  Go read it, or else... you won't have read it.  Hmmm.... I wonder if I need to work on my motivational techniques.  In any case, I should be able to get page 4 done before disappearing for the holidays for some unspecified length of time.  And after that?  Who knows?  (Not me, that's for sure.)

Page 3 was based on the "comic with no people" I posted about a month ago.  The actual layout for this page was done before that in thumbnails, but the people-less comic was used to flesh out the locale from what existed in the thumbs (the bottom panel from the people-less comic will be the first panel of page 4, when it is done).

And this week I think I feel like posting two pictures from the sketchbook.  Excitement.

It's The Pen, looking someone put upon as she often does (and is) in both "civilian" clothes and her fencing/sidekick gear.

And next up is The Pen's in-game character, Taramir, crouched and ready to spring into action (no, she's not constipated).  Taramir last appeared in this blog about six months ago (unnamed at the time).  She also appears in the title page for episode 4.

Well, that is pretty much it for this week.  The pantomime is over and seems to have been a success so no I return to my regularly scheduled life, or some semblance thereof.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

No, It's Not Done Yet

Hey, it's time for another page of The Word Smith!  It looks like there'll be another page next week as well, but after that, all bets are off.  Maybe I'll stop early for the holidays.  Or I'll say that, anyway.  Yeah.

And I think for this week's sketchbook entry, I'll just leave this here:

This was drawn about a week before Hallowe'en (so I'm posting things out of order - gasp!) as part of this terms comics workshop.  It's a word ladder comic based on a simple word ladder thingy.  The words in my ladder are underlined.  Naturally, I ended with CAPE.

That is all.
Freak Out,
-TFitC

A Narf A Day

Page 1 of The Word Smith, episode 4, has been posted.  I did some computer-based toning for the page but I don't know how long I'll keep doing that since it didn't seem to be a whole lot faster than colouring...  I'm really just experimenting with things to find out what reasonably fits into my time constraints.  Anywho, episode 4 takes place in the evening of the same day as the previous episdoes.

And to fill out the sketch book quota for the week, here's another page of hands:

This was drawn on Hallowe'en which explains why one has been severed.

Anywho, nothing else really exciting to comment on.  The pantomime I'm in got off to a good start so I shall take that as a sign that the universe approves of it.  Or something.

Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Once More Unto the Weeb

Well, I didn't manage any further progress on episode 4 this week, but I said I'd start posting it this week so that's what I'm going to do, gosh darn it, and with any luck I'll be able to make it through to the holidays without any delays.  In any case, the title page for episode 4 of The Word Smith is available at the usual haunt.

I thought it might also be mildly interesting to show the pencilled version of the title page:

For the final version, I decided that I wanted the Word Smith banner to be a bit more prominent so, through the magic of tracing paper, I lowered the central character and then copy-pasted the banner from the episode 3 title page into its final position on the coloured version.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for this week.  The pantomime I'm in opens later this week, so I've been sequestered in the theatre all weekend and have had/will have dress rehearsals last night and tonight.  I'm looking forward to next week when things mostly go back to normal - there will be shows three nights a week, but no rehearsals.  Yay!

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Not the Face

So!  More stuff from the sketchbook this week.  To start off, I've drawn another page of the New Adventures of The Freak in the Cape:

Along with this comes the usual disclaimer that more of these will be drawn if and when I have the time, motivation and inspiration to do so.

And to fill the Word Smith void, such as it is, here's some character design for a couple of characters that will be appearing in episode 4:

One of these characters is important, the other less so, but which is which shall become apparant at some undisclosed time in the future.

Until then,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Sketchy Business

It appears, curiously enough, that page 4 of episode 3 of the Word Smith has found its way onto the interwebs.  Rejoice?  Or not.

In other news, I am running another comic workshop this fall.  It is a follow-up to the one I did last year using a follow-up book to the one we used last year by the same authors.  Our first meeting, in addition to all that fun organizational stuffs, we to talk about the usefulness of sketchbooks and do some time doing some free sketching.  I figured I'd post my sketchbook page since I've, you know, been doing that for a while now.

It's all just assorted random sketchy stuff which was one of the points of the exercise (though certainly not the only way to approach a sketchbook page - I primarily went this route because it's not how I usually approach sketching).

Anyway, stay tuned to next week for the next page of the Word Smith and more random babble on the interwebs.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Behind the Lines

Page one of episode three of The Word Smith has now gone on-line.  As an added bonus, I, for reasons I cannot fathom, decided to colour this page which was very time consuming!  Thus, do not expect to see many coloured pages in the future (unless I get much faster at it) and do make sure to go look at the final coloured page because it was kind of a pain to do.

I also figured I'd take a few moments to talk about how I went about colouring the page.  For those familiar with Photoshop or colouring comics in general, this is probably all old hat.  For those who aren't terribly familiar with either of those things it might still be a bit dull, but go and read it anyway.

So, naturally, I started with the scanned in inked pages.  One could, of course, do everything digitally, but I'm still doing thing drawing/inking the old fashion way, at least for now.  Here's the black and white page:

Yay!  The first step is to put the line art on a new layer (leaving the background blank) and set the layer to multiply.  This makes the white parts transparent, allowing you to draw underneath.

The first step is a technique called "flatting".  I'm not going to go over this in excrutiating details (tutorials exist on the weeb for the terminally curious), but the basic idea, is that you outline each area (in my case using the polygonal lasso tool) and fill each area with a solid colour.  Generally, the outlines should be created under the inked lines so that, when filled, there are no gaps betwixt the lines and the coloured areas.  This is all done on the background layer (or, I suppose, any layer underneath the line layer) with all forms of anti-aliasing, feathering and so on turned off.  The idea is to create areas of solid colour that a colourist can easily select when doing their colouring.  With the line layer turned off, the flats will look something like the following:

See?  Kind of a neat looking effect, in and of itself.  You  can actually use any colours you want at the flatting stage, but since I'm doing my own colouring, I just flatted with the final colours.  As you might imagine, doing all of this by hand is a bit tedious.  I understand there are plug-ins that can help with this so I will probably look into that the next time I decide I'm crazy enough to do some colouring.

Now, one can leave things as flat colours, but I decided to go a little further and add some shadows.  I actually did this fairly similarly to flatting.  I created a shadow layer between the flat and line layers set to multiply with about 80% opacity.  Then I just created my shadow areas in a similar manner to flatting, except there were a lot fewer areas so it didn't take quite as long.  With the line art turned off, it looks like the following:

Similar to above, except now with shadows.

Well, that was basically it.  One can add hilights and other effects, but I decided to stop with shadows.  And don't forget that you can see the final, full colour version here.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Ripe Tomatoes

Today, I am starting to post episode three of The Word Smith.  I know, I know, I'll bet you can hardly contain yourself for joy so I'll just get to the point.

Added some toning in photoshop for something a bit different.

The plan is to post one page per week, probably Tuesdays.  I'm fairly close to being done drawing/inking episode 3 so that should be doable.  I'm not sure if I'm going to post these to my blog or just to my website (such as it is), but at the least I'll link to each episode from here.

In other news, I have now harvested four tomatoes (one of which became part of today's sandwich, so far with no ill effects) from my garden so I suppose I can consider that part of the garden a success.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

That'll Leave A Mark

Hello internets.  Today I give you page four of "The New Adventures of The Freak in the Cape".  It goes a little something like this:

Dear readers:  this is a work of fiction and no Freaks were harmed during the making of this comic.

Could this be the end of The Freak in the Cape?  Assuredly not!  It is, however, likely to be a while until we see the aftermath since, in addition to my normal disclaimer that future pages will be drawn as time and inspiration allows, I suspect that there's going to be a long-ish flashback before returning to the matter at hand.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Title That Has Nothing to do With the Post

Just one thing today so I'll get right to it.

It's the third page of "The New Adventures of The Freak in the Cape".  As before, I'm doing these when motivation and inspiration strike in some relatively coordinated manner, so no guarantees on timing (or existence) of future pages.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

New Adventures

I guess it's time for another post or something.  Not, I'm sure, that anyone was really wondering "hey, when's that freak going to make another post?"  Answer to a question nobody asked, I guess.

Anyway, today is two related comic pages from my sketchbook (not drawn consecutively, however):

Not entirely  sure where I'm going with these or if I'll do any more of them.  I guess that will depend on if any further ideas come to mind and whether or not I feel like doing more.  Only time will tell.  Failing that, I'll tell time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

When Toasters Attack

As part of my conference poster, I wrote a one-page comic script, basically off the top of my head, which I used, in part, to illustrate what I was talking about and also used to show some results.  I also drew up some thumbnails and recently completed a relatively quickly done inked version:

As with the poster, this was drawn in photoshop using the Cintiq.  The actual layout for the page was generated from the algorithm I'm working on.

On the pencil-and-paper side, I did a bit more playing around with the design of marshmallow-girl.

The not entirely coherent "narrative" (such as it is) around the outside sort of just  happened.  The arrow shows the first face to be drawn (and it went clockwise from there).

And lastly, a moment with The Freak in the Cape.

That is all.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Gallery of Freaks

I said this would be a more picturey entry and so it is (click to enlarge!):

The previous comic-blog was Friday, September 4, 2009. Still not planning on doing these often since they do take longer than a normal post. Anywho, here's the attempted self-portrait mentioned in the comic:

Not much to say beyond what was said in the comic. For the most part, my drawing probably won't be attempting to be "realistic" in style very often, but I may attempt something meant to be more realistic every now and then. Practice and all that.

We'll see how long this keeps up.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Comic Workshop Post-Mortem

Another post-mortem, yay! This'll probably be the last one for the foreseeable future (awww...)

As should be apparent from my blog, this past fall (and January) I've been running a comic workshop in the graphics lab at school. We were working through the book "Drawing Words & Writing Pictures", a sort-of text book on comics. The book covers things like "what are comics", issues relating to panel layout, content design, storytelling, thumbnailing, penciling and inking (with both pens and brushes) and a few other topics. Each chapter has excercises and homework assignments, the last series of which walks you through creating a six page mini-comic (my results having been previously posted on the blog, though I still have to finish the inking).

Overall, it was an interesting book and the experience of running the workshop was also interesting. I did follow the book fairly closely in its presentation, though I drew in material from other sources (such as Scott McCloud's books about comics) where appropriate. I also added some extra workshop sessions on figure drawing and perspective, which is one of the reasons that we went into January.

We only had a small group - just four of us (including me). I think I would have liked to have had two or three more people, but with just the four of us I suppose it was easier to work around scheduling issues that came up and there wasn't any need to worry about finding a special space to hold our meetings.

Of course, for me, the workshop essentially involved giving a twenty to thirty minute talk each week (I wouldn't call them lectures) along with the weekly homework assignments. It kept me busy, but it was interesting and I liked having the extra motivation to do some regular drawing. I was also the only one to do all the assigned homework, but as I was running things I figured I should do my best to set a good example :)

One nice thing about the workshop is that it gave me the chance to try out some things that I wouldn't have otherwise, like using nib pens. One of the big reasons to run the workshop in the first place was that it was much more likely that I'd actually do the exercises and homework in the book. Left to my own devices, I probably wouldn't have done most of them, which would have missed out on part of the point of the book.

As to my presentation style - well, that's a bit harder for me to judge. My fellow participants seemed to find things interesting and we had some good discussion at times, but it was all fairly informal, overall. I was treating it more like a "tech talk" sort of thing than anything else. I mean, I think I'm generally a competent speaker, at least nobody showed up with rotten fruit or sleep masks or anything.

Would I do something like this again? Maybe. It would certainly be less work if I were to do it again since I'd have all my slides already and I've already done all the homework so I probably wouldn't feel the need to do most of it again. It would still be a bit of a committment, of course. Interestingly, the authors of the book have a follow-up one that's being published sometime this spring so there's always the possibility that I might end up going through all this again anwyay. We'll see - though I probably wouldn't mind doing a follow-up session, if i can drum up enough interest.

Well, that's all for now. My next post should be less talky and more picturey.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Ending With a Bang

The pencilling and lettering for the six page mini-comic are now complete, bringing things to their exciting (or not) conclusion. Not much to say regarding this so lets dive right in, shall we?

Here's page five:
And page six:
I'm probably going to add in some more background details for some of the panels before inking them. Speaking of which, I now have six pages that I have to ink by Tuesday of next week! Ack! I may not get all of that done, especially since I will be ostensibly busy for much of the weekend (though in practice I'll probably be sitting around for long periods of time so I may be able to get some work done on things - we'll see), but I'll do what I can.

Freak Out,
-TFitC