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

Foliage

Taking a break from posting sketches this week to show some pictures of my balcony garden experiment in progress (not seen since it's first mention way back when).

The tomato plant in my hanging planter is doing quite well and is laden with several developing tomatoes.  I'm crossing my fingers and hoping they ripen so I can have some fresh balcony tomatoes at some point.

My jalapenos are also doing fairly well with lots of proto-peppers in development.  I hope they all ripen too and that they turn out nice and spicy.

Finally, this is my box of basil.  It's growing quite well - much more basil than I'm going to manage to use up myself, I expect.  One plant would have been plenty and I planted three.

Not pictured are my green onions (I've harvested about 2/3 of them so far) and my potted tomato plants.  Overall, things are certainly growing, now I just have to hope the tomatoes and jalapenos ripen at which point I will consider the experiment a success.  I started everything from seeds, so if I do this again next year I'll either start with seedlings or start things indoors about a month or so sooner than I did this year to hopefully be able to start harvesting sooner.  Crossing my fingers right now in the hopes of being able to harvest at least some tomatoes and jalapenos this year.

Until next time,
Freak Out
-TFitC

Hooray for Science!

Busy(ish) working on episode 3 of The Word Smith (amongst other things) which is progressing slowly though somewhat steady-ish.  Today is a couple of sketches related to episode 3, though for stuff which is mostly in the background.

It's sort of a "manga-within-the-comic", specifically it's the (fictional) manga that The Pen is holding in the second last panel on page 6 of episode 2 (though not named at the time).

And a related sketch with another character from the same "manga-within-the-comic".  Incidentally, the character sketch from my previous post is the villain for the series.  It seems likely that these characters will show up again in at least one later episode of The Word Smith, though they may not be too prominent beyond that.

And that's all for today.  Next time, I might show some pictures of green things.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

It's Tuesday

Currently working on pencils for episode 3 of The Word Smith (about half done), part of which requires doing some additional character designs.  These are for some background characters that may not really get much notice, but there's a chance they may show up again in the future so I should at least try to be consistent.  All this is to say that today's post is showing some of the design for one of these characters.

These were the two initial design sketches for a mad-scientist type character.  At some point after those, I did the final design sketch:

I apparently decided I preferred the second of the two original sketches.  While his feet got cut off, he's supposed to be wearing flip-flops.  He's eccentric like that.  Eccentrically evil, or evilly eccentric.

Anyway, that's all for today.  Until next time,

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

Defeeted

I've done a few pages worth of drawing hands in the past so I thought, for something different, I should practice drawing feet.  Yeah.  Sounds exciting.  Are you ready?  Because it might just be a little too exciting and I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt by all the excitement.  Well, here goes...

Zapow!  There.  Can you feel the excitement?  If so, might want to take something for that.  Oh,  and there's one hand in there.  Can you guess which one it is?  Careful, it might be tricky.  (Hint:  it's the hand.)

That was so exciting that I thought I'd ramp it up a bit more.  Turn it up another notch.  Up to eleven.  Maybe twelve or even plaid.  Ready?  Hold on, it's about to get nuts.  Squirrelly, even.

It's Cape-Freak!  And what's with that pose?  Does he think he's Sephiroth or something?  (Hint:  no.  Besides, Kefka is much cooler anyway.)

And that's all for today's exciting episode of The Freak Report.  Tune in next time, whenever that is.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

This is a post. It is about some things.

Well hello again internets.  It's time again for a journey of some sort.  Allow your mind to transport you to a fantastical realm where reality is nothing but a figment of your imagination.  Or don't.  It's all up to you, really.  I mean, who am I to say what you should do?  No need to get defensive or anything.  Sheesh.

Um, anywho, how about some drawings of debatable merit?

Some character design for episode 3 of The Word Smith.  I'll probably get rid of (or alter) that jacket for the final version.  At least, that's what I'm currently thinking.  (Well, not currently as in this instant, but, you know, in a more general sense.)

And some potential designs for a character that will be appearing in episode 5.  I may play with the design some more before it's finalized, however.

Anyway, that's today's, uh, stuff.  It seems that I have started working on the thumbnails for episode 3 for The Word Smith so I may not end up doing as much sketchbook drawing whilst I work on that episode.  Not, I'm sure, that the internets are really all that concerned about that.

Whelp, until next time.

Freak Out,
-TFitC

Happy Canada Day

It's Canada Day and what better way to celebrate than post some drawings that have nothing to do whatsoever with Canada Day, other than being drawn by a Canadian.

Continuing on with the character design that I started last time with an individual shot of each of the characters.  I went from right-to-left in the order that they appeared in the group picture (for no particular reason) - see previous post.  This is the first of the three g4m3rz.  Yes, that's Saturn-on-a-stick.

The second of the three g4m3rz.  Running with daggers is only slightly less dangerous than running with scissors.

And the last of the three g4m3rz.  Yes that is an oven door being used as a shield and that is a pizza emblazoned on his tabard.  He's a Master Chef, you see.

Anyway, that's all for now.  Have a happy fireworks day.

Freak Out,
-TFitC