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Saturday, July 23, 2011

My Comic Book: Coloring phase! Pages 1 and 2

I've finished lettering the book and am putting up what I have so far from page one and two of my book:


It's been awhile since I've colored my first book, so I've been struggling with the look of the first few pages. It's pretty simple coloring, I know, but for some reason I was stuck and kept noodling the Hue/Saturation sliders.

When I color, it's rare that I plop down the colors and immediately feel it's right. I usually color it in, then I need to step away for a few seconds, sometimes longer, then come back to it. If it doesn't bug me when I come back to it, I feel like I can move on.

The color treatment I did for Cityville, started off as how I applied colors for my first comic, but evolved into something that involved more gradients and line fills. I got so used to using those tricks to bring focus or clarity to those tiny icons and spam images, that coming back to something that has a very simple look threw me off. I had to really force myself to be okay with plopping down big flat colors on these pages!

Also, I have a dual monitor/Cintiq set up on my PC, and color on my Cintiq. I use some pretty funky colors sometimes, and it really wigs me out when I drag the art over to the other monitor and see how messed up my colors could look! I get so unsure about my colors when I do that, so I have to keep reminding myself that the first book turned out somewhat okay and trust the Cintiq! Still, it drive me nuts to see it on the funky monitor...

Funny that I chose the simple colors to make my life easier, but it's actually giving me a headache! Ah well, onwards!

Friday, July 01, 2011

My Comic Book: Pages 16, 17, 19 to do lists and lettering


I finished 'inking' my last page around 3 or 4 pages ago! So now I'm onto the fun parts like coloring and lettering, and I don't mean that in a sarcastic way!

For some reason there's always this great feeling when I'm attaching word bubbles to characters: it's like my story starts coming more to life, one bubble at a time. When I'm applying colors, I find it's a lot of fun trying to bring more focus (or less) to things that are needed to make the story coherent. Maybe, mentally I just feel like the hardest part (for me) is done, and I can see the end in sight.

Here are a few pages that I've finished up:

Page 16

Page 17

Page 19

Here's a screenshot of my lettering process. I use Blambots' "Crime Fighter" font for my books. They do some great fonts and offer certain ones free for independent creators. But even if you had to pay for them, they're pretty inexpensive.

Yes, I am using a dirt old version of Photoshop: 4.5!

As I'm starting to put the polish to the book, I'll go through the pages one by one, trouble shooting any mistakes I may have made and making a little checklist for myself. And for a pretty unorganized guy like me, to-do lists are great!


That's it for today! The neverending battle continues!  
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