the nessecary tools to start out

LucyR

Right so, i seem to be realising the hard way that a decent graphics program is required to make comics look good online and make them small and such.

Can anyone recommend a good programme, ideally freeware that would be suitable for the budding drawer? I like to draw my frames big, so they dont all fit on the same page sometimes, i'd be looking for something that would allow me to join up pages and make the look purdy.


Also recommendationso nice pens wouldn't go amiss, while i do love my pencil, some things need proper blackness.

bombidol

I just use Paint shop pro for messing about with graphics but if yer serious you probably need photoshop

Fysh

The most common ones I'm aware of are Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro - I use Photoshop personally, mainly because after a bit of faffing about I finally got the hang of it and I'm too lazy to change. However, both of them are commercial software (and not particularly cheap either).

A free alternative I've heard good things about is The GIMP (that's Graphical Image Manipulation Program, before you go thinking it's something odd). I've not yet played with it but since I've had to hunt down the download page, I'll probably start fiddling with it this weekend...there seem to be a good few tutorials on the site as well.

As for pens, I use Staedtler pens for inking - I don't know if they're the best, but I've used them for years and am comfortable. I know a lot of American cartoonists use Sharpies, but I don't know if you can even get them over here.

There again, once you're using a graphics program of choice...you can always do your inking digitally, or evey just mess around with the levels of the image in various ways to darken your pencil lines.

ztoical

Fysh wrote:

I know a lot of American cartoonists use Sharpies, but I don't know if you can even get them over here.

ahhhhhh no sharpies evil and bad. Sharpie is fine if your just doing some quick sketches but its basicly just a felt marker and isnt archival and shouldnt be used for inking. I've only ever used sharpie [and only ever seen other cartoonists use them] when doing quick jam comics and the like. You can get them in Easons but please don't.

If your going to use pens then get a decent set of microns, Neopiko or copic pens. Prismacolor are great if you still want to colour by hand and not via photoshop but just get their markers - their colouring pencils are rubbish.

That said I ink mainly with brush and do finer lines with nibs. Proquil [which i'm sure I've spelt wrong] are the nib of choice for most cartoonists - the sound they make against the bristol drives me nuts thou. A good set of nibs to start with are Deleter or Nikko G pens [which you can get via Akadot ] nikko are the better nib but the deleter will last longer and take more abuse. The deleter pen holder is great as its takes pretty much ever nib even proquils which usual need their own holder.

Brushes -anything from a 1 to a 3 brush depending on what your inking and how you ink. The main thing is the clean the brush at least ever 15-20mins regardless of how much your inked. This is the big thing people forget to do. Windex or is it windoleen [i forget what its called here the stuff you clean the windows with] is great for cleaning brushes and nibs. Also replace the brushes ofton - once a brush is to beat up for fine lines use it to ink larger areas of black when its to beat up for that use it as a glue brush.

Brush pens can be good as well but the ink in them tends to be rubbish so better to dry them out and use them as a dip pen.

You can also ink with rapidographs which are the pens Crumb uses but be warned they can be very costly and get blocked really easily and you have to get this soloution to clean them with thats also really expensive and its also just a pain in the ass to clean them. Rapidograph ink is nice to ink with and comes in a big range of colours.

Ink wise I hear alot of people argue over which brand of ink is better for getting those black blacks. I use higgins ink but i leave the pot I'm going to use open a couple of hours before I start to let some of the ink dry out, this will make the ink a much richer, yummier, black. Sumi ink is the best if you want to do washes. A good white out ink is a must - don't use tipex its a bitch to re-ink over an area with tipex on it.

Paper - don't waste your money on those "pro comic" pages they sell in FP and other comic stores - get some decent Bristol All your paying for with the comic pages is for the bleed lines to be put in for you.

As for digital work, illustrator and photoshop really are the must haves. As my hand lettering sucks I letter everything in illustrator and would be lost without it.

LucyR

I've just finished the main body of the challenge piece using a bic, so i think i will get a proper pen before i try my next non pencil drawings.

Will go d/l the gimp later tonight then and try assemble this then. cheers for the info lads

Briony Noh

Pros use all manner of exotic stuff. They also say they use all manner of exotic stuff but sometimes don't. Someone said (I honestly can't remember who, but it might have been the revered Will Eisner) "Anything that makes a mark on the page (that you're happy with) will do the job."

He included biros, marker pens and biros in his list.

I am using high quality A4 paper, for smoothness and as little as possible colour tint. I draw with an HB clutch pencil. I rub out lines I don't like with a putty rubber. I used to ink with brushes and rapidographs, spent a fortune on keeping these clean and perfect.

Now, I just scan the pencils in and start playing using Photoshop and/or GIMP, the end result can be web-published straight away. Furthermore, some of my thumbnails have more dynamism than the finished drawing, so I've often seen myself scanning the thumbnail, enlarging it and dolling it up instead, because the start quality/resolution is rarely as important as the finish.

The GIMP is everything Photoshop is, but it's FREE. I unreservedly recommend you get it. There's nothing it can't do that Photoshop can (including lettering - why does anybody need Illustrator??? - seriously, I need to know.), it just does it differently in some cases. Moving between Gimp and Photoshop is easy. I also recommend you experiment with other programs later, once you know the questions it's easier to find the answers.

Summary: White paper; pencil; putty rubber, biro or marker or pen or whatever; Scanner (or phone camera at a pinch because "the start quality..." etc etc); Gimp; and publish. Costs, minimal.

Good luck.

p.s.
I loved your Challenge entry.

ztoical

Briony Noh wrote:

There's nothing it can't do that Photoshop can (including lettering - why does anybody need Illustrator??? - seriously, I need to know.

the options for playing with text are endless with illustrator just ask any Graphic Designer. What i do with text in some of my comics [i still handletter some of them] I can't do with Photoshop - I always use illustrator and the up-grades of CS and CS2 are just amazing. Cus its vector based you can make the text go anywhere and pretty much do anything, you can effect the shape and size of the text in other ways rather then just increasing/decreasing the font size.

Also when going to print its alot easier to move from illustrator to indesign rather then photoshop.

Briony Noh wrote:

the start quality/resolution is rarely as important as the finish.

for web based work yeah thats true as everything on the web is at 72dpi however if you do ever plan to go to print 200dpi is the very very mini - most printers would rec 300dpi and tiff over jpg format. It's always best to scan at a higher dpi, save that as a source file and do all digital work to a copy - rember you can always move down in dpi but never up.

Briony Noh

ztoical wrote:

the options for playing with text are endless with illustrator just ask any Graphic Designer. What i do with text in some of my comics [i still handletter some of them] I can't do with Photoshop - I always use illustrator and the up-grades of CS and CS2 are just amazing.

For anyone interested, the Open Source (free) version of this is called INKSCAPE and is available at http://www.inkscape.org/.

Yeah, ztoical, I get the graphic designer use, and I suppose comics illustrators might aspire to graphical designer excellence. I come from a background of free-hand creativity and merely use lettering capabilities of Gimp (and Photoshop) as a convenience. My hand lettering is ok, but probably not confident enough for professional standards. I use Inkscape for logos and suchlike.

ztoical wrote:

for web based work yeah thats true as everything on the web is at 72dpi however if you do ever plan to go to print 200dpi is the very very mini - most printers would rec 300dpi and tiff over jpg format.

Yeah, good point, though not precisely the point I was making. My quote is actually "the start quality/resolution is rarely as important as the finish", as you say, but it is the final clause that is important here. After all, what is the starting point of a daVinci? (bad example as even his 'thumbnails were often exquisite.)

I was referring to the starting point, the size, the scan resolution and all of that, of an image, which is after all only a series of darks and lights forming an image, often on paper, sometimes on an envelope, even a doodle in the margins of a phone book, a coffee stain on a napkin or occasionally a highly precise rendition of an imagined vista on high-quality baxterboard.

I have used half-inch smudges (thumbnails), scanned them (usually at 100 dpi), rendered them to 300 dpi in the Gimp, rescaled, reworked the shapes and recoloured appropriately to produce a page of 300 dpi finished product in exquisite, printable lushness (debatably). I never finish on a lower resolution than this, though I will convert to 120 for sample prints and 72 for most web-based purposes. I will always have the highest resolution product on the disk for posterity, usually in its multi-layered form in case I ever want to work on it again later.

In the end, the artist must satisfy him- or herself. We all have our personal benchmarks and our aspirations. Occasionally, we are limited by our skills, often by our willingness to learn new technologies. I hope LucyR never loses whatever joy and sponteneity she derives from working with a biro. I don't believe she needs to go beyond that unless she wants to, but when she does, if she feels like it, she can always (all ways) revisit that earlier body of work in the technology that will then be available to her.

ztoical

Briony Noh wrote:

Yeah, ztoical, I get the graphic designer use, and I suppose comics illustrators might aspire to graphical designer excellence. I come from a background of free-hand creativity and merely use lettering capabilities of Gimp (and Photoshop) as a convenience.

Thats all i use illustrator for and all i use photoshop for is minor corrections before going to print - I have actually never used photoshop to colour my comics [I have used it for illustration work but only when i had a very tight deadline] Any colour work I do is nearly always hand silkscreened.

I didn't mean to imply using photoshop for lettering was wrong but you asked why anyone would use illustrator over photoshop - i have used photoshop to letter but only when inserting basic blocks of text. As illustrator was developed for typography work it is the better programe for very text heavy work.

Briony Noh wrote:

Yeah, good point, though not precisely the point I was making. My quote is actually "the start quality/resolution is rarely as important as the finish", as you say, but it is the final clause that is important here. After all, what is the starting point of a daVinci? (bad example as even his 'thumbnails were often exquisite.)

I was referring to the starting point, the size, the scan resolution and all of that, of an image, which is after all only a series of darks and lights forming an image, often on paper, sometimes on an envelope, even a doodle in the margins of a phone book, a coffee stain on a napkin or occasionally a highly precise rendition of an imagined vista on high-quality baxterboard.

I have used half-inch smudges (thumbnails), scanned them (usually at 100 dpi), rendered them to 300 dpi in the Gimp, rescaled, reworked the shapes and recoloured appropriately to produce a page of 300 dpi finished product in exquisite, printable lushness (debatably). I never finish on a lower resolution than this, though I will convert to 120 for sample prints and 72 for most web-based purposes. I will always have the highest resolution product on the disk for posterity, usually in its multi-layered form in case I ever want to work on it again later.

I'm still think I'm reading what your saying wrong - if scaned into photoshop the image would not be a series of darks and lights but a series of dots - photoshop is a raster based programe [where as illustrator is vector based]. if you scan at a low resolution and then simple up said resolution in photoshop all the programe will do is add blank dots - it cannot interpret your image and insert the correct dots. I may just be reading this wrong as all my work is done for print and I've yet to do a comic just for the web but I've worked for a comics anthology were my main job was scanning artwork, and inserting it into indesgin and for print it was always 300dpi. I know David Mazzucchelli scans all his work at 1200 dpi and works down from there. I don't think you need to go that mad but if you've got the RAM why not.

Briony Noh

ztoical wrote:

I'm still think I'm reading what your saying wrong

No, it's me, I'm describing it wrongly and you're absolutely right to pull me up over it.

Let me try to get sense out of the mass of pre-conceptions currently residing in my brain.

Take a smudge that looks like Jesus, only it's about a quarter-inch in size. Bung it on the scanner and scan at 100 dpi (or whatever, but at these sizes it hardly matters). Now you have a low-rez smudge that looks like Jesus on your screen.

Use the tools at your disposal and make it look more like Jesus blessing his lunch. Now, up the res to 300 (or 1200, if you have loads of RAM and patience). Use your God-given skills to add colour, definition to your lines, a background, texture and overall artiness, throw in a handful of disciples, a table, a lot of extra grub and a Holy Grail and what have you got?

Where you start from might be a quarter inch, but while you're in the computer you can work on it until it fits a canvas 12 feet wide. I emphasise, you work on it. You don't just blow it up. You can't. I know that. You know that. Jesus knows that. You aren't scanning a finished image, just the first step towards one. It isn't a quick-fix, it's a working process, like a sketch that you have to transfer onto a canvas before you paint it. You can use grids, you can use projectors, in the end it's only what you do on the canvas that really matters.

On the Illustrator thing, I'm in agreement, too. I'm just lazier than you. I can afford to be. Nobody has ever paid me for this kind of work. Why should they?:mad:

(Arbitrary reference to the OP so this thread doesn't get bumped and there we go)

ztoical

Briony Noh wrote:

Take a smudge that looks like Jesus, only it's about a quarter-inch in size. Bung it on the scanner and scan at 100 dpi (or whatever, but at these sizes it hardly matters). Now you have a low-rez smudge that looks like Jesus on your screen.

Use the tools at your disposal and make it look more like Jesus blessing his lunch. Now, up the res to 300 (or 1200, if you have loads of RAM and patience). Use your God-given skills to add colour, definition to your lines, a background, texture and overall artiness, throw in a handful of disciples, a table, a lot of extra grub and a Holy Grail and what have you got?

On this front I'm lazier then you as in the time it would take me to scan a thumbnail and do all the work for it I'd have drawn the bloody thing by hand i only use computers when i have to and work requires it otherwise i much rather do everything by hand. I wish my hand lettering was better so i could do that by hand.

Briony Noh wrote:

On the Illustrator thing, I'm in agreement, too. I'm just lazier than you. I can afford to be. Nobody has ever paid me for this kind of work. Why should they?:mad:

(Arbitrary reference to the OP so this thread doesn't get bumped and there we go)

For your discription of how you work your really should try and get a hold of illustrator - theres a fun trace option [not live trace which is also great fun] but a template option which is so much fun to play with - ive scanned really low res ****ty sketchs and done vector logos on top which can then be scaled as big or as small as you like. I can't rember if its a CS or CS2 option, I'm pretty sure live trace is CS2 [live trace does what it sounds like - it does a quick traced image of whatever image you ask it to]

Briony Noh

I think you'd be surprised how quickly you might be able to work with a graphtab. But then, I know how slowly I work with paints!

I first turned to computers as a financial expedience. The amount of paint I used to get through per page was ridiculous and now I'm doing considerably more work in full colour. Admittedly, it caters to my laziness as I get from the pencils to the fun stuff much more quickly. Of course, it's strokes for folks and all that, but it's revitalised my interest in drawing again after quite a few years in the relative wilderness.

I have Illustrator, but it - erm - hasn't got a - as it were - manual - so I've never really given it a go. I gather it's very similar to Inkscape, though, which I've had a go on a number of times, but generally only for one or two specific uses. I've no idea how much more it can do. As I said in an earlier post here, if you don't know the questions, you'll have a hard time finding the answers. Maybe it's time I looked into it in more detail (I have the manual for Inkscape - it's open source).

Anyhow, nice chatting with you. Goodnight, ol' man.

ztoical

Briony Noh wrote:

Goodnight, ol' man.

goodnight, ol' girl......if you please:p

Briony Noh

It was a fifty-fifty chance. Thank God I didn't go with "young lady", though.

LucyR

cheers for the info lads. decided the biro didnt quite work out as well as i'd hoped so back to the wonderfulness that are pencils. B series ftw

The Gimp is rather a funky programme, im still befuddled as to how to get a few pictures to stick together (i would like to draw things on lots of pages and shove them together in a strip then)

Briony Noh

Simple enough, though by the time I've finished explaining it you'll probably be more confused than ever. Nevertheless, here goes:

Open GIMP.

NEW page from file menu.

Change from PIXELS to INCHES or MILLIMETRES according to taste.

Select the dimensions of your chosen finished page (e.g. roughly 8"x11" for A4).


Two ways to proceed. First, the simple way:

FILE and then OPEN AS LAYER one of your drawings; now resize as required (described below).

Now, go LAYER menu and LAYER BOUNDARY SIZE to select the boundary dimensions of the layer.

You can do this as often as you like in the same page.


Second, the slightly more complex way:

Open a finished drawing alongside your blank page.

FLATTEN IMAGE in the Image Menu of your drawing, if neccessary.

COPY.

Move cursor to the clean page and PASTE. (Simply drag across in Photoshop)

On the EDIT menu, find TRANSFORM and then SCALE. (Free Transform in Photoshop)

Click on your image and rescale using the handle on one of the corners. Holding CTRL at the same time will scale only the width. Holding ALT allows you to scale only the height (ALTitude???). ALT and CONTROL together will scale while keeping your original aspect ratio. (Shift does the same thing in Photoshop)

Once you have the picture where you want it and how you want it on the page size you have chosen, hit SCALE on the scale menu to perform the scale (or ENTER on the keyboard).

Now, go LAYER menu and LAYER BOUNDARY SIZE to select the boundary of the layer.

Open your second drawing and repeat the process until all your pictures are where you want them, the size you want them to be, on your (in this example) A4 page.


Finally, if you ever lose sight of a layer (often after scaling a really large image), select the layer window (WINDOW, LAYERS) select the layer by name and ZOOM OUT and keep zooming out until you can see its marquee. Now drag it into the picture area.


And that's all there is to it. Hope I haven't overexplained it (as usual) or taken too much for granted (as usual) and good luck (as ..._).

LucyR

that's perfect! thanks a million, have finally made a half dozen images into one long strip

the GIMP

Uncle Spunk

Brush Pens.

The Faber Castell PITT artist pen is the best thing you can get if your starting off drawing/inking comics. Gives you great swooshy line weights without the hassle of dipping ink. Also Corel Painter 9 is the biz, get the 30day trial
http://clamnuts.com/rants/2006/06/inking-comics-in-corel-painter-ix.html

ztoical

Uncle Spunk wrote:

Brush Pens.

The Faber Castell PITT artist pen is the best thing you can get if your starting off drawing/inking comics. Gives you great swooshy line weights without the hassle of dipping ink.

yeah but the ink in those pens is ****, its not archival and doesnt mix well with other inks if your planning to do small areas with mircons or nibs. Your better off wasting the ink in them and using them as a dip pen.