Tagged: colour
ICN Awards – I didn’t win, but I still have the Nomination!
I reflect on my 2015 Webcomic Award Nomination, from Irish Comic News
Jack – and I – give thanks, to everyone who voted for Between * Wars as Best Webcomic 2015
Ah well. I was being realistically optimistic about winning the best webcomic 2015 Award for my Between * Wars comic. After all, I’m pretty new on the Irish Comics scene. I only raised by head above the parapet this year and went out and actually met other creators! Continue reading
B*W: My Comic Production Process #2
An updated look at the production process of my comic. The previous blog post about the process « can be seen here.
“Where do you get your ideas?”
That most often asked question… The « Peace-keeper strip idea came to me in a flash, as usual, but this time as I walked with my wife, Gabby from one building to another. In the space of 5 or 10 seconds. I mentioned a kid who used to be in school with me, and suddenly I had the concept of the whole strip in my head. Some dialogue and lot of images.
Developing the idea – scribbles
B*W: The Disintegrator Rifle
This is the illustration that made my mind up that I had to do this comic. It was terrific fun to do and it really cast my mind right back into childhood.
Wear and Tear
B*W: My Comic Production Process
The basic production process of my comic strips.
The drawing and layout and lettering process starts with sketches. As you can see, after I sketched it, I had a go at a some bits in ink as a sort of dry-run. This is rare. Now take a look at the next few stages of production. I’ll do Blog posts in the future detailing each stage as separate articles.
Rough Sketch
Above: Pencil sketching the concept and layout on A4 copy-paper
Full-size pencils and inks
Above: Full size blue-pencil and ink on A3 Bristol Board
Pg.4: The ‘Incident’
Art Notes
Jamming it all in
I bit off more than I could chew with this page. Remember on the < last page I seem to have learned all of these important nuggets of wisdom via trial and error? You’d think that all the trouble I ended up going to with revisions would have taught me something? Not so.
Get the drawing right – first!
Well, I just learned a valuable lesson – that never should have had to be learned:
Get the drawing right first– before proceeding to colour.
I know I’m not the first or only person to make the mistake of thinking:
“It’s good enough, it’ll all come out great when it’s coloured.” Wrongggggg.
So this morning, I went to the considerable trouble of re-doing last week’s page 3 of the comic [See the differences below]. It’s more than changing the drawing, you have to patch the new bits into the page – erase the old bits of line and colour and tone, and redo all the flats and other colours and tones for those areas. Hours of work!
So, lesson to me: Don’t rush – it’s a false economy – more haste = more waste!
Oh, and there’s another thing: I should get some proper model sheets done. Clive, from all angles and and with lots of different facial expressions. I suppose this is why Disney and Pixar like to sculpt 3d models of their characters for the animators to refer to in-the-round.
Pg.2: Monday[s]
< page 1 | page 3 >
< page 1 | page 3 >
So here it is, page 2. Drum-roll…. Ta da!
I hope you were surprised by the twist that this page has taken so soon into the story, and that it strikes a chord w… No, actually. I hope it doesn’t. I hope you like getting up each Monday morning and going to the job you love. There’s nothing quite like going to bed on a Sunday evening with a smile on your face, and springing back out of bed at 7am knowing you’ll be doing fun, interesting work which people will enjoy – especially kids.
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ART NOTES
There’s such a stylistic difference between this and the < previous one! But, it’s early days yet and I’m still learning. Continue reading
Pg. 1: “It’d be soooo… easy!”
| page 2 >
| page 2 >
So here it is – the very first ever page of the comic! Now I must make sure to do one a week. It’s funny, I did a version of this page about a year ago that took me days and days and DAYS to create. Very detailed, fancy, too complicated stylistically. So it all went on the back-burner. The week before last I tried simplifying things – and succeeded to an extent. But as I coloured away in Photoshop, the embellishments crept in: a shadow here, a skin tone there, here a highlight – there a highlight – everywhere a highlight. Old MacDon…
I’m new to this so I mustn’t expect instant greatness from myself. What will Clive do next we wonder..?
I hope you enjoy my new venture!
– John
John White's Creative Blog 