P.O.W.! Challenge 15--The Messenger

[arttorney]

@ KMadden: Then jus' step up and beat their asses, mang! They're scared. Look there's sweat on their foreheads!

@Redfrog: Funfetus was cranking out some pretty good panels with Manga Studio Pro Edition in the early editions of this challenge. I gathered it would figure out perspective for you and some things like that. Probably worth the dough if you are into panels and into digital.

(Awesome turnout this time!)

Finals below, unless I get better images in which case I will inform Ilaekae regarding which are the real finals.

[Redfrog]

Hey Farvus, nice high contrast style.
My only suggestion would be to download some fonts to do your illustration justice. Try Blambot or 1001fonts for some free fonts you might be able to use.
Great job on the comic though!

arttorney - nice job on yours man, and thanks for the info on Manga studio.

Here's my first page, refined then inked. Will post the others once i've finished them all.

[Grief]

sorry guys, i'm not going to make the deadline.
the story i developed isn't one i would feel good about rushing, so it'll sit until i can do it properly.

until then this POS for class has my attention for the weekend.


i'm not enjoying it.
[/wrists]

[arttorney]

At this stage of your career nothing could be more important to you than getting through to that piece of paper. I think you can do the portfolio thing.

Get the piece of paper. Make me proud.

At least 4-5 other people did substantial work on this. I see you. Push through to the end. You can do it.

@LogickInk I think the arm placement on that one point you worried about looks more like he's about to decapitate the zombie than like he has already done so.

@Oni Rem congratulations to your sister.

You guys rock1!!

[Redfrog]

Seems I may have been a bit ambitious trying to start the day before deadline and get four pages done.
Here's the second one, but unfortunately that's all i'm going to get the chance to work on tonite. Will definitely finish it and post it when done but it looks like i won't make the deadline...
Sorry folks!

[Hideyoshi]

Kmadden: hey, yours is not looking bad at all!

Redfrog: thanks! Nope, I don't use Manga Studio, gave it a try once though. I am actually drawing all this in Photoshop. I made my own inking brush that sort of comes close to real pen nibs... The screentones are bitmaps in halftone mode which I create in a new document and import back into the comic page via multiply. I play with the dots settings until the spacing looks right.
Inking on yours looks ace btw!

Farvus: Really great to see you taking a stab! Looking good!

Grief: That drawing looks really nice! Too bad you won't be able to finish it!

It would be a pain to see the POW die. Hm...maybe if it did, it could be replaced with 'Scene of the Week'...
Similar to the 3CH, but not as randomly fashioned...

just realized I forgot the scars on my character on page 2, gonna fix that real quick!

[llothcat]

I may be a bit late in posting...due to working graves and all. Anyhow...:


(yeah..panel 1 page 2 needs some tlc...working on it...)

[arttorney]

Maybe you didn't finish four pages Redfrog, but you finished two. The last I heard that was good enough. They look pretty exciting. It reminds me of JonZ in Challenge 1.

Your manga style looks great as always Hideyoshi. You inspired me to go out and buy tone film with that earlier one you had put up on your website (challenge #1). I decided to try a different approach to values during this round but I don't think the squiggles lend themselves well to every scene now that I've tried it. I'll probably use them sparingly as a special effect in the future and go back to the tone sheets, especially if they stick onto colored pencil (which I liked).

You're getting there llothcat.

I hope Sundance can get another page of pencils done today. I think he has a solid feel for the mainstream U.S. look.

Farvus. I like how you display skill in flopping back and forth about whether the negative space is black or white and using the two values to show planes such as steps or apex platform. Those last two scenes are a great example. When the facial expressions are important you have the white faces on black. When action becomes important you go to those black silhouettes on white.

[Hideyoshi]

hey, thanks arttorney!
You always have a very disctinct and uncoventional style which is eye catching
But yes, be careful with those 'squiggles', well, texture in general. You need to make sure it doesn't distract. In your first panel for example it's used pretty heavily and, eh, 'aimlessly' it seems. You could try to tone it down some maybe?

llothcat: (assuming that you're a girl). Wow, I have much respect for you actually drawing some solid background - in perspective! Often, girls tend to insert flowery screentones etc. behind their characters... no offence *cough
It's great how you establish a setting for your scenes and characters!

[arttorney]

Thanks Hideyoshi.

Richard Solomon was talking over in the lounge about having a signature style that is accessible. All my life I have had no trouble being obviously different. The quest has always been to figure out how to be different in a good way, to be accessible as they say. Still trying to work a few bugs out of that system. Wanna catch eyes in a good way so they don't turn away in disgust.


Digital looks so good when it is done well and it is definitely more accessible for these forums. Gotta love Edit>Undo.

I found a sackload of hatching styles, vector and 3d capability in Open Office yesterday and today I got the GIMP (my laptop is now a Linux system). Perhaps I can scan some of my more unusual tone screens and add them to the gallery I found in Open Office, or somehow create a custom GIMP stippling brush. GIMP's kind of analogous to Photoshop so I am going to study what you said above about your methods. (Still trying to figure out how to work these bleedin' programs). My Wacom was supported and so my greatest fear proved to be unfounded. My wireless modem remains negative function. Can't have everything. At least my OS and browser are not festooned with a garden of spywares.

[Sundance]

No way I'll finish. Great job to all of those who did; everybodys looks great.

[Kmadden2004]

NAILED IT!!!







Not all that happy about how the last two pages turned out, but I'll go a little easy on myself (I've been struck down by the nastiest case of 'man flu' in the world... ever!). Hope I got this in before the deadline...

Now if you'll all excuse me... I need to get some sleep...

zzzzzzzzz

[Ilaekae]

Nice stuff in so far! I'll have two pages at least to post out of the nine I have in the works which will at least allow me in for what it's worth. If anyone is awake now (it's 2:30 am here), I won't have the poll and new Challenge up till tomorrow evening, so you have a little time if you can use it. I'll just assume whatever's here was on time.

I have to make an emergency trip to Pittsburgh tomorrow morning to have my foot looked at--I broke three bones right near my big toe a couple of days ago, and was hoping it would heal if I took it easy, but the stupid thing seems to keep bouncing in and out of pain/swelling...probably going to be a complete waste of time.

[Kmadden2004]

Do I use this extra time to fix the problems that are bugging me about my entry...? Y'know, the multi-coloured mucus I've just coughed up onto my keyboard suggests I might just leave it as is... but I'll see what I can do...

I'm just a glutton for punishment.

Sorry to hear about your foot Ilaekae, hope you have a speedy recovery.

UPDATE: Just fixed the last couple of pages... now I can go off and die quietly in my bed... good luck, guys!

[Hideyoshi]

used the extra time to tighten up my last panel

[llothcat]

gah..hope I made it...last page, I admit, is a hack job. I scripted for 5 pages, and only had the time to do 3.

[llothcat]

llothcat: (assuming that you're a girl). Wow, I have much respect for you actually drawing some solid background - in perspective! Often, girls tend to insert flowery screentones etc. behind their characters... no offence *cough
It's great how you establish a setting for your scenes and characters!

Yep..I'm a girl


And thanks...bg's are not my strength, nor is tech, but i'm working on it.


Hope your toe feels better Ilaekae. Luck to ya.

[arttorney]

Sorry to hear about your foot Ilaekae. I'm guessing the doctor will give you one of those things that look like a Frankenstein bedroom slipper and tell you not to walk on it. At least you can probably get some cool pills.

Yay llothcat!

[Farvus]

Yay. Lot's of comics for this edition . Good work.

I am extremely influenced by Niheisan when it comes to manga... T_T

I'm a big fan of Nihei too. His comic don't even need much story beacause those moody megastructures are enough for me. As an architecture student I share similar fascinations. I wouldn't mind doing some Blame fan-art too once in a while .

arttorney - Thanks. I'm capable of doing more realistic art. However when I went that direction for comics, I struggled with anatomy and perspective while the whole story (which should be top priority) didn't work out. More graphical style made it much simplier to control. I want to start from the bottom instead of doing something too hard.

[arttorney]

The people are the hardest part for me too. Luckily, there are a lot of styles that can work for sequential art.

I'm really glad we had such a good turnout this time and therefore a lot of different styles to look at. I think doing one with just two values is difficult and daring.

[Farvus]

arttorney - Yeah. To me keeping faces consistent in realistic comic is the hardest thing. I always wondered how some comic artists do this and I found out that it can be helpful to make a clay models of main characters. This way you can draw as loosely as you can beacause it's mostly life drawing.

So today I found some cool freeware program Looxis Faceworx that can make 3d model of face from two 2d images - front and side. It's supposed to work for photos but I painted quickly one face and model from that turned out pretty good. HERE is result of my test. Not super accurate but I think it's enough for reference. I also tried opening it in Sketchup to see light and shadow. I used Sketchup OBJ importer plugin and this face like this - HERE.

Sorry for small off topic but I think it's good place to share it. Might be helpful for somebody.

[arttorney]

That thing looks great. It requires the Windows XP that I used to have (but no longer). Luckily, the strategy of roughing out my panels then taking photo prints of my brother in those poses seems to have resulted in a more realistic character than my usual drivel. Almost everybody I know is a Chinese-American, though, so if I keep doing that my panels will take on a much more Asian feel. (My secretary was pleased to pose for that one scene but I accidentally made her look fat.)


It looks like there may be a linux version of Sketchup out there, but I would have to recompile the tarball so I'll probably stick to figuring out the 3d tool of my OpenOffice

Edit: I'm thinking about building a template with all those hatching patterns I can find in various layers that can be hidden unless I use them, and then just use the eraser tool to remove the hatching from all the parts of the scene where it is not supposed to be on those hatching layer(s) that I actually use. Does this sound like a plan or is it cumbersome? It's just a kind of negative painting approach.

[Ilaekae]

Arttorney, I've been trying to work out a couple of different ways to do hatching on the machine myself, especially for people who don't have a vector program, so I'll hopefully have a couple of ideas, too. Your idea operates exactly the way old fashioned sheets worked, where you laid down a film and then scratched or cut out the parts you didn't want. I'm thinking, if what I have in mind works, we might be able to create a library of "hatching sheets" or even "brushes" that anyone can use, no matter what app they're using.

Poll for Challenge 15 will be up later today. It's going to take me a while to get all the entries ID'd and sorted for upload. ...lots of entries--what a bummer...

[arttorney]

I'll focus on learning good import/export practices for now and try to get good scans of some patterns I have on the traditional sheets.

[Hideyoshi]

Interesting, I am actually using very large cross-hatching brushes that I made myself once in Photshop. They work pretty well and can save a lot of time. Admittedly look a little too precise, but I made a couple with varying density.
Combining with screentones they make a good addition to your comics.

[Zergaloth]

Redfrog: digitally inked? what program do you use for that? beautifully done.

[Redfrog]

Redfrog: digitally inked? what program do you use for that? beautifully done.

Hey Zergaloth,

Yeah its all digitally inked. Done from start to finish completely in Photoshop.

Hoping to finish the final 2 pages in the next day or so but i have a life drawing class after work tonite so its gonna have to be tomorrow.

[Redfrog]

Finally got a chance to go back and work these pages a bit more. Want to do P.O.W 16 as well so that will take precedence. Have added halftone effects to pages 1 and 2 and should have 3 and 4 inked soon.