zouuu's sketchbook::Comics and scribbles

[Lyraina]

I love your lines, your sketches and comic pages are so lively!
Can' find anything to critique right now, sorry.

[bbwolf]

the desert comic is rad. I love the lines in theat one and the character with the claw hand. The Business Card illustration looks good too. Very refined.
I dig the amount of work you display here. Cool stuff too. I must have a closer look at those comics. cheers

[zou]

ja1307: thanks dude

owlies: thanks !

Kungfoowiz: thanks dude, for poses ,you mean all in general or the ones in comic ?

Lyraina: thhanks, u can critic anything u know (what ? my haircut ? )

bbwolf: many thanks for your interests.

[bbwolf]

hehehehe. Funny. Smart dog.

[kingkostas]

Damn mate!!!!The comic work is totally awesome!!! The lines are lovely, the scenes have lots of details. The jungle themed panels are awesome [only the top-down view that shows the trees on that way, doesnt read well in my eyes]. You are doing great at this works.
Also i want to thank you very much for giving me that info mate , i really need it

lets both keep up

[zou]

bbwolf: funny comic = success

kingkostas: thanks mate for the jungle comic you mean the one with the monsters ? the frame you mean is the one with the flying demon (with bone arms) ? feel free to tear them , i'm very new to storytelling


so i finished the dog comic (in french but the story is clear no ?)










i finshed coloring the business card illustration

wich one would you choose ?






and a character

[Kungfoowiz]

Hey =) Was refering to the characters you made (in general) No.2 biz card looks fab =)
Will take you up on the challenge =)

[bbwolf]

number three has the best contrast of the business cards. Number four the best layout as it shows website and telefon better.
I took the liberty and did a quick do over with my art directors hat on. Imho the email needs to be better and in white too.
the artwork is now tilted to keep the dynamic of the whole and also give room to make it bigger. No use having a busy and
detailed pic like that and then have it too small too read the details. Hope that helps. Feel free to diregard any advice too.

[zou]

Kungfoowiz: thanks dude, take care

bbwolf: cool, thanks bro ! you're right about the 'too detailed' i thought it more like a flyer. i made another proposition after seeing your proposition.

a colored panel of the desert panel (gonna add paper texture to color)




a variation of biz card

1





2




3

[Lyraina]

I like #1 from the new cards! It's a lot easier to see what's going on now. The font of your mail is a bit hard to read though (around the @) - I don't know how it would look printed. The white border in #3 doesn't really help, but is more distracting, in my opinion.
Alltogether the new ones look pretty cool though!

[bbwolf]

I am glad I made sense. From the new ones no 3 is a favourite. When doing a design for stationary, whih includes business cards, one gotta think of your overall CI, your corporate Identitiy.
One of the few golden rules is the rule of 3s. You have three elements that govern the thing and mostly one main and two supporting ones or the other way round. That translates into
having two different fonts max and one color for them. As an Art director I tell you to stick to one font in your BCard and two colors for it. Also not more than two different font sizes for
the main Information aka Name, Telephone, email, internet. Readability is important. Sticking to one way of writing is also considered good style. Switching between Capitals and regular sizes
is making it hard for the ppl to read. Think about the objective. The ppl you give it must see the main info in a heartbeat. Otherwise your card might end up in the bottom of the pile. It should
look interesting yes, but it must be instantibly readible. My tips are either:

Move the artwork to the upper right and your info into the blue box in the lower left corner and make it a bit bigger. Keep your name above it. Stick to one Font.

or

Keep the layout and orientation of the number 3, but either have the email stand on a blue banner too or make it clearly white. Also have
the pencil overly the grey stripes. Break the wall. And loose the graphic boxes in the upper left corner. With that design they are superfluous.
The general design speaks for itself and is pushing the "being busy" frontier already.

Also a good test is to print your designs out in the final size and hand it to your granny or anybody NOT connected to art and design and ask
their oppinion or if they can read it fine.

Hope that helps (takes of artdirectors hat again)

[bbwolf]

btw the way, the comic looks rad!!

[zou]

Lyraina: thanks for your feedback


bbwolf: thanks for your long and useful feedback, btw i don't know what rad means XD

[bbwolf]

glad I could help. Rad means its awsome. "Rad"iating

With the business Card my last thing is that you switch between capital letters and small type, bold and condensed tyle, between Name, webadress, and email.
For no immedealteyl apperant reason. Thats the stuff I´d hand back to my interns in the agency. Maybe capital letters for the name and regular writing with all the
others after oxford english ruls. Most ppl in the anglophon countries are mostly used to that and if reads well.

But again, just imho. its the consistency I would look for when I get handed a card like that. "Can the guy do print or design for print?" If all you do is illustration
its not so important but loads of illustration work I had and delegate ends up in context with copywriting, headlines and such. A good understanding of that helped
me to get jobs. ..... just saying

On antoher note, do you own a Cintiq?

[zou]

bbwolf: wow, quick reply yes i have one (after so much saving) but it's worth. i'm still not getting full use of it. thanks again for your valuable advices


i forgot this caricature studies, i'm trying to make caricature of a local politician, here some studies

a photo of the man


some studies (will do the actual caricature next post)




since i will send it to a newspaper, i put my coordinates

[Anthis]

That's great advice from bbwolf, and I agree with most of his points. Especially the practical stuff on the layout and how to present yourself.
The only difference is that the first of your initial cards (post #906) seemed most interesting to me, mainly because of the colour scheme. You have this bright orange, which is an interesting colour to begin with. And it also contrasts with the cool grey background and blue T-shirt. May be personal preference .

Love the desert comic as well as the accompanying character/creature designs. Especially the bird. He has great expressions too, haha. Tucan reference?

Also, trying to land a caricature job? . Looking good, only thing not quite working yet seems to be the mouth. Looks soft and friendly. Some of your portraits have thin and harder lips.

[kingkostas]

Hello mate . Well i did a paintover to show my point. In my opinion it would be better to draw the forest/oasis down there on the same style as all the other page. Since your page consists of contours, placing a black value mass/shape contrasts it totally and doesnt allow it to work as in 3d space. Maybe if it was a bit grey it could go to the background with the help of atmospheric perspective but now with the black value and without overlay[to be behind the flying man] it seems more like it is next to him. But thats just a personal thought.

By the way great card
For the next caricature works maybe try to find some big characteristic shapes of a face and exaggerate them. Exaggerate them towards the direction etc. they tend to go. So if a head is triangle shape, do it even more triangle and not the opposite exaggeration. I think in the upper portrait you get his overall head shape very well. Eyes look small ? try them smaller/thinner
Well actually since you play with the elements you are doing great. Just keep it up and it will come to its greatness

[zou]

Anthis: hi dude, well since i will print small numbers, i can try the orange one too
yep true, about the referenc

and yeah since i'm freelancing, i could do some caricatures and have clients in that area. do u mean the reference has softer lips than my drawing (actually he s a really bad guy, so i made him quite innocent this way)

kingkostas: hey King, a BIG thanks for your time and your point (i was just hesitating about doing it the brush way or the normal pen way) i guess you're right since i'm working in line-style way more than brush-painterly way. and you're totally right about the perspective, i'm gonna make another color pass to vary colors, make those kind of atmospheric tweaks (cold hot colors)
thanks for the reminders about the caricature, sometimes i get really lost even in known areas.


another coloring of desert panel (im gonna make the tree change of course)



and a WIP of caricature

[kingkostas]

Great mate, the caricature is coming out lovely. Lets keep up !!!

[bbwolf]

gawd the guy looks already like a zombie with an acrylic paintjob. I like the initial sketches of him

[zou]

kingkostas: thank again, your comment are really helping


bbwolf: thanks thanks



more advancing on caricature

[G@m]

not to be a dick but it doesn't look like a caricature anymore, just a portrait with an unusually large ear

[zou]

g@m: took note, and since i'm working digitally i can tweak anything

[Kungfoowiz]

Decent man, I like the overall character, only part which bothers me is at the back of his neck, it's kinda lumpy for me, head is looking good though imho =) Thank you for the feedback on my stuff =)

[zou]

KungFoowiz: yeah i noted it too (when posting) thanks for feedback, it always makes correct something



i colored the caricature using softlight/overlay layers. i'm not fond of this kind of coloring but since i began it b/w, it's a quick way to give colors





calligraphy exercice, using the diwani arabic alphabet i tried to make some stylized gesture, i must do more and make some gesture to draw characters

[zou]

a wip of a camel character

[zou]

another caricature (wip) normally i will complete her hair

[Tall_Boy]

nicely done man with the caricatures, really glad G@M said something about the politician, I was thinking the same thing.

I really like the linework on that comic but i'm not as crazy about the colors. feels too much like everything is colored the way it would look standing alone without much thought put into local color or atmospheric tension. This is a guess more of a personal preferance quibble. The colors you have will definitely let the environments read quickly, and I'm sure most people wouldn't have a problem. I just like colors that play off eachother more or create a mood.

[Caleb-Brown]

I agree with Tall_Boy i think your colors look better with less focus on local color and more focus on mood
I really love your lines though, and your rendering is nice

[zou]

Tall_Boy: thank for the comment, of course there is another color pass. i'm not tough enough to get the final color from the beginning
if you have any tutorial on the subject i buy

Caleb : thank you dude, good luck with your work too


update of angelina caricature (now i look to it, her expression is very generic gotta do more expressive caricature in future)



and another panel