Black and white comic pages

**Snowfly** · February 21st, 2006, 07:34 AM

I don't like to post here often because it's gotten way too scary... but here goes.

There's a lot of things I can't draw, but I try to tell a story in each picture. Hope you like..

**Tyranx** · February 21st, 2006, 08:02 AM

cool stuff, u got some nice angles on some of those shots.

One thing that really stands out to me is that the intersection between the walls on the shot of the dude with the mask, (2nd to last) is not clearly defined, and just doesn't have the same lvl of finish that the others have.

**Mort** · February 21st, 2006, 08:06 AM

this is really well done.perfect light and mood. very noir blade runner meets matrix . like it alot. no crits becouse your skill level is more beyond my own. but as a consumer crit only thing thats disturbs me is why are they wearing gas masks? ok i know that gasmasks rock but i dont see why they need to wear it. nice concepts and feeling. show more if you got.

**tensai** · February 21st, 2006, 08:16 AM

looking really nice man. how did you do these?

**Number_6** · February 21st, 2006, 09:34 AM

Damn, this is great!

Originally Posted by tensai

looking really nice man. how did you do these?

Is it all pencil? What grades did you use?

**Mirana** · February 21st, 2006, 09:49 AM

Are there breaks in these pages? Right now the story does some leaps in a couple of places and I'm a little confused. Maybe if I knew where the page breaks are? Or is it supposed to run together like that? Also, the car scene has a lot of camera movement and comes very close to breaking the 180 degree rule (or at least slowing down the movement of the story while I try to get my barings in each panel). Just keep an eye on that.

The art itself is very good. It has a great feel to it--dark and mysterious. My fav panels are #7, 10 and 13/14 together. No crits on the art at all.

Can I ask what's going on in this, because I'm kinda baffled how each scene relates to another.

**Zaknafain** · February 21st, 2006, 09:51 AM

Originally Posted by Number_6

Damn, this is great!

Is it all pencil? What grades did you use?

I'm pretty sure its at least 50% digital.

Great work anyway. Has a really cinematic feeling and I like the compositions (don't know if this is a correct term for stuff like this).

The only frame I don't like is Deception-6.jpg. It is a lot weaker than the other ones.

**Snowfly** · February 21st, 2006, 05:49 PM

Zaknafain is 50% right.

Actually it's all digital. Greyscale paintings in Photoshop with a paper texture overlay. The car coming out of the tunnel is actually a paintover of a 3D model..

You guys are right about the 180 flip and the gas masks.. things I did in the heat of the moment but regret doing now. But at a rate of 1 page a day before the deadline, there's no way I can go back and fix it now!

**JoshuaTheJames** · February 21st, 2006, 06:02 PM

I really like some of these shots!

-JtJ

**savii** · February 21st, 2006, 07:55 PM

Very nice, I like them all except the second to last one which doesn't quite live up to the rest of them (the gas mask angle and the 'guy in the bath'), but overall good work here, nice!

**Snowfly** · February 24th, 2006, 11:01 AM

Here's a couple more. I did these on a Celeron 1.7 with 128 MB of RAM on an ancient 21" monitor, in Open Canvas and Photoshop 7. It was a bitch.

**Redchaplin** · February 24th, 2006, 08:52 PM

I'm not sure I followed the story accurately, but the illustration is mind-blowing. I always thought that if I went into comics, that it would have to be strictly black & white. Color, in my opinion, can sometimes distract way to much from the artist's ability. I think you've illustrated this Idea Brilliantly

**seba_boi** · February 24th, 2006, 09:16 PM

Wow!... You got what I call a "director's eye"!... Your use of angles (close up of the guy in glasses in shadows from below not clearly showing his face), stages (the closed door-->smashed door), and compositions (guy looking out of the car---you can totally tell he's thinking; I like that... I'm a sucker for "thinking" pictures of people rather than just being there looking pretty you know)...

And yes!... It looks fantastic in black and white!... The stark contrast of the darks and the lights are just perfect but not over-the-top like Sin City--sorry, I know it has lots of fans here, but I think its b&w cinematography is distracting rather than helping the movie...

EDIT: and I love the '40s theme with the car design...

**thraktor** · February 24th, 2006, 09:46 PM

Here's a couple more. I did these on a Celeron 1.7 with 128 MB of RAM on an ancient 21" monitor, in Open Canvas and Photoshop 7. It was a bitch.

You've just proven that tools don't make the artist. Very, very nice stuff. Were I to stumble upon this in a comic store, I'd be yelled at for reading it before buying. Good luck not ruining your beautiful panels with voice balloons. It'll be a challenge.

**jhagler** · February 24th, 2006, 10:07 PM

I think on the surface the work is pretty well done. On another level, it's hard to get into the situation because something about the digital media makes it more obvious that we're being manipulated by the artwork. I was interested in the discussion as to how digital this was, because it was really apparent to me that it was done completely digitally. As the digital process seems to be becoming as or more common than raw materials, a certain tangibility afforded by raw materials seems to have been supplanted (even in reproduction on screen) with a more sterilized aesthetic immitating the aesthetics of raw materials. My question is why immitate the texture of pencil on paper, when you can do so more authentically? I think I could enter into this world better if that was the case. Not to sound like a traditionalist, because I use the digital process all the time. But there is a quality about traditional media that I am beginning to miss as illustrators walk away from it.

On a more practical level, I'd like to see more detail in the backgrounds and anatomy.

But, it's true what everyone is saying. You do have a strong cinematic eye. So on that account, you've done a great job.

**Snowfly** · February 25th, 2006, 07:46 AM

Well if a reader believes that he is looking at watercolor on paper paintings when he reads the comic, I'll take it as a compliment. But that wasn't the point.

The look of this comic was developed out of necessity. Originally I had wanted to paint each panel with at least half the same level of finish as an Enayla painting! (Yeah, right! Well, I'd hoped...) But after much slacking off, it got to a point that I've had to do 2-4 pages a day. And I discovered that I could do the panels as speed paints at 200 dpi and slap on a paper texture overlay to give them a finished look. The grayscale is a printer's requirement...I knew I did want to do a story that would look good in grayscale, hence the WW2-esque theme.

There is also the fact that I did a half-finished job witht the script, so I am actually having to improvise on the sequencing of certain pages. I wake up in the morning and draw thumbnails in a notepad, but digital's really been a blessing here, as I'm able to revise and revise on the same canvas until it looks okay. Some frames are re-painted 2-3 times! And you'd be scandalized to know that I cut and pasted frames across pages to save time, hehehe...

I used to paint with watercolors in my teens, but haven't touched them since I started doing professional work. I would have loved to do an entire piece in traditional and I am actually switching more of my workflow to analog at the moment, but with the tight schedule on this project, it has to be digital. Next time...

And yeah a lot of the panels lack finish. I would love to do a final pass on each page to really bring the oomph, but there just isn't time!

Glad the camera angles are well received too... 99% of my past work doesn't involve camera angles, and I spent a lot of time on their composition. And studying best cinematography flicks.

**tensai** · February 25th, 2006, 09:54 AM

update is very nice! wouldnt have guessed these are all digital. its got great texture without the current rough mad texture brush digi stylo you tend to see these days (not that theres anything wrong with those). looks very much like marker was used to built up value.

edit - i think i like the second one even better than the first one. as a crit i would say the guy in the suit pointing his gun, looks a bit stiff. especially cause he's not dead yet. but thats nitpicking.

do show some more!