Eishiya/Lana has a sketchbook ಠ_ರೃ

[eishiya]

Years ago, I used to pride myself on having clean sketches, I wonder what happened...

I wanted to use more spot blacks, but somehow haven't gotten around to it. On every page so far I thought about them, and barely used them. I'm still trying to figure out what's keeping me from using spot blacks, given how much I love them :T

[Thera Dratara]

Considering you put in so much feedback in my thread...

Forgive me if I'm being presumptious by doodling over your work, but I find that doodling over people's work helps me communicate a little better, as well as allowing me to test whether I might be right about something:

Alright, the first thing I was wondering about is that your necks seem a little awkward. What bothers me specifically in the first panel is that I can quite see how the spine and the sternocleidomastoids(yes I had to look that up, my brain usually just goes like 'important neck muscles') connect the skull to the torso, making me feel as if I'm looking at a broken neck. I tried to see if I could adjust it, but I might've made his neck too short in the process.
The driver does seem to have a fitting neck, but again, in the second shot it's a little thin on the backside for his spine to connect to the skull proper(even then, what I drew is still a little on the thin side, but I think it's enough for the spine to be conceivably there).

There's also a little something, which is a style quirk of yours I think, because I see it on pretty much all your characters: You draw very Asian noses on everyone. Or rather, I feel like the whole nose, specifically the nose-tip is relatively back into the skull. Personally, I've mostly seen this on people of Asian/Pacific descent. It strikes me as a little weird because it's very unusual(if not non-existant) on European-descent people, so with Black Dram I didn't feel like I was looking at Brits and here I feel a little weird regarding the trucker who is otherwise so clearly white.

Finally, I tried to see if I could spot some blacks. I don't really have trouble with it? And I think it'll improve the general balance of your comic, as well as making it easier to recognise objects for the audience(I didn't quite see he was in the back of a pickup truck till I was spotting it). I think though, you are capable of designing the look yourself, so I'll refrain from attempting to enforce too much direction.

[eishiya]

Asian-nose thing: I'm amazed no one's pointed it out before, actually! I'm quite aware of it. I think the source of the problem is that I draw the bridge of the nose rather flat on most of my characters, which might affect the position of the entire nose (not sure). It's a stylistic quirk indeed, but it might be high time to get rid of it xP Mr. Talkative, at the very least, deserves a mighty Scandinavian shnoz or something.

Your redlines (bluelines?) have some good catches. That ear thing: I am ashamed of myself. I put in the time to position the ears right where we don't see them, but on Mr. Talkative I derped pretty bad. In two panels in a row, no less!

Tim's neck in panel 1 is definitely every kind of wrong, and I think I should know better. I'm okay with necks when I put effort into them and actually think about the underlying structure, but I think if I really understood them, then that knowledge would show through even when I wasn't thinking about them. Putting necks and shoulders on my priority list of things to practice again. Thank you for kicking my butt out of "meh, I'll do it better next time" :D

I'm not sure how much black I want in this (or any comic), which might be why I'm just not putting any in. I really like how you spotted Tim's pants. I imagine him wearing very light colours so that's not how I'd do it, but I'm feeling rather inspired by that, so I think I'll give Jen (the girl, whose Asian nose for once actually suits her ancestry) dark pants to practice. And Mr. Talkative gets midtone denim so I can practice that too.

I think my fear with spot blacks is that I always go too light or too dark. I can do night spot blacks okay I think, where I'm thinking of it like painting with light - everything is dark unless I need it to stand out. If it's a well-lit situation, then I only add blacks in areas where there's no ambient light... which is usually too little. I need to be bolder and spot those areas that have a bit more light than that. I'm playing with spot blacks a bit on the next pages of UW right now, but I'll try to push it even more than I already have. I hope to have those pages up tonight.

I'm not sure I'll implement all this stuff though. UW is a sketch comic, so I'd really rather not stress about it.

[Thera Dratara]

No of course not, it's a practice comic, so just have fun.

It might also be an idea to play around with cross-hatching and similar techniques if you ever have the opportunity.
I myself was playing around with manga studio a while back, and tried to figure out how to tone properly. After some experiments and good study of some of my favorite manga artwise(earlier volumes of Naruto and (Young) Bride's Story), I cam to the conclusion that while tones give the finishing touch, good use of cross-hatching in combination with spotting can carry a drawing all by itself.

Then again, I've never been much of a Shoujo fan(the love-plots exhaust me), so I don't quite know many tone-heavy styles outside of badly drawn doujinshi. /might be biased

[eishiya]

When I say tones, I mean any sort of grey tones, not just screen tones. For example, Black Dram was entirely toned, even though there wasn't any shoujo-esque screentones in there. For something that heavily toned, spot blacks can look rather out of place. String Theory, for example, uses spot blacks that look lovely, but once the colouring it added, I feel like it's just wrong.

Bride's Story is an amazing comic with great use of inks, even if the story isn't anything I enjoy :F I really need to stop being stingy and get the books of it. I have several comics I follow just for their use of spot blacks and/or hatching, so don't worry, I'm certainly not short on inspiration. The problem is actually working up the will to use it.

Some examples of tone-heavy manga that aren't shoujo:
Azuma Tou. He also writes porn under the name Saiki Keita, most of which is painted in grayscale. Combines greyscale with spot blacks quite well, he's a sort of benchmark for me.
Samurai Deeper KYO
Mushishi (the heavy tone use, though again it's mostly flats, adds a lot to the dreamy, humid atmosphere of the comic)

Personally, I'm not a fan of toning at all, except when it's the painterly sort like I did in BD. And even then, I'd much rather just see the whole thing painted.


I love hatching and cross-hatching, but it's something I mainly do when working traditionally, as it's much harder to do digitally. For my digital comics, I keep the hatching to a minimum. When I redo Senka, which is all traditional, I intend to rely a lot more on hatching techniques <3

[Thera Dratara]

I'm not a huge fan of screentones either, to me tones only need to be there if it has texture or visual design value.
Not too impressed by most grayscale either, because to me it feels so incredibly sterile. Watercoloury grayscale is nice.
I recall thinking that Black Dram's texture was pleasing, but the contrast between the shadows and the mid-tone(highlights were absent in most cases) was very low, giving a very disjointed feeling between the linework and the greyscale.

Well, I did manage to be able to crosshatch nicely on the computer from time to time, but that's really only at very high resolutions. It also depends a little on the pressure curve associated with a brush. But yeah, the 'infinite' resolution of reality is indeed preferable.

Bride's Story is just a porn. But instead of sex it's scenery. But like how a normal porn would make up a flimsy excuse to have some sex happening, Bride's Story's plot is just a flimsy excuse to have scenery porn happening.
It's still very lovely though.

Ah, thanks, I'll put those on my to watch/read/play list. I looked at Azuma Tou's work. It is indeed a lovely style. I think it's because they manage their values and shadows(and making use of the full range of values) very well that they are able to achieve the harmony between spotted black and the grey tones.

[JoKeRcologne]

I love hatching and cross-hatching, but it's something I mainly do when working traditionally, as it's much harder to do digitally. For my digital comics, I keep the hatching to a minimum. When I redo Senka, which is all traditional, I intend to rely a lot more on hatching techniques <3

Try SAI out ...it is totally different to normal digital painting ...you can turn and flip the canvas pretty easy and keeps the control over everything. Cross-hatching in SAI is no big deal anymore. And you can use the stabilizer what compensate even a low sample rate without alternating your line.

[eishiya]

I've tried SAI before, I didn't like it. Or rather, it didn't do enough that PS couldn't do for me to keep it around beyond the trial xP I've been painting in PS for so long that my brain doesn't work with SAI, the approach I have to take is just too different. I've had better success with Manga Studio, but as you can see, I'm still using PS for comics over MS, despite its advantages.

My issue with hatching is similar - it's a workflow issue, not anything innate to the program. I have seen wonderful hatching done in PS, and have even some some myself... it just requires flipping rusty switches in my brain. Merely swivelling in my chair and breaking out the brushes, nibs, and inks though, flips that same switch with no issues. When I'm using ink, I'm an inker, and when I'm using Photoshop, I'm a painter. In much the same way, I can't really "paint" with ink xP My brain doesn't work that way. Although, I have had some success with specialized hatching brushes that gave me some cool effects :F I should try that again. It's not like "real" hatching, but it might work for some situations.


And because I feel bad posting without some artsu, here's some old-ish concept art for MR:

Spoiler! :

There aren't concept art exactly, more like exploratory pieces to get a sense of the kinds of colours I want to use (I've since decided to go for a gloomier atmosphere), and try different technique to sketch mountains and related textures quickly. Making progress, but not there yet.

I'm also not sure how much to exaggerate the location. I'm working with a fictionalized version of a real place, so I'm not sure how much creative licence I can take. The taller and mostly-bare mountains in the top image are much more exciting for me to look at and to paint than the more boring ones in the bottom image, but the ones on the bottom are what's actually there D:

[Thera Dratara]

Ah, we have now uncovered the truth about eishiya's brain: She has a software-comfortzone.

I think the lower landscape is fine. It resembles my memories of Austria. Well. That is. If you put in some trees and plants and maybe some human industry, like, Boats, fishing nets, wheat fields, meadows. The little town looks a little lonely...

Out of pure curiosity, what region are we talking about?

[eishiya]

It's a medium comfort zone, this isn't just limited to software xP Every tool has its use, and I have a tool for everything.

I stuck some trees here and there, but certainly not enough. In those images, I was looking for ways to paint mountains, so everything else was an afterthought. I don't plan to skimp out on things like that in the comic itself.

The region is in Austria!
I'd rather not specify the exact location as I'm not aiming to replicate it exactly in my comic.

[JoKeRcologne]

The region is in Austria!

Is this supposed to be the Bodensee (Lake Constance) ??

[eishiya]

Nope, it's one of the hundreds of smaller lakes.
In any case, the exact location is irrelevant to the story, I chose it purely for plot convenience (proximity to a certain place) and appearance, and intend to butcher it with gratuitous artistic licence. I will strip those mountains of their forests and maybe blow some things up. I realized I was researching the location too much to the detriment of the story; I want to make it more generic/fantastic/prettier rather than go for accuracy.

(Would you mind putting the image in spoiler tags?)

[JoKeRcologne]

(Would you mind putting the image in spoiler tags?)

Nope ...because I deleted it seconds after I posted it. Sorry for that.

[eishiya]

Oh wow it's been a while since I posted.

I've completely rewritten everything about the story. I'm too lazy to do more concept art at the moment, so I'm procrastinating by posting this here.

Spoiler! :

11 "generic" designs and designs for the main characters (clothing only; sizes not to scale). The whole thing was also an exercise is making pretty browns out of my comic's palette.

The MCs aren't meant to look particularly outstanding, so I focused on making them look distinct from one another. Their clothes are form-fitting and thus don't offer distinctive shapes beyond their natural shape*. So, value and colour. Good 'nuff for me.
* Their body shapes aren't evident in this sketch, but I admit it's not a dramatic difference anyway. Cai is taller than Luca, and has more of a blocky shape while Luca is a somewhat pear-shaped.

I'm reconsidering painting the comic because I'm growing fond of the sort of style I used here ._. I'll do some page colouring tests later and see what works best. First, I need to do... everything else.

[Monette]

Oh wow it's been a while since I posted.

I've completely rewritten everything about the story. I'm too lazy to do more concept art at the moment, so I'm procrastinating by posting this here.

11 "generic" designs and designs for the main characters (clothing only; sizes not to scale). The whole thing was also an exercise is making pretty browns out of my comic's palette.

I hope you don't mind if I steal this idea of drawing the same a rough body x10s and putting clothes on them (its a simple idea really...I think I been trying to make things to complicated.) Seeing your realistic paintings tempts me to do the same with my characters, but its really intimidating because its been a real long time since I did strictly realistic stuff.

Either way good stuff!