Snow, Snow, Snowed in!

Since it is now ACTUALLY WINTER in the sense that there is enough snow on my hill to trap me here for a few days, I have actually had a few moments to sit down and be productive!

Read as: Playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I did some paintings too! Speaking of Zelda, here's a silly little comic I did today.

I like making comics, but I don't think I'm particularly funny. Whatever, I'm having fun doing these. :D I also started a two new wood paintings today. They are a quite a ways from being done, but here's a preview!

I need to go to bed before I think of more new projects to embark on. <3

Deleter Scenery Collection

I found two of the Deleter Scenery collection books a few days ago, and being extremely lazy with drawing backgrounds, I snapped them up. Last night, I decided to mess around with them! I started with this:

 I'm actually kind of fond of this because I like the chandelier design. The only thing here is that Koren looks a little too much like Jupitor in the face. Okay, so with the drawing lined and cleaned up a little in photoshop, I scanned in the stock image of a bar from one of the scenery books and slapped Koren onto it.

The original image is straight black and white, but I made a layer under it and threw some gray on it just to see how it looks. I'm not very good with traditional comic toning in photoshop, so I'm trying out alternate ways to make shading and definition look good. I'll probably try to get a better handle on toning in the future though, because I'm not really sure how I like the straight grays. Also, as much as I like the relative ease of using the stock images to spiff up a picture's background, I think my line-art style is a little too curvy to make it look totally cohesive.

I do like the Scenery books and I'll probably use them in my comics, but I need to get better at making them look like they belong where I've placed them. Also, I know the flipped image of Koren creates continuity problems with his eyes, but I don't really care. I was just fiddling around, really.  Let me know what you think!

Firefly Page 2

Heyyy, page 2. I'm getting a little better and a little faster at this toning business, but it still takes me a long time to come up with something I can consider a complete image. There will eventually be some dialogue, but I like to keep talking to a minimum during emotional scenes. I'm just going to say that elven fireflies are like willowisps and create a lot of light that kind of trails behind them in a magic-y sort of way.

Hur. Onwards!

Firefly Page 1

This is the first page of a little interlude I'm working on, both as a way to get better at toning shit in photoshop, and as a way of jumping into comics again. There are a lot of things I'm not particularly happy with on this page, but I'll just leave it as it is for now.

I did learn some stuff in the process though, about how to create your own tones in photoshop, which is nice because I don't like to use brushes made by other people, unless they're really excellent ones that I wouldn't be able to make myself. =w=

I started with pencil and pen lines on comic manuscript paper, then scanned it in for some photoshop loving. After locking down the lines and setting the layer to multiply, I kind of flew at it by the seat of my pants, as I tend to do with most things. It makes for a lot of mistakes and frustration, but it was a good learning experience, and I am sure that my pages following this one will be a lot better. :D