Thursday 16 April 2015

Tips & tricks part 1

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a 'pro-tip', but hey I found a neat little trick that works for me.

Here it is. You ready for this?

Sometimes all the art work for a page isn't done on the same page...whoa man, that's crazy talk. 

Is it?

I first discovered this looking at Justin Randall's development blog for his award winning 'Changing Ways' series. I also noticed that dry brushing master Greg Ruth used a similar technique in his phenomenal art work on CONAN volume 0: Born on the Battlefield. (Buy it, read it. Easily one of the best Conan stories ever, and I have read A LOT of Conan stories.)

Get this - Justin only uses one whole page PER PANEL for his work.

The advantages are obvious when you think about it. Working large gives you the advantages of simultaneously having more detail and being less fussy about every little stroke.

It's a classic win-win.

Here's an example from a Spoiler free page from the upcoming 'A Brigand's Tale' #2.



As you can see from above, panels 2 and 5 are incomplete.
From memory, I wasn't happy with those panels for one reason or another.
But not having those panels on the page meant that I could make panel 3 & 4 slightly bigger and less cramped for the inking of it. 

So what about the other panels I hear you ask?

Well, there is a whole other blank side of the paper, so I just use that side to do the other panels...



As you can see, I have A LOT more real estate for only 2 panels. Trust me when I tell you that traditional inking is much more forgiving the bigger the size your working at. Quite simply because all the big (and little) mistakes are less obvious!

Using this method I actually feel that these 2 panel pages above are actually some of the best inking I've done in terms of realising what I was going for right from the beginning.

So what now?

With the magic of Photoshop, I scan the 2 pages, resize/scale the panels as required, chuck on some panel borders and lettering and boom, the final piece...




A possible downside is selling the original art may be a bit harder, but I'm not currently being swamped by offers at the moment, and the trade off is worth it for a better quality finished product.

Am I wrong?

Let me know in the comments below!

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A Brigand's Tale, Brigand, and all distinctive likenesses thereof are trademark and copyright Daniel Tribe 2015. All rights reserved.



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