I’m very pleased to show these first few pages of the Santoro School Handbook for Making Better Comics that Frank asked me to do a little while ago. This booklet will be 16 pages stuffed full of great info on Composition, Timing, Coloring, the Grid, Geometry and Formalism, and other essentials of Frank’s teaching method. Best part is that this little comics-course-in-a-book can be YOURS for a $25 donation to Frank’s IndieGoGo campaign to raise the funds for a physical school. Seriously, where are you going to find a chance to help build a whole damn comics school for only $30K? This is a steal of a lifetime for the comics community.
Hello and happy Sunday, my fine webcomic artists! This is Cami, and today I’m going to talk a little about the book I’m putting together and some of the giant glaring mistakes I made that are making this process a total pain in the ass. I should have avoided them by Getting Smart, and maybe it isn’t too late for you!
Before you think about making a book, you will have to think about making everything in your comic conducive to printing. I did not do this for pretty much the first four years of Doomsday, My Dear’s existence, which is why I am taking a little time to tell you now why you need to pay attention to things like file resolution, dimensions, and all the nitpicks and details like lettering issues and printing colors.
Bear in mind that this is my first book ever, so there are many many more people who have much much more knowledge on this subject than I do (and I welcome them to reblog with commentary if they so desire), but as with previous posts I am here to be a baby advising double babies.
So I’ll begin with a couple points:
1) Oh my god, make sure your page files are AT LEAST 300dpi
2) Don’t draw them at the size you’ll be displaying them (draw in a larger file and shrink it down for viewing), because otherwise your formatting process is going to be a lot of this:
lmao
So it’s a whole lot of resizing, wincing at the pixellation, and otherwise being SOL because to print that page (drawn 600x800pixels, 75dpi) at actual size it would be probably about the size of a business card. The white lines above and below the image are guidelines in a template I created for resizing so every page will be in the same position, and that is literally the best I can do.
It’s still going to come out okay according to my printer, but it’s not an ideal situation: it’s eating up a lot of time and I generally would recommend dealing with this sooner than later if you see a book in your future.
3) Watch your values!
By this I mean don’t just mind your p’s and q’s, I mean make sure everything isn’t super dark and/or super light and will actually translate on paper and/or not being viewed optimally. That’s just a rule of thumb, but one I could’ve stood to learn way sooner than I did.
cami why
4) Other details: make sure your text is legible and your poses/expressions are coming across early on, because once you have a huge backlog, fixing everything in bulk is going to take much longer than just making small adjustments as you go.
If any of these things aren’t of particular concern to you, it’s still worth looking into just in case you do decide to put things in print someday; and this isn’t to say you should redraw everything or even anything at all, because that’s a cycle a lot of people can’t get out of. Personally, I’m using Manga Studio to format (as opposed to InDesign or what have you) so I can edit small things as I go, but I’m only allowing myself time for small adjustments so I can continue plugging away at a reasonable pace.
I’m still in the process of hoping this book doesn’t come out a disaster as a result of my past ignorance, but you can escape this fate! Save yourself!! Don’t be like meeee
(and as for Doomsday volume one, I’ll keep you posted.)
Lately people have been asking about my brush settings for drawing, which I haven’t updated in my FAQ since… 2013? Idk, but anyway here are the ones I’ve been using the most these days. *(Take into account that I change a lot the density of all of these depending on what I want, making the stroke different everytime)*
Does anyone know any good pixel art tutorial for beginners?
This is the one I always give to people, hope it helps c:
Kind of a self plug but if you’re looking into sprite art we have eight classes up here. Comes with video lessons, written guides, and files for you to mess around with. We’ll look into environmental art later too!
I’ve been asked a lot about tips for aspiring animators, so here are some ! Enjoy, I hope it will help some of you.
Oh, and for the ones wondering who I am, I’m a french 2D animator. I studied animation at Gobelins like 10 years ago and ever since I’ve been mostly working as a 2D animator for feature films, commercials, shorts and shows.
So, you know how there is this awesome Fandomidea floating around of an all-elvhen-advisor-to-the-elvhen-Inquisitor-Team?
With Zevran as Spymaster
Merrill as Ambassador
and Fenris as the Commander to the Inquisition Forces?
Yes?
Well, here is my unpopular oppinion about it:
I think, Fenris would make a WAY BETTER Ambassador than Merril.
And Merrill would make a WAY BETTER Commander than Fenris.
Why, you might ask.
Well, Fenris knows how Nobility works. He can speak several languages. He is trained in conversation and all the impressive chatty ‘The Game (but without masks)’ stuff. He negotiated a one-on-one battle with the Arishock, for fucks sake. (And who would want to piss of an Ambassador who can straight up rip your heart out if you Insult ANYONE he represents or likes?)
And Merrill? She is trained to be a leader in many ways. She has been brought up to be a Keeper, after all. She must have had some Training in that regard, simply to defend the Clan. She knows what must be done and what Price to pay and she knows how far to go. She might look cute, but she sure can kick ass.(Not to mention that she is the one who gets that shiny armour if you romance her.)
But:
Zevran as Spymaster, absolutely! (But one who’d rather not kill, if it can be avoided. Most People are useless once they are dead, no?)
Process for the landscapes. It’s pretty fun to paint backgrounds like this. The key is to break up the big shapes into separate layers. Much faster than painting everything on one layer (which is what I used to do)
