Log of work for this week:
- Sketched, edited, and lined Pandora’s expression sheet
- Wrote about my ideas for Pandora’s backstory, aim, and motives in my Research Slides document on Google Drive
- Visited the Allotment Club site, to get used to the area and form a plan of our next steps.
- Sketched and lined Pandora’s outfit for her turnaround sheet, separate from the base, and put the two pieces together
- Learned about “Flatting”, a term used for adding flat colours to an illustration/comic page/etc. I’ve worked this into my project, and have added flats to Pandora’s turnaround and expression sheets on Photoshop
- Sketched and modified the side and front/back 3/4 views for Pandora’s handgun, “Hope”.
- Worked through tutorials on colouring and flatting
- Organised the next student movie night
- Took on an official (voluntary) role as a social media content producer for a local visual arts group (Visual Arts Plymouth CIC) and related arts festival (Plymouth Art Weekender)
- Tabled at a local art and maker fair (Tiny Mart)
This week I managed to get much more work done compared to last week. I’ve found that I’ve spent more time editing sketches, specifically on Pandora’s gun because I am unfamiliar with drawing guns. I also feel that my sketching process needs tightening up, as I have had to do more editing in Photoshop to my sketches than I would like before I can begin my lineart.
This project has really helped me gain confidence in making digital lineart. I usually use ink on paper and scan my image into digital software, and the only real change I typically make is to alter the Levels (the intensity of the tones in an image) and fix any mistakes and blotches. I preferred to do this because I was comfortable with working traditionally, and because when I tried to work digitally I often made mistakes and ended up with lineart that barely resembled my sketches.
Now, when I look back, I realise that it wasn’t just my inexperience with lining my work digitally using a drawing tablet, but it was also my inexperience with the software. This project has helped me improve these skills immensely as I have begun learning about the software capabilities, for example about dynamic brushes that are made to resemble brush and pen strokes. Using dynamic brushes will allow me to draw directly into Photoshop with a drawing tablet, and produce illustrations that are very close to how I usually draw with pen and paper. However, without more experience, my lines and strokes don’t always match up properly and line weight can be inconsistent – and not in a good way (for example, thinner lines for smaller details, larger lines for clothing hems/etc). Through the Lynda Photoshop tutorial I’ve been following, I’ve learned how to adjust brush settings and disable/enable the Pen Pressure, which drastically affects how the pen works. Here’s a visual example:
For now I have mostly continued to work with the Pen Pressure disabled, manually adjusting the pen size to specific points, ending up with a similar process to using traditional fineliner pens. It’s much harder to use pressure-based pens digitally than real brushes and dip pens, as drawing tablets are extremely sensitive, and the slightest wobble or shift in pressure can entirely throw off a stroke. Having learned about dynamic brushes I plan to practice these techniques over the summer to improve my skills.
Though drawing the gun has taken up a fairly big chunk of my time this week, I managed to get Pandora’s expression sheet almost completed as well. This did involve a lot of editing too, but I used my concept expression sheet from earlier in the project as a reference, as I really liked some of the expressions I had drawn and wanted to recreate them. I had originally drawn six faces, and by splicing together parts from different faces I was able to create eight final expressions in all.
To start colouring my work, I’ve been using techniques recommended by Flatters, artists that are hired by comic Colourists in order to make the colouring process in comic book pages easier by laying down all of the base (or flat) colours digitally, so those colours can be easily adjusted and added to when the Colourist begins work on the page.
I’ve never heard of Flatting before, and I’ve found that it is really enjoyable and therapeutic (when practicing or working on personal art), so I’ve decided to factor this in as a potential future job for myself. Here are my placeholder and corrected flats for Pandora’s expression sheet:
I have been watching K Michael Russell’s YouTube tutorials on flatting, colouring and shading. They are really interesting and I think will be helpful so I have started working through them. I probably will not have enough time to complete them all (there are a lot!) but most of them are quite short but cover some important areas. The ones I have worked through so far are below:
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