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Description
Oh god, that's terrible news! Shock and awe!

***

So, here it is, a brand new, and kinda different looking page! Those of you who read my recent journal entry will know that I've been struggling to manage drawing the comic as of late due it's ever incresing level of detail. I quickly arrived at the conclusion that something had to be done about the lineart which, by far, was the most time consuming-step in the process for me. Linearting sometimes took all of my free time, two or three nights a week, and that's simply too much.

I spent the past week or so experimenting with photoshop and trying to find ways of enhancing my sketches enough that my raw pencil drawings could replace the lineart, but however I tried, I couldn't find a method that both enhanced the lines enough to look good, and suppressed dust, paper texture and other junk in the whitespace that I didn't want included. Spending several hours carefully cleaning the pages manually was also not an option, because that's just replacing one tedious task with another. Then NinjaTertel suggested to me that I should color the characters first, and then select all the areas not colored (i.e. the background areas) and delete that part of the sketch entirely. This way, the background became clean and while I still have to do some touching up on the page, it's restricted to the character art, a much more manageable task.

The end result is what you see above. The backgrounds look as clean and nice as they ever did, but the character art now looks a lot more sketch-like. Is it less professional... or uglier? Maybe, but it also has a bit of a distinctive flair and perhaps more personality than it did before. Regardless, the time it has saved me means I can now EASILY manage a page a week, or maybe even two. Even if you think the art quality has taken a drop, I think you'll agree that it is worth the price if I can get back on schedule.

I've tried different sketching techniques throughout the page. The first panels for example, were sketched really darkly, the middle panel was enhanced a bit and the bottom ones were lightly sketched. It was an attempt by me to gauge how I should draw in the future for best effect, and indeed, over the coming weeks, I hope my sketches, and thus my lineart, will become less messy. This is all rather new for me so bare with me.

Description
Oh god, that's terrible news! Shock and awe!

***

So, here it is, a brand new, and kinda different looking page! Those of you who read my recent journal entry will know that I've been struggling to manage drawing the comic as of late due it's ever incresing level of detail. I quickly arrived at the conclusion that something had to be done about the lineart which, by far, was the most time consuming-step in the process for me. Linearting sometimes took all of my free time, two or three nights a week, and that's simply too much.

I spent the past week or so experimenting with photoshop and trying to find ways of enhancing my sketches enough that my raw pencil drawings could replace the lineart, but however I tried, I couldn't find a method that both enhanced the lines enough to look good, and suppressed dust, paper texture and other junk in the whitespace that I didn't want included. Spending several hours carefully cleaning the pages manually was also not an option, because that's just replacing one tedious task with another. Then NinjaTertel suggested to me that I should color the characters first, and then select all the areas not colored (i.e. the background areas) and delete that part of the sketch entirely. This way, the background became clean and while I still have to do some touching up on the page, it's restricted to the character art, a much more manageable task.

The end result is what you see above. The backgrounds look as clean and nice as they ever did, but the character art now looks a lot more sketch-like. Is it less professional... or uglier? Maybe, but it also has a bit of a distinctive flair and perhaps more personality than it did before. Regardless, the time it has saved me means I can now EASILY manage a page a week, or maybe even two. Even if you think the art quality has taken a drop, I think you'll agree that it is worth the price if I can get back on schedule.

I've tried different sketching techniques throughout the page. The first panels for example, were sketched really darkly, the middle panel was enhanced a bit and the bottom ones were lightly sketched. It was an attempt by me to gauge how I should draw in the future for best effect, and indeed, over the coming weeks, I hope my sketches, and thus my lineart, will become less messy. This is all rather new for me so bare with me.