Comments on your special Hallowe'en drawing...

Not damonk · Post by **Not damonk** » Tue Oct 22, 2002 9:32 pm

...would have been what you would have found here, had the link to the drawing not led to a 404!

How am i supposed to praise you if you won't even let me look at your art?

Darn you, Trpeal!!

Darn you to HECK!!!

ThePooka · Post by **ThePooka** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 1:05 am

At least we were warned it was risque....:)
So I know to chill on it untill I get home....
Even though I know I'm extreamly curious...considering what some of those link piccies looked like..And I only sent the tasteful ones :)

Matt Trepal · Post by **Matt Trepal** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 4:47 am

Yeah, apparently I forgot to upload the page. ;P

The picture is here, and I will try to fix the link quickly.

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 5:57 am

There, that works now.

Very nice pic. Poor Portia, she still has nightmares about Fawn, does she? :-)

About GIMP... I'm gonna go out on a limb and assume you're using GIMP for Windows? (Actually, I'd say it's fairly accurate to assume, since you threw Photoshop in its place) Ahhhhkay... GIMP for Windows is fairly unstable and prone to crashing badly. Believe me. :-) Best to use it just for quick modification to things if you prefer GIMP filters. GIMP under Linux, though... I've yet to have it bomb out on me badly.

Of course, this is kinda due to GIMP using the gtk+ libraries... they work beautifully under Linux, poorly under Windows. Hrm.

Not damonk · Post by **Not damonk** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 7:03 am

Nice drawing, Trpeal!

As for the GIMP, the trick is to save often and not keep it open for too long at a time, depending on your computer RAM; it eats up system resources and mem really fast, so you have to refresh it every once in a while. If you do that, she won't crash at all, or at least hardly ever.

I still use GIMP to do a lot of my stuff, tho I letter and balloon with Photoshop 5.5 now, since it's quicker that way. I like 'em both, what can I say? ^_^

And more hooray for evil dreams!!!!

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 8:48 am

I letter and balloon in Paint Shop Pro, since GIMP doesn't have vector layers... yes, I have sloppy-style balloons in my comic, but they're MADE to be that way, and they take a small bit of node manipulation to make 'em work. :-)

Though I do all my coloring in GIMP. I'm more used to it. And it is true, under Windows, you should make sure you save fairly frequently in GIMP. Should be safer.

Or just get a Linux/BSD/etc box. I've had GIMP up all day on my little Linux box, and it never goes down. I'll try to stop evangelizing now, sorry. :-)

Matt Trepal · Post by **Matt Trepal** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 9:35 am

Thanks for the comments, Frank. I'm certainly getting better at this, although there's still some things I find horribly wrong with this picture. But every time I do another one, I can see a marked improvement to my work!

Well, that explains why GIMP chokes when I do large colored pictures but usually doesn't have any problems when I'm doing the strip. I'd save more, but it doesn't like large (6x9inches @300dpi) images, particularly when they've got lots of layers (like this one did). It takes a loooooong time to save such an image, and might bomb even then.

You're right, Cap'n, I used GIMP for Windows; I'm not savvy enough to play around with Unix or Linux at this point. However, my copy of Photoshop 6.0 is such a screamer that I probably won't go back unless I want to start making PNGs. (and, yes, Portia still has some issues about Fawn!

)

Kellogg · Post by **Kellogg** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:12 am

Top notch work there Matt! 8)

The folds of the blankets and the lines of the musculature
look pretty good!

I think the coloring job is excellent too.
I *Was* about to bug you about coloring your strips, but if it
keeps crashing on you, maybe I'll have to be patient, eh?

I must admit that when only the top half of the pic displayed
my reaction was a WHAT??? until I scrolled down
and saw it was Portia.

So... Portia has... issues, ya think?

Scott

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 10:51 am

Matt Trepal wrote:However, my copy of Photoshop 6.0 is such a screamer that I probably won't go back unless I want to start making PNGs.

Zuh? This is implying Photoshop has problems with PNGs? (I don't use Photoshop too often, but I almost always prefer PNGs for comics) I know Paint Shop Pro has a few issues, namely it needs special instructions to convert its transparencies to alpha layers (mmmmmm... alpha layers), but PS has problems?

Ironically, GIMP runs faster on my 200MHz Linux box than on my 400MHz Windows box. Weird. Yes, my coloring box is a 200MHz box. Yes, I occasionally color 2000x3000 pixel images on that. Yes, it's outrageously slow, but still faster than my Windows box.

Anyhoo, yes, 'tis a sweet pic, Matt. Makes me wanna do full-page colored pics again. Shame my comic's still a bit young to justify holiday-based pics. Ah, well. There's next year. :-)

Kellogg · Post by **Kellogg** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 11:04 am

CaptainSpam wrote: Zuh? This is implying Photoshop has problems with PNGs?

I work with photoshop. Photoshop doens't seem to save PNGs very well.
As far as photoshop is concerned: PNGs have all the funky problems of GIF with color gradients getting messed up, and all the file size problems
of JPG.

Given those limitations, I stick with JPG, unless it's a very simple comic
and GIF doesn't mess up the colors.

Anyway, Matt, did you ever consider trying a couple experiments with
windblown fluffy hair for Portia or Fawn? I'd be very curious to see
what you'd come up with.

Just a thought,

Scott

Big Bad Al · Post by **Big Bad Al** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 12:47 pm

Well I can't add much to what's been said except is best to have a number of art/editing apps. I have PhotoShop, Paint Shop Pro and Fireworks. PhotoShop is my main workhorse as it's FAR superior to the other two BUT Fireworks can convert PhotoShop PSD's to PNGs well (converting layers and everything which I can later use in Flash) and Paint Shop Pro blows at most things but has a helpful image viewer which I can use to manage my porn coll... I mean strips... yes my strips!

Anyway, try to get more then one that balances out the weaknesses of the others.

Nice clean lined pic BTW! You ARE getting better.

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 2:37 pm

Kellogg wrote:I work with photoshop. Photoshop doens't seem to save PNGs very well.
As far as photoshop is concerned: PNGs have all the funky problems of GIF with color gradients getting messed up, and all the file size problems
of JPG.

So... basically, Photoshop always assumes PNGs are pallete-based, or it does odd things with the colors anyhoo? In either event, wow. That IS a bit strange, given that PNGs are lossless compression, good to the full 16 million color range plus a 256 level alpha layer... Remind me not to use Photoshop, then. :-)

But, enough banter. Matt, can we expect to see more big ol' full-color pics or whatnot? A Christmas pic with the FCE crew would rock, methinks.

Matt Trepal · Post by **Matt Trepal** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 4:27 pm

Kellogg wrote: Anyway, Matt, did you ever consider trying a couple experiments with
windblown fluffy hair for Portia or Fawn? I'd be very curious to see
what you'd come up with.

Hair has always given me problems, women's hair even moreso. I think the best hair that I've drawn was in my Suburban Jungle fanart. Partly I think it's because I draw hair too quickly. Another problem is that I have a hard time visualizing how it falls, therefore can't draw it well. It's something I'm trying to work on, although free-flowing hair might clash with my stylized drawing style.

CaptainSpam wrote:So... basically, Photoshop always assumes PNGs are pallete-based, or it does odd things with the colors anyhoo? In either event, wow. That IS strange, given that PNGs are lossless compression, good to the full 16 million color range plus a 256 level alpha layer... Remind me not to use Photoshop, then.

Ah, you only say that because you've never used it before! As Al says, Adobe Photoshop is far and away the best image manipulation software out there. The biggest problem is that it's expensive! Another significant problem (but only if you work with them) is that it doesn't save images as PNGs well. I'm not sure what the problems are, but it doesn't like them. For instance, this Halloween picture, which is a 169kb JPG image, turned out to be 233kb PNG. Actually, I created that PNG in GIMP.... Maybe it's because of the diagonal gradient? Trust me, Cap'n, Photoshop might not cause you to abandon GIMP, but you wouldn't be using PSP for much longer!

CaptainSpam wrote:Matt, can we expect to see more big ol' full-color pics or whatnot? A Christmas pic with the FCE crew would rock, methinks.

We'll see, Cap'n. There isn't any Christmas, per se, in the Middle Kingdoms, but mere anachronisms haven't stopped me before (witness today's strip). Part of it involves coming up with an idea that meshes with the season (and, to give credit where credit is due, the germ for this picture was planted by the ubiquitous Stalks-the-Wind's-Shadows, who wanted to see Fawn as a succubus). So I won't count it out, but I wouldn't recommend holding your breath until it shows up.

Big Bad Al · Post by **Big Bad Al** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 5:06 pm

The less colours you use the smaller the PNG file size. Using 256 colours, PNGs kick GIF files asses!

Of course it's sometimes better to use JPEGs, but it is a VERY lossy (I don't think that's a real word) format and often shows around the text in a strip. Last week I had to bite the bullet and use a HUGE PNG, as the blue on black text was just eaten by a JPEG! It got to the point where if I notched up the quality any more I might as well use the loss-less format and make it look nice for a few extra k!

BTW, I use Paint Shop Pro to reduce colours. It's simpler and normally does a better job then PhotoShop. I should use Fireworks as it's MADE to reduce file sizes, but I'm too lazy to do so. I also use PSP to add text to my strips as it's the simplest. It's not very good at it but you don't have to fart-arse around with layers and stuff like you do in PhotoShop.

As for not celebrating Christmas, I'm the only strip on the web that celebrates Guy Fawkes

CaptainSpam · Post by **CaptainSpam** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 5:10 pm

Matt Trepal wrote:Ah, you only say that because you've never used it before! As Al says, Adobe Photoshop is far and away the best image manipulation software out there. The biggest problem is that it's expensive! Another significant problem (but only if you work with them) is that it doesn't save images as PNGs well. I'm not sure what the problems are, but it doesn't like them. For instance, this Halloween picture, which is a 169kb JPG image, turned out to be 233kb PNG. Actually, I created that PNG in GIMP.... Maybe it's because of the diagonal gradient? Trust me, Cap'n, Photoshop might not cause you to abandon GIMP, but you wouldn't be using PSP for much longer!

Ah, but I have used it a couple times... however, I know not the uber high quality pizzaz whoop-dee-doo hyper happy happy wheefun magic techniques and such involving Photoshop that seems to draw everyone to it (One look at my comic makes this obvious. :-))... all I really use PSP for is vector manipulation (text in comics) and a few contrast hacking bits. And maybe mild image conversion stunts. So, at least for now, PSP does the job for me in that respect, and my familiarity with GIMP keeps me happy for coloring.

Then there's the price bit. Hooooooo boy, there's the price bit. And hey, did I mention the price bit? :-)

As for why the image was big-like in PNG... Hrm... PNG usually works GREAT with solid colors and/or smooth gradients in any direction, making it ideal for colored comics. And the gradient you have there is smooth enough that it wouldn't cause problems, methinks. It doesn't work well with pictures that have 'noise' in them (so, they suck bad when it comes to photos); it makes the pics huge.

The JPEG you have on the server now seems like there's very little compression, so I'm not sure why the PNG would be so much bigger...

Matt Trepal wrote:We'll see, Cap'n. There isn't any Christmas, per se, in the Middle Kingdoms, but mere anachronisms haven't stopped me before (witness today's strip). Part of it involves coming up with an idea that meshes with the season (and, to give credit where credit is due, the germ for this picture was planted by the ubiquitous Stalks-the-Wind's-Shadows, who wanted to see Fawn as a succubus). So I won't count it out, but I wouldn't recommend holding your breath until it shows up.

Aha. Cool, then. We shall see. And, of course, more would always be welcome. :-)

Big Bad Al wrote:The less colours you use the smaller the PNG file size. Using 256 colours, PNGs kick GIF files asses!

Ohhhhhh, yeah. :-) Pallete-mode PNG rocks all over GIF. And GIF can't do more colors than that anyhoo, so...

JPEG is lossy, but it's mainly made for photos, where losses aren't as noticeable. Solid, distinct images, though...

Matt Trepal · Post by **Matt Trepal** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 5:17 pm

Thanks for the kind comments, everybody! That's part of what keeps me wanting to do this!

Kellogg wrote: I *Was* about to bug you about coloring your strips

You mean going full-color for all the strips?

Yeesh, I don't know. Part of the problem with doing that is that my drawing style doesn't work well with color fills. If you look closely, you'll notice that the faces of all of my characters are open, particularly between the forehead and the nose; I don't draw the opposite cheek. In a coloring situation, this causes the color to bleed out when I use that convenient flood fill tool. The necessary work it takes to prevent this can be time-consuming and, sometimes, ruinous to the effect. For instance, in this newest picture there is a solid line around Yerzle's eye (actually, there's one on all three figures in the picture, it's just most evident here), which produces a sharp delineation between colors, and effect not evident in the normal strips, where your eye places that cheek/forehead line where it thinks it looks best. Some slight character redesign may be necessary before I go full-color.

But I've been thinking about experimenting in that direction. Any tips would be most helpful!

Big Bad Al · Post by **Big Bad Al** » Wed Oct 23, 2002 5:45 pm

Remember PhotoShop is an odd beast. I've been using it for years and I STILL keep finding handy new functions. Sadly, PhotoShop is TOO user friendly to the point it isn't any more. The number of features that use the Ctrl or Alt keys and not listed anywhere in the menus is huge! It took me ages to figure out layer masks thanks to that!

Kellogg · Post by **Kellogg** » Thu Oct 24, 2002 7:14 am

{Full color FCE!}

Matt Trepal wrote: Yeesh, I don't know. Part of the problem with doing that is that my drawing style doesn't work well with color fills. If you look closely, you'll notice that the faces of all of my characters are open, particularly between the forehead and the nose; I don't draw the opposite cheek. In a coloring situation, this causes the color to bleed out when I use that convenient flood fill tool. The necessary work it takes to prevent this can be time-consuming and, sometimes, ruinous to the effect. For instance, in this newest picture there is a solid line around Yerzle's eye (actually, there's one on all three figures in the picture, it's just most evident here), which produces a sharp delineation between colors, and effect not evident in the normal strips, where your eye places that cheek/forehead line where it thinks it looks best. Some slight character redesign may be necessary before I go full-color.

But I've been thinking about experimenting in that direction. Any tips would be most helpful!

For stuff like that, where I want a border of color without an inked line,
try this:

Select the white space with the magic wand to limit the area you can
draw on. Then use the pencil in the single pixel mode to get as sharp
a line as you can. Draw the border in the color it needs to be in. and
then you're free to use the old paint fill.

This is what I use to draw the border between the white parts of
Jack's ears and the orange of his face. I also use this to draw the
white highlights in Beth's blonde hair.

Hope that makes sence.

Al: Thanks for the tips on PNGs!

Scott

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