Okay, Lineart

[Reubo]

I suck suck suck suck at making lineart from a sketch.

How do you guys do lineart?

EDIT: I should be more specific. I use a tablet to do my drawings, so when talking about lineart I mean digital lineart. My main programs are The GIMP, Photoshop Elements, Painter Essentials, Inkscape, and MSPaint

[Lei]

What I do is:

- sketch out my panels in pencil
- go over the page in pen and ink
- erase all my pencil lines thoroughly
- scan it into Photoshop
- go to Image: Level Adjustments and tweak the levels until the blacks are black and the whites are white and all the gunky smudgy stuff is gone

And I'm set! I know other people do it all digitally with tablets, but I find I prefer my tablet for coloring, and traditional media for linework.

Some tips for contour line in a composition:
- use varied line width. Pen and Ink is great for this - by pressing down hard on the nib, you get a nice thick line, and by barely pressing at all, you get a line that's hair thin. makes it more interesting.
- Use line width to indicate a light source. Make the lines thicker on the side of the figure where there's a shadow, or even darken in portions of the figure (you're already doing some of this, but you could do it more).

Hope some of that helps...

EDIT: I've looked through your comic, and I think your main problem is the pixelated quality of your lines. What program are you using?

[Jekkal]

Digital Inking suits me. (Tablet + Illustrator, but YMMV)

Pencil is messy. Ink is clean but permenant. Digital Ink is clean and easy to Ctrl+Z your way out of a mess.

[KWill]

Depending on what I'm doing, I'll either do it digitally or on a seperate sheet of paper. Digitally takes its sweet time on account of me not having a tablet, and I end up tracing the sketches with the path tool. Takes a while, but the lines look acceptably neat.
For inking on paper, I paperclip a second page onto the sketches (I hate losing original drawings and don't want the original lost because I screwed up inking) to avoid it slipping and then trace the pencils with a pen. I've got a little translucent "table" that I put a lamp underneath to make tracing easier. It's a bit messier than digital inking, but doesn't take as much time. It's more suitable for projects that I shrink a lot afterwards.

[Tystarr]

I used to draw the whole strip in pencil, ink it then finish it off in photoshop but now I recently learned to use the paint brush tool to redo lines I didn't like or fix my inking mistakes. So yeah, I just pencil and ink it on paper. I would do the whole inking process on the comp but it kinda takes too long.

[GeorgeComics]

I do the line art exclusively in Flash. I then export it as a PNG file, about four times larger than it will appear on the web. I color it in Photoshop, add text and bubbles, shrink it down, sharpen it a tad bit, and post it.

[Siabur]

the higher the resolution the smoother your lines will appear. For a simple way, use a pencil, draw on paper, scan, trace in graphic program. I use 300 dpi for most things. Works for comics and web graphics. It's easier to reduce resolution from a higher number than increasing from a lower number.

[Chelsee]

I've learned to forgive myself for infidelity to any one technique ^_^(). I'm an inker at heart - some things can only be accomplished with good old fashioned ink pens and paper. Other things... well, a tablet used right (and a corresponding brush!) can reproduce a line almost identical.

So I go back and forth. I do what would be best in ink, scan, and do the rest with a mix of PS and Painter.

I think your main problem is choosing to use 1.) the pencil tool (or equivalent?) to ink your lines. They're too jagged, where other tools (paintbrush in PS, example) could do a significant job smoothing out your lines. And 2.)...trying to accomplish line art without a tablet. I know there are some hard-core mouse-artists out there, but they are rare and devoted and are not concerned about time, where as webcomic artists have deadlines...

I suppose you should go with what you're comfortable with. These are the things I would say to someone who might want to try other techniques. Otherwise, you seem to have your own style as well, so to with what you know...

[Paul Escobar]

You have the "varied line width" thing going already, so that's cool. But it seems you draw in 1:1, which inevitably makes the line art look jagged. So like siabur said, draw bigger - simply make your original drawings in a much bigger size. This will make it much easier to control the linework when drawing, and will make it look more slick in the finished, scaled-down png you put on your site. (This goes whether you're inking with actual ink on paper or with a tablet.)

[Geekblather]

I draw at 250 dpi, but I also zoom in to 200% or more when I ink. That alone makes a huge difference. (Just make sure to zoom out once in a while to keep your perspectives right.)

[Fabio Ciccone]

My Photoshop/Illustrator process:
1. create a document with the desired size at 300 dpi
2. in the first layer, you draw the rough sketches (aka stick figures or whatever suits you), for diagraming pourpouses
3. in the second layer, make the sketches per se (aka pencils)
4. in the third layer, make the frame borders
5. in the fourth layer, draw the final lines (aka ink)
6. in the fifth layer, make the shadows
7. in the sixth layer, make the backgrounds
8. go to illustrator and add the words and balloons.

I've been thinking about doing step 8 in the first place lately, so you don't have to squeeze the balloons in the art (you make the art fitting the words instead)

[GeorgeComics]

Well, DPI means absolutely nothing without the size at which the document would be printed going along with it. Saying "250 dpi" is useless unless you specify, say, "250 dpi at 10 inches wide." That would be 2,500 pixels wide on your monitor. I mean, if your comic is 250 dpi but you're only drawing it at 1 inch wide, that's only 250 pixels wide and that's too tiny for a webcomic. Deal in pixels for web viewing, and DPI when talking about print use. I draw my comic 2,880 pixels wide in Flash and export it at the same size--which is 72 dpi at 40 inches wide, and 288 dpi at 10 inches wide. The important thing (for the web, anyway) is that, ultimately, I condense it down to 749 pixels wide for web viewing.

[Montanto]

If we're talking just using a tablet I prefer doing my sketching with Painter. While Photoshop has the advantage for post production when it comes to doing an image from scratch there's no comparison. (Not to say I don't sketch with photoshop I can kind of get the pencil effect by cutting the opacity in half and switch the brush mode to multiply but it's still not the same. When I get to the inking stage unless I absolutely want to save the sketch I don't even bother with making a layer. If you're sketching in color and I generally use a light blue it's easy to clean up once you go back to photoshop and use the select similar function. Having said that when inking I can't say I've yet to really get the eye hand coordination down to my liking. Even though the scratchiness I get from a slightly unsteady hand is mostly hidden once I shrink it down to 72 dpi it's still enough for me. So generally I still go with the old fashioned method and scan it into photoshop.

[Wyldcherry]

I used to do my rough draft on paper. Then I would scan and do my lines in opencanvas. Now I just to my rough draft on one layer and line it on another.

It took alot of practice to get my lines to look right. I had to get used to the pressure and the strokes to vary my line widths.

[Flounderville]

I used to draw with pencil, then use a fine tip permanent marker (and sometimes art pens) to ink the drawings...Then I'd scan them in, open them up in Illustrator, and do Live Trace on them. That would make all of the dark areas black, and the light areas white...and the white areas of the drawings were really easy to color (just click the area you want to color, then change the color in the...square color selector thing).

The way I do my new stuff is a secret...that doesn't involve using a tablet (because I don't have one!)

[GeorgeComics]

While I still do my line art in Flash, I've taken a shine to using the paintbrush tool instead of the pencil tool, and it makes my art look much more natural and "hand-drawn." Plus, now I've got a Cintiq at home so I get the more natural feeling of drawing right on the screen...I think I've finally reached my personal goal of finding the perfect blend between digital art and old-fashioned hand-drawn art. Plus, I do my coloring in Flash now, but I still can't quite give up finishing it all (shading, word bubbles) in Photoshop.

[Lance]

I loooove paper! I do original art oldschool doublesize w/pencil on artboard. Ink on paper, then scan, color,letter.

[Lance]

I've got a Cintiq at home so I get the more natural feeling of drawing right on the screen...I think I've finally reached my personal goal of finding the perfect blend between digital art and old-fashioned hand-drawn art.

Drawing on the screen itself... I gotta admit that makes me a lil' jealous.

[Montyandwoolley]

I draw everything on paper first to get an idea of the angle (im terrible at imagining angles and positions without free-hand drawing it) then i start the whole thing again on the computer with line art. That way i can sorta improve any imperfections in my drawing. - I'm not too fond of scanners, plus this way i draw the picture twice and it improves my art!



Well, that was the theory anyway...

[Themacnut]

What I do is:

- sketch out my panels in pencil
- go over the page in pen and ink
- erase all my pencil lines thoroughly
- scan it into Photoshop

That's basically my process as well, except afterwards I use the Clone Stamp and Pencil tools to correct inking mistakes and clean up my lines. It works amazingly well, and much faster than trying to do all my inking on a tablet, where I'd face a learning curve as I tried to draw while looking at the screen and not my actual drawing surface. I think I could only use a tablet if it was one of those Cintiq screen tablets-which are way outside my budget.