I'm in need of helpness/reviews

[CorruptDictatorNumber2]

Alex - As for the Links page, thanks for telling me. I doubt I'm ever going to mind enough to bother to change it...LOL I'm just too lazy.

Halflight - "wimpy pencil lines"--Hee hee hee! Whoo, that was just such an interesting choice of words that I had to start laughing at it... and myself. I'm pretty sure I know what you're talking about with all this, but I hope you don't mind if I ask some questions. The outlines--can you see my planning lines? Did I not erase them thoroughly? That's what I assume you mean by "scribbly." The shading--okay, that's very important to me, so I'd like to know what you think I can do to clean it up. Should I use a soft-lead pencil to keep the shading from looking like a bunch of distinct lines? Am I not being careful enough with the shading so it looks like I rushed or just didn't bother to do it well? About the evil chick in the last panel (well, it's not actually a panel, but whatever...you know which picture I'm talking about)--at this point I'm not quite certain whether I chose not to shade her because I was thinking it would make her look all powerful and glowy like her hands... or if I was just trying to finish the stupid page so that I could scan it and put it up. Ha ha ha!! Oh, that sounds so bad... Anyway, thanks very much for your advice! That's one of the things I didn't actually notice until you pointed it out. ALL RIGHT!! ^_^ I'll try out some new techniques for Thursday's comic.

A question to everyone who suggested computer lettering... I'm wondering if the lettering on Tuesday's page doesn't look very good. Maybe I'm just thinking that because I'm not used to it and my hand-lettering (since it's just done with a .5 pencil) is much more muted. Does anyone know of another font I could use? I really like the Anime Ace one on blambot.com, but I have to have a font that can give me both lower and uppercase. (Yes, HAVE TO. Hehehehe.)

Katherine

[CorruptDictatorNumber2]

I think I've begun to reply to my own topic more than anyone else. That's really pathetic. Oh well...

Something else I was wondering, if anyone wants to bother to look for me. I'm getting the feeling that the quality is deteriorating... like the first couple pages were fine because I spent quite a while on them (while I was waiting for my account to be created), and since then I've been spending less and less time on the pages. Is it starting to show? Methinks it is.

K

[Halflight]

I don't see any planning lines... i more meant the shading itself. the outlines look inked or at least exTREMEly darkly penciled, but the shading looks like a #2 or so-- it would be too light at the best of times, and with black outlines it just looks like... an afterthought. I don't know if pen outlines with pencil shading *can* work... if it can, it would have to be extremely dark pencil (or extremely light pen...?). computer (gimp is always out there) or just plain pen, be it just outlines of different widths, outlines and some pure black spaces for emphasis, or some pen shading technique (crosshatched, scribble, etc.) might be a thing to look into too. if you do continue with pencil... shade slowly so the shading is softer and the strokes overlap so you don't see them distinctly. i'm pretty awful at pencil myself, so somebody else might be more helpful.

On that last panel-- glow is made by contrast, not by a lot of white. since the paper is already white, you can only draw light by drawing shadows.
even if you leave the figure white or only lightly shaded, a dark background would enhace the glowyness and make it look more finished. a black baground that got lighter around the figure would show glow. for the fire above the figure as well, instead of shading it dark, which is odd for fire, make it nearly white and everything around it nearly black, and it will glow better. all the fire and light stuff would be more dramatic with a) more contrast around it (not in it, as its supposed to be bright) and b) dramatic shadows on the pointing-away sides of all shapes that are near it-- eg. on the hand at the top right corner, you made the hand darker as the fire got brighter, presumably for contrast. what would make more logical sense and look more dramatic would be to make only the underside of the hand, and other parts of it pointing away and shielded from the fire dark, so that we could see the light cast on the hand. the palm would be light, the sides would fade to dark underneath, and the arm would be somewhat darker than the palm as it is both farther from the fire and sloped away from it. the heel of the hand would probably cast a slight shadow as well. the background of that panel would be the darkest part, probably, dark at the edges and lighter towards the center of the fire, but never light enough that the fire edges would be indistinct.

hope that helped

[CorruptDictatorNumber2]

Wowies. I asked for clarification, and I got it. Thank you, that's excellent!

The entire comic is drawn in pencil, and when I scan it, I turn the contrast up way super high so that it looks like it's inked. On the originals I still do the shading lighter than the outlines, though, so that's why it looks the way it does. I'll try making the shading darker so that it shows up more, and hopefully that will look better.

"glow is made by contrast, not by a lot of white." Ha ha ha! You have a very good point. I agree, that panel needs more contrast in it. I guess I *was* just being lazy and in a hurry. ^^;;

The fire is black for a reason. This page actually needed to be in color, but I did the best I could with black and white; although I didn't make it clear or obvious, the color of the flame was suppposed to show the negative or positive answer to her questions. Black was no, white was yes. I realize that sounds pretty lame, but oh well... What you said about the shadows, though, is good. Yeah. I should do that. I did some shading rather like that on a previous page--if you'd care to see it, it's at http://slightlyschizophrenic.keenspace. ... 20712.html

Thank you SO much for your help!! ^_^

Katherine

(It looks like I have no life, and I just lurk around this forum waiting for people to post. Actually, I'm online working on my class, but it's not like that really makes a difference. Okay, I'm shutting up now)

[Halflight]

Ooh! yeah-- the pic at the bottom left looks great, the face in particular. i feel like i'm being really nitpicky now... but some of that contrast on the body would be nice too.

black flames... i was thinking of that...
i guess you would do that by making the flame itself black, with light around it, then dark around that so it would look glowy?

very nice art you have here ^_~

[CorruptDictatorNumber2]

Actually, I couldn't figure out quite how to do the contrast on the body (I looked at a reference for the face), so that's the only reason I didn't do it.

If anyone who has commented so far is interested to look, I've tried to incorporate a lot of your advice into Thursday's page (if you go to slightlyschizophrenic.keenspace.com today or tomorrow, it will be the main page). I'd rather like to know how you all think it turned out ^_^ I'm still toying with the idea of inking and all that--haven't had time to get serious about it yet--but I've tried cleaning up my pencilling and using computer-drawn speech balloons, frames, and (in one part) shading.

K

[Ajcg51]

Well, I've looked at yesterdays (thurday) strip. I reckon the speech balloon thickness needs to be increased. It's er... quote Monty Python here "... only Waffer thin". So, give the balloon a thinkness of 2pixels and see how that looks.

[CorruptDictatorNumber2]

I tried that, but I didn't like the feel of it--but that's just because, like the lettering, I'm not used to bold stuff that stands out, since the lines are all thin when I hand-draw it. If you really think it looks better 2 pixels, though, then 2 pixels it is.

K

[Ajcg51]

well, I dont want to impose. I just thought the thin lines were a bit too thin. If you try it on another strip I will either keep or retract my statement at will... after all, its not my comic

[CorruptDictatorNumber2]

Well, I suppose that's true, but it's also true that I opened this topic so that people would point out things I didn't notice. ^^

Katherine