Okay, now that I've been using GIMP awhile, I've learned a lot, but there are some things I'm still shakey on. I was wondering if some one could either help me or direct me to a information/tutorial site?
I still need to find out how to color, panel, speech bubble, inking, and sharpen ing mages...Any advice?
GIMP Comic Techniques?
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Kris X
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GIMP Comic Techniques?
PK Comics meets Gaming genre.
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Jesusabdullah
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I don't remember where I found this, and I haven't checked it out myself, but maybe it will help? It looks pretty frickin' thorough in any case:
http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/
http://gimp-savvy.com/BOOK/
A good deal of the GIMP's tools can be found in the dialog menus, not only in the toolbox.
It really depends on the setup of your process.
If you're coloring an inking straight out of a black and white scan, paintbucket is simple enough for color, but if you're dealing with a grainier image, you may want to use the magic wand tool, and then "grow" the selection using the Grow tool to bypass any artifacts.
On a different layer placed above the original (set to Multiply so colors will go over white and go under black), you would use the tool to fill the selected area with color.
With speech bubbles, one way you could do it would be to have your text placed, then create a layer beneath the text. With that layer active, you select the text with bubbles, and select the bubble tail regions as well (the create shapes tool is useful here). Keep in mind, making selections with the shift key held down will create new selections while preserving the other ones.
Once that's done, you fill the selections with black, then use the Shrink tool to shrink the selection by one, and then fill with white. That should do the trick.
It really depends on the setup of your process.
If you're coloring an inking straight out of a black and white scan, paintbucket is simple enough for color, but if you're dealing with a grainier image, you may want to use the magic wand tool, and then "grow" the selection using the Grow tool to bypass any artifacts.
On a different layer placed above the original (set to Multiply so colors will go over white and go under black), you would use the tool to fill the selected area with color.
With speech bubbles, one way you could do it would be to have your text placed, then create a layer beneath the text. With that layer active, you select the text with bubbles, and select the bubble tail regions as well (the create shapes tool is useful here). Keep in mind, making selections with the shift key held down will create new selections while preserving the other ones.
Once that's done, you fill the selections with black, then use the Shrink tool to shrink the selection by one, and then fill with white. That should do the trick.
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TightSight
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I use GIMP for all my cartoons (cough cough, as seen at the link below) and I find it very useful.
I learned most of what I know about GIMP through tutorials and just working with it, practice makes perfect. I'm going to link you to some of the tutorials I used and then fill you in on some of the basic things I do.
I think http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ is some of the official tutorials, I would recommend most of them.
http://www.tigert.com/gimp/tutorials/ has another couple of good tutorials. In particular http://www.tigert.com/gimp/tutorials/the_bazaar_1999/ is a very good introduction to layers if you dont know much about them yet.
I usually start by scanning my (inked) drawing in at a high dpi (300) and then clean up with MS Paint. Once I have a relatively clean image I open it up with GIMP and immediately save it as a .xcf file (that is basically a GIMP file) as GIMP can crash every now and then.
To color the image I make a layer called paint, set it to multiply (under layer properties) and then just paint the regions that I want colored. Because you set the paint layer to multiply the paint will stay under the actualy drawing lines, enabling a smooth fill. (A good tutorial of that right here: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Coloring_A_BW_Sketch/ ) .
Once I have it colored I use the text tool to add the speech. After I have it all typed out I make a new layer for the speech bubbles. To make them use the select region tool (the circle one, upper left) and select a good looking circle around the text. Then right click and go to edit-> stroke selection and pick paintbrush. It will color along that line with whatever brush and color you have selected for the paintbrush. If your bubble is out of place you can always move it (as it is on a different layer), move the text, or rearange the text so that they fit.
Finally, once I have the image colored and the text added I go to Image -> merge visible layers to combine everything. Then I scale the image down to a reasonable size (remember we scanned it in large, shrinking the image makes it look much better) and save it as a png file.
Now, I realize that to describe exactly what I do would take forever. The best thing you can do is read some tutorials and just practice, practice, practice.
I learned most of what I know about GIMP through tutorials and just working with it, practice makes perfect. I'm going to link you to some of the tutorials I used and then fill you in on some of the basic things I do.
I think http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/ is some of the official tutorials, I would recommend most of them.
http://www.tigert.com/gimp/tutorials/ has another couple of good tutorials. In particular http://www.tigert.com/gimp/tutorials/the_bazaar_1999/ is a very good introduction to layers if you dont know much about them yet.
I usually start by scanning my (inked) drawing in at a high dpi (300) and then clean up with MS Paint. Once I have a relatively clean image I open it up with GIMP and immediately save it as a .xcf file (that is basically a GIMP file) as GIMP can crash every now and then.
To color the image I make a layer called paint, set it to multiply (under layer properties) and then just paint the regions that I want colored. Because you set the paint layer to multiply the paint will stay under the actualy drawing lines, enabling a smooth fill. (A good tutorial of that right here: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Coloring_A_BW_Sketch/ ) .
Once I have it colored I use the text tool to add the speech. After I have it all typed out I make a new layer for the speech bubbles. To make them use the select region tool (the circle one, upper left) and select a good looking circle around the text. Then right click and go to edit-> stroke selection and pick paintbrush. It will color along that line with whatever brush and color you have selected for the paintbrush. If your bubble is out of place you can always move it (as it is on a different layer), move the text, or rearange the text so that they fit.
Finally, once I have the image colored and the text added I go to Image -> merge visible layers to combine everything. Then I scale the image down to a reasonable size (remember we scanned it in large, shrinking the image makes it look much better) and save it as a png file.
Now, I realize that to describe exactly what I do would take forever. The best thing you can do is read some tutorials and just practice, practice, practice.
