Tag: educate

Subscriptions and a word about thumbnailing

Our life is returning to the old tracks. Coloring Circles is going well, at semi-constant speed and I’m thinking more and more about how to share and market it to public. There is so little time everyday I can put into updating site, writing posts etc. that it took me over a month to post this little illustration above. But I managed to setup subscription form for my newsletter.

Subscription?

In times when people are giving up with facebook and other social media, many artists are recommending subscribtions to mailing lists, as a way to stay connected with fans. Everybody is checking mails, right? And if there is one more in your box, from time to time, with a little drawing and a little story? It’s almost like a social media post, but without nasty algorithms or advertisment.

So here it is. Subscription form, somewhere in sidebar. I promise no spam, just updates on my projects (Circles of magic), drawings with stories from world of Erenn, thoughts and other stuff directly linked to fantasy, comics, illustration and storytelling.

Thumbnailing

Few words about this often underrated or missconcepted term we hear in many many tutorials from artists. Learning art looks pretty much like this – we pass by everything teachers say to us, trying to learn from their work instead of learning from them. All they say sound so simple, so we just take it as a natural thing. But many artists have to mature to learn the true simplicity, how it turns into elegancy and, later, into appeal. Learning is constant discovering of a true meaning of things we already know.

So I’ll just combine this idea into one sentence – thumbnailing is, holy shit, the best tool to create and save time. Don’t ask question, just thumbnail a lot.

If you add ‚holy shit’ before any idea, it makes it look stronger.

Thumbnails

I had a clear idea in my mind. Normally, it should be 20 of these.

Rough drawing

Rough drawing

Tight drawing

Tight drawing

 

Have a nice weekend!

Creating ‘Circles of Magic’ – Inking comic page

I decided to let You enter ‘Circles of Magic’ backstage for a while and share some of my inking approach in creating fantasy comic. During last live stream I digitally inked one page from upcoming first chapter and, because no one would ever watch this again for 3 hours, I created timelapsed version.

Inking comic

Inking comic

In case You wonder what inking  means – it’s a step when artist is creating final quality lines over initial rough drawing. It’s last step before applying colors. Inking is very often done by seperate artist who specialize in this kind of art. Because I decided to simplify things I do Circles fully on my laptop + cintiq.

I do sketching and drawings on 500 dpi A4 format which is approximately 4134 x 5846. Then I resize my files to 800 dpi for inking stage and use always one settings of a brush so I can mantain consistency along all pages. For coloring, file is resized back to 500 dpi and to 300 dpi for printing. This way I get rid of most of small errors and flaws of digital medium.

I use support od 3d software for repeating things that are harder to draw consistently. In this example – wagon. I bring my sketch inside Maya and do simple clay renders of  models to match sketched story. I will probably use it a lot more for important architecture during whole series.

I’m not spending much time on smaller details or hatching a lot because I decided to wait for coloring stage and then do additional layer of inks that emphasize important spots.

Yes, I’m still learning to do this better and better. I know I’ll have to redo couple of first pages because they are not even close to what I do now :)
If you’d ask me for any beginners hints – be patient, create few rules allowing You to keep consitant and stick to them.

Also visit makingcomics.com for much much more informations about creating comics.

City of fireflies and a word about craft

I’ve recently finished an illustration created with a help from Lamp Post Guild course. It is a pencil drawing on a bristol, scanned and colored digitally. On illustration you can see all four main characters from my story Circles of Magic, while they pass near  Fargdad, city of fireflies and the oldest city of questing era.

City of fireflies

What’s important. I redraw whole picture several times before I commited to a final drawing and then screwed up and start over. But.

“Artist should be able to do the same thing twice”. Sorry, but I don’t remember who said that. It’s called craft. Yet there are so many people who can’t do that because they rely heavily on spark of inspiration  and improvise a lot.

Well, that’s not entirely bad. But craft is important if you want to be consistently efficient. And belive me, you want to be consistent to avoid situations when in the middle of comission suddenly something goes wrong and it’s because you did your “magic” instead of slowly build up illustration. I’ve been there couple of times.

So althought speed painting is cool, helps maintaing daily posts and gives you fans on facebook, from time to time consider going harder way of craftsman and share with society something you both will remember.

Beyond Art Fundamentals

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New book from 3dtotal, Beyond Art Fundamentals is coming soon. and it’s not yet again about  techniques and technicalities  of art, but rather about conveying right mood and emotions using visual narratives.

I was asked to write chapter for ‘Suspense’ (favourite). It was quite tricky to write down my way of thinking, stick to the point and try not to write about obviousness.
I had very little time, so any redo’s were out of the question, but somehow it turned out quite well and fresh.

You can find book here: https://shop.3dtotal.com/books/3dtotalpublishing/beyond-art-fundamentals.html

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