Stupid Comics Tricks

Something for the artists...

I was wanting some inking practice. I haven't done much of it the last few years, and I wasn't sure I was up to par on it.

nicholas_cox showed me a trick... I made copies of 2 pages from a black and white comic - Strangers In Paradise - at about 150% (the size comics are drawn on) and replaced the black with blue at 20% opacity. It's dark enough to see the art, but light enough to ink over and it won't reproduce when the inked pages are copied.

It took me a little under 2 hours to do the first page, experimenting with different pens, and I thought it looked pretty crappy. But when I reduced it to print size, most of it looked okay.

I did the second page today. At first I tried using a brush, but it was sucking something fierce. I found a pen that worked fairly well, though. After copying it, even the brush part looked reasonably decent.

I'm feeling somewhat more confident about doing a comic now. The art stuff, anyway. :)