555 - Ghosts and other things

[Five]

Hello guys!
I hesitated long enough, time to start my own thread here, even though I can't compare, haha.

So, short explanation ahead: I have been doing online comic battles for over a year now, it's what made me pick up drawing again after a long pause and actually pushed me to draw a lot. The problem is, since those battles happen in turns, I can never show you a complete story here. Also, for every part I only have a one-week deadline, so most comics are rushed and I had to compromise on many things. Still I would be happy on your input. :-)


But first let's start with two finished pictures:


Astorite. A secret santa gift from last christmas.



My character and the one of a friend.


Now my current battle:

I tried to take into consideration what people have said in my last thread on C9, that my panels and perspectives are sometimes too dramatic for what is happening. So this time I experimented and only used landscape panels.

Round 17, at the swamp.
Read part 1 from my opponent here if you are bored: http://warforarcadia.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=847
Part 2 from me:
















This time I used a new method. Usually I sketch, then I make the proper clean drawings (sometimes tracing some of my sketches), then I scan that and print it out lightly to ink the printout.
This time, since my printer is not working, and my sketches came out pretty good, I used transparent paper to ink on, over the sketched pages. Since the transparent paper is also a bit smoother I was able to hatch a bit more and also finally use my brush pens.
The greys are made in photoshop and were actually screentones, but they turned into plain grey during resizing. I have to find some better ones for this.
Also, first time I'm fighting out in nature! I really dislike drawing architecture, so the first few pages were a lot of fun to draw. Later on you might have noticed some wonky perspective and perspective shifts within the panels. Yeah, I just suck at it.
Overall I'm happy with these pages, though.


Some examples of previous rounds:

Round 16



Round 15

[Novacaptain]

Finally some long awaited kunst from you!
I like the comics a lot, but my favorite is the christmas picture. The woman looks, in spite of the stylizations, like she is actually based on a real person :)

The last panel of the comic is nice, even if it's a bit messy in terms of compostition. The reflected speech bubble is great. Note that "shadows don't add" as Arne said once. The hind leg of the sheep can't block light from a lightsource that is already blocked by the door frame.

I wonder if the shield-surfer isn't standing too much with his feet in-line with each other to stay balanced. It is as if he was line-balancing even if he didn't have to.

I read your S as Z most of the time, giving zome zort of robotic zynthezized tone to the voicez. I don't know if thiz iz intentional or not...anyway I thought it would be worth mentioning, even if I am the only one who might have this issue.


In any case, I am very happy to see your drawings and i hope there will be more to follow

BTW: 555= hahaha in some language.

[Five]

Oh wow, a critique already! :D Thank you for the pointers, Nova!

I actually know that shadows don't add up. I think I even thought of that when I did the mirror panel and then thought "fuckit, it looks more 3D and dramatic" that way. But yeah, I will try to avoid that in the future.

You are actually the first one to point out that problem with the font. I wondered about the readability S for a while now, actually. It is a font from blambot.com called EvilGenius. So I guess it is supposed to look and sound a little evil. I haven't found another font that I'm fully happy with and that fits my comics, though. But I'll take this as an incentive to look again.

Thanks again for your input!

[Novacaptain]

Maybe the font designer was thinking of the shutzstaffel SS insignia when he made the font... I don't say that they are illegible or difficult to read, but in my mind the text just sounds full of Z's (If that makes any sense). By the way i love the panel where she is running away to the mirror labyrinth haha. the mud squirt and legs are just hilarious.

[Five]

Last night we tried a new RPG "Scion" and used pre-created characters for it. So I drew my character "Brigitte de la Croix" after the description while playing. Now back home I quickly colored her.




Stuff from Amsterdam:

[saffi]

you know what, i LOVE your amsterdam sketches. I'd like to see more sketching from you, but maybe thats because I have a predilection for them.

[Five]

Aww, thank you. Most of my sketches don't feel postworthy or land in the speedpaint thread.

Here's the last part of the last comic battle I did. I teamed up with two other guys, and one of them ended up not doing his part. Pretty disappointing. And I feel like the story is not that great, had to make too many compromises in regards of story and time. But I like some of the art.

Part 1 was even more rushed, so I will spare you that. If you want to read the whole fight, please go here.

This part picks up after the vampire girl and the blind ninja girl have just defeated the evil admiral:













Last panel has a bad composition. It's an homage to Caspar David Friedrich's "wanderer above a sea of clouds".

[Five]

I did a short comic for a goth comic collection, Gothology 2, together with my friend Ben. The whole thing was a bit rushed, I wish I could have added more details, especially in the backgrounds, and a title page. We did this in about 4 days, just before the deadline, which was my own fault.

[Asire]

These look great. I do notice that you make some anatomy mistakes, which is to be expected, you said yourself you useually have a very short ammount of time to do these pages, but the funnything is, some times you nail a tricky angle or hand gesture, but a few pannels later a similar gesture looks a bit weird.

Either way, the improvement from this last batch in comparison to the first is clear, and its a fun read! Do you write the story as well?

Can't wait to read more!

[Five]

I know, sometimes I look at my pages weeks or months later and all of a sudden I see horrible mistakes, haha. Sometimes I notice things aren't great when I've just drawn them, but I don't always have the time to fix everything.
That's why I feel a bit stupid for starting so late on this, I wanted to have enough time to do this as good as I can, but then I ended up having to rush again. Next time I will make sure I start at least a month before the deadline.

But thank you for the encouragement!

And yes, I write the stories myself. Ben is great with writing his stories when he is alone, but when teaming up he usually goes with what the other person suggests. This comic was actually delayed so long because I couldn't come up with anything.
Next I want to do a little comic on my own, to practice a lot of things, among them storytelling.

[Five]

I might work more on this (digital shading and highlights), but for today I have to call this done.

[Gunstar]

^Loving the rendering and concept on that.

[Five]

Thank you, Gunstar! :-) I definitely need to practice my pencil shading.


Now here's a rushed secret santa picture. The figure was a pencil drawing which I inked in Photoshop and then decided to paint the whole thing, which I did in Open Canvas 1. The background was before composed of a few photos which I painted over because I had so little time (still lame, I know). And I still managed to screw up the zeppelin.

[Five]

A pub doodle:




And some practice with ink and markers where I drew a friend's character from a photo ref during a recent roleplaying session:

[Five]

Someone's character:

[Five]

The comic I posted above, the one with the dead whale, was published now in a comic short-story collection: Gothology: Misery Loves Company. http://www.indyplanet.com/store/product ... ts_id=3229



Today I finally started practicing by painting movie stills as I wanted to do already months ago.

1 1/2 hours, no color-picking, Photoshop.



Ref: http://s61.photobucket.com/albums/h50/f ... les075.jpg

[Five]

1 hour.



Ref: http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h50/f ... VD_717.jpg


1 hour.



Ref: http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h50/f ... s/lh37.jpg

[Five]

1 1/2 hours



Ref: http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h50/f ... VD_518.jpg

[Alexa]

His nose is elongated in your version and he's looking more towards the camera than away, and he seems very stretched out. But it seems like your style elongates noses anyway, so I think it looks cool no matter what. I think you could've pushed his blue eyes further though. They're glowing so otherworldly in that ref, and you definitely can take liberties in a digital study with that. Beautiful thread though!!!! My god, your sequentials just ROCK, and I especially love how angular and well-constructed your ladies are.

[Tutoh]

I really enjoyed your squid submarine comic for the unique story concept and the rendering style when they're underwater. The greyscale tones and sharp white hilights do give it a deep cold mysterious ambience. The panel where the vampire say "*sniff* Fresh blood" is the best looking of them all for me. It would be great if that rendering style could have carried through all the panels where they were underwater and fighting the mermaids, then resumed to the half-tone style once they were back in the office.

Also, it wasn't immediately clear that the white ring the robot puts his arm through is a teleporter ring because one edge of it is cut off by the panels.

The digital shading and hilights on pencil look gorgeous! I hope you can draw a comic in this style sometime!

[Lance]

feel free to pop those movie still speedpaints in here, they look great: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=515

[Michael]

Great great great! i especially like the comic pages!

[Five]

Oh hey, thank you guys!

Alexa: Yeah, he looks a bit like a caricature when you compare him to the original. Somehow I only see the differences once I called it finished and uploaded it! I will have to keep an eye on my noses in the future. :O
Thank you for the sequential love. I like/dislike them depending on the day.

Jonno: The painterly style pages were drawn by my friend Ben, not by me. And we just divided the comic at some point so we both could work on it and get it done before the deadline (we started just a few days before). While his pages look nicely dark on a monitor he told me they are almost too dark in print. I don't have my copy yet so I can't judge.
I will try to use some different styles in the future and see what looks good, so I will put the pencils on my mental list. :-)

Lance: I wasn't sure if I should put them there or not. I assume it's still open? But then I don't want to post them twice, and I doubt I'll get any feedback in that thread.

Michael: Thank you! :D

[Five]

I started out so well and then I've hardly been at home all week. Here are two from today.

1 hour 45 minutes


Ref: http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h50/f ... 500-04.jpg

A friend of mine drew the same image in the same time: http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/3364/practice1.jpg


1 hour 30 minutes



Ref: http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h50/f ... VD_176.jpg

[Tutoh]

Nice work, Five. Shadout's chin looks a little far forward because of the difficult angle of the shot. It helps to know the proportions of your page first and use to make some basic calculations to work out the placement for the facial proportions.
http://www.high5art.com/images/shadout.jpg