Hey there, cool kid!
Wow, okay so the hits keep coming as we had a (thankfully minor) family medical incident again while we were up visiting my parents. Like I said, it was thanking full minor, but stressful none the less. So we thought things might calm down for a bit…
Until a WHOLE ASS TREE fell into my parents’ pool! A quick but nasty storm (that might have been a tornado) tore through the neighborhood and knocked down a ton of trees, including this one. Yes, the tree is now removed and it looks like there really isn’t too much damage, but my goodness, my parents just did not need this. Here’s to hoping maybe things are done happening for awhile.
(Stay tuned for a time lapse of this illustration as I keep playing around with digital coloring!)
The Process of Inking Pages
As the video shows above, this week I'm doing a deep dive into how I ink and screen tone my pages. Before we get to the inking stage, first I have my roughs and pencils that get all the details blocked in. Unlike the first two layers, the inks have to be smooth and accurate. These are the final lines for the panels! So they have to look good.
Inking
I start with basic lines in the thinnest brush I use, size 6. The brush I use is a free brush from a CSP tutorial, called Inker Flatter. It's pressure sensitive so I can get width variation and tapered ends to my lines. I also like that it's a very smooth brush.
After the first pass on different areas, I'll increase the thickness of the brush for areas of shadow or overlap, to help show dimension and make areas pop. Also, eyebrows and hair will call for a thicker line as well.
There's also a few effects brushes that I use, but only one in the inking stage for Aiza’s skirt. It's a tattered edge brush that captures the right texture, and is much faster than inking it by hand. These kinds of tools make it much more efficient to make comics digitally!
Screentones
When I started using digital screen tones in Clip Studio Paint, I wanted to be careful to make sure I had enough contrast and not use too many different tones.
Each page has two to three layers or regular dot tone at 60 LPI— 30% and 80% for shading, and then 10% for Aiza’s skin tone (30% would be too dark for her). Right now, the standard I use is 30% for shadows on white and 10%, and then 80% shades on 30%. I also make sure to create enough contrast on the page by using these tone layers to indicate different colors on characters and buildings. I also will use cross hash brushes in combo with these layers to get all kinds of all effects!
In this page, for instance, I used the screen tone scraper with 80% tones and the 1x hatch with the 30% tone to get different background textures.
Additional Effects
It's also at this stage where I start adding in additional effects to the panels individually! CSP has a lot of great default materials packaged with it, in addition to a large online library of free resources as well. For the backgrounds in al-Diya, I've been layering a brush that spawns Arabic style fantasy buildings at different sizes to get a larger scale of the city. I still draw in some of the landmark buildings and the city walls to capture the identity of al-Diya and still feel like its own place.
(I also used a brush for the rocks but erased and drew in at parts to get the exact look I wanted!)
Can you see where I used these different techniques in the video above?
Video Info:
Song: NIVIRO - Without You (feat. Justin J. Moore) [NCS Release]
Music provided by NoCopyrightSounds
Free Download/Stream: http://ncs.io/NWithoutYou
Watch: http://ncs.lnk.to/NWithoutYouAT/youtube
Check out this Kickstarter!
IMPURE BLOOD: 15th Anniversary Book Box by Nathan Lueth
Dubbed the "Abomination" because of his appearance, enslaved gladiator, Roan, carries within his human body the blood of a mystical and nearly extinct race known as the Ancients. He jumps at the prospect of freedom when a mysterious girl named Dara appears at his cell and offers him a chance at a new life in exchange for his help. Together with the aristocratic Caspian, roguish Elnor, and grease monkey Mac, they embark on a mission to track down an artifact that Dara believes may be connected to Roan's ancient, Impure Blood.
Celebrate 15 years of this steampunk epic with my pal Nathan on the art with a very special, numbered collectors box to hold your high quality volumes of Impure Blood!
Till the next time,
Melissa J
