Tycho fucked up the text in today’s comic. He has the word “version” twice in the first panel. I suppose I should have caught it when I dropped the text in but honestly at that point I’m just thinking about making his disgusting words fit without obscuring too much of my beautiful artwork. It’s a delicate balancing act.
Anyway I was going to fix it this morning but decided instead to leave it and then point it out to shame him. He’s got to learn this sort of half assed textmanship isn’t going to cut it in the big leagues. I honestly expect better from him.
I posted a video yesterday on gabeart that showed me inking my Boba Fett sketch from last week. I recieved a bunch of questions about the process and I’m going to try and answer some of the main ones here.
Real quick here’s the video if you didn’t see it. I threw in a Q Unit track so if you’re at work or you hate the idea of a 50 cent and Queen mashup, you may want to turn the speakers down.
Q: Are you using a custom brush? If not, what are your pen settings?
A: Nope, it’s not a custom brush. I’m just using the regular brush tool in Photoshop CS. Here’s a quick run down of the settings:
- Mode: Normal
- Opacity: 100%
- Flow: 100%
- Hardness: 100%
As you can see, it’s pretty basic stuff. I use all the default settings on the most basic brush.
Q: How are you able to change the brush size in mid stroke?
A. I’m using the pressure sensitivity of the Wacom Tablet. Just like a real brush you can change the weight of your line by pressing harder. If you go into your Wacom tablet settings you will see a setting called “Tip Feel”. Mine is set one notch to the right of center, towards the “firm” side. It’s worth it to play around with this setting and find something you are comfortable with.
Q: How are you able to make such smooth lines?
A: Well I think it’s really a combination of things. The biggest one being practice but there are tricks you can use as well. First remember that if you’re drawing a vertical line it’s much easier to pull it than it is to push it. What I mean is that you should be starting at the top and dragging (pulling) the pen down towards your body. This will give you much more control and make for a smoother line. When going horizontal try to avoid using your wrist. Instead keep your wrist locked and pivot from your elbow. You’ll also notice that I work zoomed way in on the image. This really helps you control your lines and minimize jaggies. Beyond that just practice practice practice.
Q: Holy fuck you're fast!
A: That video is actually going at double speed so as not to be super boring. Instead of inking the entire thing in a bionic eight minutes it actually took me a much more human sixteen.
Q: How do you move around the image so fast?
A: I’m using a very handy PS shortcut to grab the image and slide it around. I’m holding the pen and drawing with my right hand but my left hand is reasting on my keyboard. If you are zoomed in on an image in PS and you press the space bar you’ll get a little hand icon. Now you can click and drag the image around. When you let go of the space bar you’re back to the brush tool.
I think those are all the big ones I got. This is essentially the same process I use when inking the comic strip. If I end up coloring the Boba drawing I’ll go ahead and capture that for a video as well. Thanks for the great response to the inking tutorial, I’m really glad so many of you found it helpful or at least interesting.
-Gabe out
On Saturday October 21st we will be taking part in a very special signing and charity poker tournament at the Comic Stop in Lynwood.
I say very special because it will also be attended by Scott Kurtz of PvP fame. I suggested we call this event “The Monsters of Web Comics Signapalooza” and then we could sell two dollar nachos and tell people that although they had paid for an entire seat, they would only need the edge! Sadly I was overruled.
The details of the event are available on the Comic Stop web site located here. Basically we’ll sign a bunch of books do a bunch of sketches and then take part in a (hopefully) big poker tournament with all the proceeds going to Child’s Play. If you want to play in the tournament it will cost you a minimum donation of twenty bucks and you’ll need to RSVP the Comic Stop no later than October 20th.
Now I just need to learn how to play poker.
-Gabe out
We have a little poker tournament coming up, as Gabe mentioned. It was sort of a last minute thing, but playing games to raise money - for Child's Play, especially - just has a kind of symmetry to it that is hard to resist. I know Joel's Fünde Razor event in Brooklyn last year was well received, and he's got another one planned for this year. Fun scenarios where people get together and hang out, and then (by some not-wholly-understood process, amazing things happen for geographically distant children) could stand to be a much larger part of our annual effort.
Gabe doesn't really know how to play poker, making our immediate task difficult, so I have taken it upon myself to instruct him. "Instruct" is the word I have chosen to describe my precision industrial money extraction process, though a person could easily use "swindle" or "hoodwink" in its place.
I would also accept hornswaggle.
You have probably either seen the Next-Gen.biz story that discussed xFire's PS3 integration, or were blistered by the heat of a thousand forums discussing it. It's now known that Full Auto 2's network implementation uses Gamespy's middleware solution, while Resistance: Fall Of Man manages this via an unnamed method - and we were already aware that Untold Legends (which looks pretty fun!) uses xFire itself. I've said for weeks now that that Sony should enter into a dialogue with gamers about their service, and now that we finally have some information - almost none of it from the company - I understand why they haven't done so. There is literally nothing to say.
I'm not trying to be glib: what I mean is that it's difficult to discuss the ethereal, and it seems like the framework is pretty loose. What they are providing is apparently so subtle that companies - indeed, even companies they wholly own - must leverage third-party tools to gin up their basic internet functionality. The user experience from game to game is so dependent on how it's using what service that there isn't really a conversation to be had. As long as everything is designed to "play" relatively "nice," I doubt the precise methodology actually matters to most people. I imagine "most people" just want to play Madden. Right now, I think the Playstation 3 enthusiast's main challenge is trying to own the machine for less than two thousand dollars.
Aside from having to maintain separate handles for each service, the seamless xFire integration they describe in that article sounds great: in fact, it's similar to what Microsoft is rolling out over several years to integrate their PC, console, and mobile platforms. I just wonder how many games will offer a suite of functionality that robust.
(CW)TB out.
we're here to make a crazy scene
I do wonder how long Live can remain a pay service, though.
(CW)TB
