Final Outline

At long last, the final outline for the Pearl Diver is finished.  It's been almost a year since I started the project, and the draft went through 3 revisions.  Judging from the way my creative process works, the next step now is just to illustrate the graphic novel from the outline and skip the process of writing it in prose.  The outline has enough dialogue and minor details for the book.

The characters grew in number as I went through the revisions.  Some characters were removed, while others shifted from being the villain to a more heroic character.  Others were radically changed both in character and physical features.

My thought process has also changed in terms of sketching the diver.  This time she can interact with a diverse selection of characters, so she is now more than just a pin-up.

Ross Andru

Here is the diver again with a sample story of her tracking down killers.  The sketch is a homage to one of my favorite comic book illustrators, Ross Andru.  Andru worked on The Amazing Spiderman in the late seventies and is known for his use of foreshadowing to make his poses more dynamic.

Once again the sketch was started in sketchbook pro, first using the pencil pal to draw the foundation of the sketch then using the signature ink brush to darken and accentuate the lines.  Later a blend mode called glow was used to make the color of the diver less uniform. There's not much of a setting for the story just a lamp shade, a chair, and a door.  The objects, however, serve as a place holder for the characters.

This sketch has its share of mistakes that's worth noting.  First the panel right below the yellow arrow was mistakenly drawn from left to right (hence the need for an arrow.).  In the panel where the diver kicks the gunman her bikini bottom was mistakenly rendered in blue instead of grey.  The grey color of her bikini was supposed to transition to the grey color of her leg.  Another shortcoming for the sketch are the dialogue bubbles without the use of tails. Finding a quick method to draw the tails with the same width as the bubble is still a work in progress.

Once again the final sketch was composited in procreate.  First a similar blend mode called color dodge was used to replicate the initial blend mode from sketchbook pro, then a more vibrant color was achieved by adjusting the curves.

At this point in time the novella for the diver is now in its second draft.  Hopefully the story will come out more condensed and cohesive.

final image

Gene Colan Sketch

Gene Colan was the quintessential gothic illustrator, and he made it look real easy, but for me it's not.  I checked out his drawing style including several Christopher Lee movies to get the actual feel of illustrating the macabre.  In order for the diver to be fully realized, she has to emerge from this Gene Colan world of the creepy and the supernatural.

Colan's world was shadows galore usually with the light source coming from the bottom of the character's chin giving him or her a creepy Frankenstein look.  It gives the illlustration an old world look as well, i.e. candle lights minus the Edison bulb.

He made the lights glow by cross hatching the lines usually combining it with a little bit of rain to add to the eeriness of the scene.  He uses the same technique for his gun shot explosions as well, but I haven't got the hang of it just yet.

Colan's signature style comes from a well defined selection of images taken from the victorian era roughly around the late 1800's, i.e. street lamps, lanterns, candles, curtains, etc.  One of his most memorable illustrations was that of Batman and his encounter with a real vampire who came from the Louisiana territory.

Colan was also a master at camera angles whether its a top shot or a vantage point of someone looking up.  He'll tilt the camera to give the shot a sense of dynamism especially during action scenes.  In contrast, he hardly had any shots of someone looking squarely at the camera.

As a special note to myself, what was not included in this drawing was Colan's use of movement arcs.  Colan uses these arcs to give more info on the path of the character's movement, i.e. where did Batman bounce or jumped from to get to his current position.

At this point in time the novella is close to the halfway point, but I can already see the writing on the wall.  The manuscript already needs a rewrite.  I'll plod my way along to the very end first, then step back and look at it again.

final image

Character sheet

Here is the character sheet for all ten characters in the Pearl Diver.  Ruka was the last character I added to give Torquemada a foil to flesh out his character.  At the moment the novella is one third done, and I'm still writing the introduction for Ruka's character.

The original concept for the story was a kid trying to find a hero, but another concept is also emerging from the story, namely the retelling of old filipino folklore in a modern fashion.  The most popular stories from my childhood were the manananggal, the kapre, and the mangkukulam, i.e. the vampire, the giant, and the witch.

The diver is now becoming a cross between a superhero story and gothic horror.  This goes along the same vein of stories told by Marvel in The Tomb of Dracula, whereby Dracula becomes the protagonist fighting evil monsters who are worse than himself.  The diver, however, is hardly the prince of darkness.

On a technical note, the final image was completed in an app called Procreate.  I wanted to test drive this software for along time on my iPad Pro, and this project made me realize what an amazing app it truly is.  This could very well replace Photoshop on my desktop, but I still need to try out the masking features.

final image

Under Water

This work is a for a special request by Julio Acosta who wanted to see more illustrations of the diver under water.  This work took a great deal of time and has over 60 layers of work.

From this work, I learned to apply the hi lights on a separate layer just above the base color and to lower the opacity to 80.  This creates a non destructive way of working on the base color layer.

The ruins in the background were drawn using basic perspective.  The ruins further back, however, were composited using atmospheric perspective, i.e. sections of shapes on a separate layer on a lower opacity.

Two gradients were used on this image.  Linear gradients were used on the top right and top left of the image, and a blue radial gradient was used on the entire image to give it a light blue filter. 

The skin shade on the diver now has four layers instead of three, the base color, the skin shade, the hi light, and now the under layer.  The under layer is a light violet color opposite the hi light which goes on the feet, the fingers, the rib cage, and other bony areas.

As far as the drawings go, careful emphasis was placed on hand gestures.  The whole drawing was an exercise in the use of contrast in hand gestures, i.e. open versus closed, facing up versus down, etc.

In regards to frames, the image first started as images enclosed in frames, but the drawings later broke through the barriers with the addition of backgrounds and secondary poses.  I still kept the frames to get into the habit of working and compositing within the box.

The design for the diver’s suit has changed a little bit.  The suit is now a vest with an upturned collar instead of a straight bikini top.  The collar makes her more mysterious, especially when it partially covers her face during close-ups.

Bubbles, ripples, and a little bit of foam, all these images should go hand in hand with the diver.  To create the illusion of deep sea water, well known water images had to be used like water caustic, clam shells, a tangled purple squid, and loads of air bubbles.  I originally wanted to draw a school of fish swimming near her, but I eventually ran out of room.

The titles has changed as well.  This time I used the text tool and picked a strong upper case bold font to compose the title instead of hand drawing it myself.  The text is now cleaner and quicker to apply than before.  Within the title is a strong use of contrast, color versus white.  The text superimposed within each other creates a washed out look and a negative effect on the main letters giving it an almost stars and stripes look.

Rendering the image had its share of challenges.  Some color information was lost when rendered at a low file size, so the final image was rendered at png 24 to get a higher color range information.  This file, unfortunately, boosted the file size from 800 kilobytes to 3 megabytes.

This project also had its share of problems on the skin shade layer.  The layer failed to render on the first try, so I added a color range fx only to that layer to boost the color.

final image

Novella

Here are the preliminary sketches of the characters for a short novella for The Pearl Diver: Rupert, Amelia, the old storyteller, the diver, the rat, Torquemada, and Sancho.  The protagonists, antaggonists, and side characters are all roughly sketched out but still need work.  The essential outline for the story is already drafted, but not the dialogue.  Once the novella is finished, the graphic novel will come next.

character sketch

DIVER PENCIL TEST COLOR

Here is the colored render of the pencil test for the diver.  The basic colors used are blue, light blue, orange, yellow, and pink.  All the colors came from the color map.

The hight lights are just whites applied to the diver’s anatomy: belly button, notch on lower back, shoulder blade, top of hair, forehead, bangs, top of rib cage, simulated tan lines especially around the bikini.  It’s the base color of the canvas bleeding through.

Other factors came into play when coloring the diver.  Darker skin and hair tones are just another layer of the same color but at different opacity.  A blue filter layer at a low opacity was also used to unify the entire image, then Photoshop curves was used to pump up the saturation of the colors and the darkness of the lines.

There were plenty of problems when it came down to the final product.  Colors were lost, frames were dropped thereby altering the timing of the animation, and even the resolution was cut in half.  The best workflow for the entire process is summarized below.

WORKFLOW TO EXPORT GIF

• rough animator
• export mov or png files
• so all the colors come out right
• i.e. yellow and pink

• photoshop
• import mov
• apply curves
• to fix saturation and contrast
• 1280 x 720
• export as mp4

EXPORT METHODS

    1)

• photoshop
• reduce the file size 640 x 360
• or percent/50
• (less resolution than original)
• change frame rate to 24
• convert to video timeline
• set timeline frame rate

    2)

• ezgif.com
• 25 fps
• preserve transparency
• optimize the gif
• 600 x 338
• (more accurate timing than photoshop but less resolution)

    3)

• keynote (best method)
• document settings/resize
• 1080 x 608
• (better timing & resolution)
• WHY 1080?
• For Twitter and Instagram, 
• the image size of 1080×1080 pixels is ideal.

correct timing, wrong color on lips and earrings

wrong timing, correct colors overall