Repeat Offenders

Here's an Easter Sunday comic to celebrate the occasion.  The white borders were created in Sketchbook Pro. 

green solution

Here's a quick comic strip for Saint Paddy's Day to keep me in practice, while I wait to recover from singles.

Diver Noir

Am still on bed rest from shingles, but I managed to sketch a short strip of the diver in the style of Sin city.

DIVER 2024

Pearl Diver 2024, this is an impromptu comic that came to my mind on New Year's eve.  The white border makes a huge difference.

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

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