302 replies to this topic

[chalcara]

The art on this page is great.

I really like the sleek style you're going for, it's working out very well. I especially like the character layout in panel 2 and the landscape in panel 3 - that one's great. And I like the smaller details, like the shading on Sonic in panel 5. The char-design is still spot-on and SatAM-ish after all this time.

(That's a skill I really really envy you for, to be honest. I have enough trouble keeping my own chars on design, other peoples character? Nigh impossible, Consistency in char design, I fail at it. )



One thing is niggling me - To me it feels as if you have too much white in your speechbubbles and/or the weight of the white is unevenly distributed. Basically, you have too much white for too little text. That's been on almost every page so far, and I can see two reason for this:

1) The tails of your speech bubbles are a bit too long and/or to wide to me. You do not need to connect the bubbles to the characters head, as long as the "tail" just points clearly into the character's head direction. Look at how short they are in the comic you've linked in this topic.

I like to make them even shorter than on your example page unless needed for special effects (maybe sometimes even too short), but that's a matter of style. But those short tails are much faster to make than the long swooshy ones.

2) Your text-lines are too long for oval bubbles. The longer lines on that comic page you linked work because the letterer squashed the ovals into something more rectangular. There are two solutions for that: Either you start squishing your ovals into something more rectangular, or you break them up more so that the text itself takes up a more oval space.


A bit experimenting will help you there - this is really just a matter of lettering style. Maybe lowering the lineheight of the font would help too, I don't know.

As you see, it's not even remotly an art issue - it's great! - just one of those details that are necessary to give any comic a professional/polished look. But I hope my comments helps a bit. Good lettering is hard, and it took myself ages till I found something acceptable for my comics. And I'm still struggling with it sometimes.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to the next page.

[Glitcher]

I'm inclined to agree with chalcara. Dividing sentences into long clauses takes up too much space and only really works if you use skin-tight speech bubbles like in the example below. The most compact shape is a circle, so you should work on splitting your sentences to match it and reduce the vertical spacing.

[salamander]

Thanks again for the advice guys, I tried formatting the text a little tighter this time.

The art on this page is great.

I really like the sleek style you're going for, it's working out very well. I especially like the character layout in panel 2 and the landscape in panel 3 - that one's great. And I like the smaller details, like the shading on Sonic in panel 5. The char-design is still spot-on and SatAM-ish after all this time.

(That's a skill I really really envy you for, to be honest. I have enough trouble keeping my own chars on design, other peoples character? Nigh impossible, Consistency in char design, I fail at it. )

That's really great to hear I think I'm getting better at polishing my lineart now, it's like I can spot drawing mistakes more easily, and can tell when stuff looks uneven or cramped as I'm drawing it rather than in hindsight. I'm being more careful to make the pencils look cleaner before inking, too, so that helps.

[chalcara]

Thanks again for the advice guys, I tried formatting the text a little tighter this time.

Yep, looks better now - especially the tails and Snivleys radio-speechbubbles.

That's really great to hear I think I'm getting better at polishing my lineart now, it's like I can spot drawing mistakes more easily, and can tell when stuff looks uneven or cramped as I'm drawing it rather than in hindsight. I'm being more careful to make the pencils look cleaner before inking, too, so that helps.

Gaining Experience is a funny thing, isn't it?

Yeah, I blame the 50+ pages experience you collected since you started out. Funny thing is it? Practice makes better.

And yes, you clearly ARE getting better, in both, your visual style and your narrative. No need to worry about that. Add to that all those small touches like the glowy moon in panel 3 or the rooftop or the hole in the rooftop in panel five, and yeah, definitive improvement. Although, I'm artsy myself, so I maybe I am disproportionally happy about that kind of smallish touches.

But that's the fun thing in art, isn't it? Unless one goes all ego-wank and rests on their laurels, one can always become a better - There's ALWAYS progress.

(Try telling "yo, go practice!" to it-must-come-from-the-sparkly-space-or-it's-WOOOOORTHLESS kind of artists and watch them flail. First they ask how to get better and they always seem to suspect that you're unfairly keeping the real SECRET away from them when you truthfully answer! 'Coz practice mustn't be, that makes you a talentless HACK. /not-really-bitter-nooooo)

[chalcara]

I love this page, Salamanda.

How did you do the background? *wants to take notes*

[randomizer]

Our cloaked friend really has poor taste in fashion.

[Glitcher]

Aye, the background texture blends in much better this week, especially on the first panel. I like how you split the rays of light based on the shape of the sewer grate. All this really needs are some broken shadows on the characters to match it. Good to see Sally and Bunnie are back in the scene, but where's Rotor? Wait! I think I know who Mr. Cloak is after all....

[saber16]

GAH YOU FORGOT TO COLOR IN ANTONE'S BUTTON IN PANEL ONE! GAAWW!

... Man, that's one thing I hate about drawing is when you spend all that time working and when you turn it in, you forgot that ONE little thing. It drives me crazy, I'm working on my fourth page for a fan comic, and during one panel Bunni's caring Tails, and I realized Bunnie's head was to big compared to previous panels, so I had to resize it, then Tails' arm was to long and-

... After awhile, I stop caring.

Anyway, great work on this page. Loved Sonic and Sally's word exchange.

[Gojira007]

Good to see Sally and Bunnie are back in the scene, but where's Rotor? Wait! I think I know who Mr. Cloak is after all....

Rotor never came with them to the city. In fact, Sally specifically instructed him to stay behind in Knothole with Uncle Chuck.
http://sonicsatam.com/sea3on/?p=133
Just so you know.

[salamander]

I love this page, Salamanda.

How did you do the background? *wants to take notes*

Thanks, I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Basically, I pasted in the brick texture, clone stamped it a bunch of times to fill in the panel, and then used transform to make it fit the perpective (skew for distance, warp for the curve in the middle), and reduced the opacity of the layer. I did another layer for the ground texture in the same fashion. On the lower layer I put down the base colours for the wall and ground, as well as the curvey lines on the wall. Then overtop of the texture I added a few details like the missing brick and drippy stuff, a couple faint dabs of rust colour and shading for the end of the tunnel. The light from above was a separate layer between the lineart and colours.

GAH YOU FORGOT TO COLOR IN ANTONE'S BUTTON IN PANEL ONE! GAAWW!

I think I just started making them red altogether to avoid things like that. But I get you, after I fall asleep after posting Sea3on I'm worried I'll wake up and notice that I forgot to colour in Sonic's shoes, or I gave Tails three noses or something. After spending so long on something like panel 5 (three characters with big heads in a group hug, and you can see all their expressions? Aaargh), it can get hard to see the mistakes until you step away from it for a bit.

Our cloaked friend really has poor taste in fashion.

He's got no eyes, he does the best he can

[saber16]

I back tracked a little. Yeah, I see what you did with the buttons. Though the buttons and shoulder pads have been yellow from the start of the story, it seems like an error otherwise. But I can see what you're getting at.

[randomizer]

He's got no eyes, he does the best he can

A blind monk eh?

[Glitcher]

I think I just started making them red altogether to avoid things like that. But I get you, after I fall asleep after posting Sea3on I'm worried I'll wake up and notice that I forgot to colour in Sonic's shoes, or I gave Tails three noses or something. After spending so long on something like panel 5 (three characters with big heads in a group hug, and you can see all their expressions? Aaargh), it can get hard to see the mistakes until you step away from it for a bit.

Ha ha, welcome to my world. I'm totally neurotic when it comes to fixing every little mistake with my artwork. Sometimes I'll look through an old pic I made a couple years ago and notice a spot I missed which I just have to paint, otherwise my world will end. It's the main reason why I'm a pretty slow artist. Still, the easiest way to spot mistakes in your work is simply to reverse the image. I do this with every step of the process, when sketching, inking and colouring. It prevents you from becoming accustomed to your art and overlooking asymmetries and disproportions.

[chalcara]

You know what's funny Salamander? By now this little comic has a higher consitency regarding characterdesign that SatAM itself.

Anyway, that Guardian is SO knuckles. Nose, eyes and size all point to "YES."

[randomizer]

In the last panel Sonic is either ready to vomit or he's painfully constipated.

[Glitcher]

This scene is quite striking. Tails angsting over his usefulness - or lack thereof - can seem quite-heavy-handed, but Sonic's brotherly care injects the right amount of levity. It's clear he doesn't believe his own words, and it will be interesting to see how this incident affects both of them in the future. Besides, Sonic still has some explaining to do to Sally.

It's refreshing to get back to Knothole after spending the last few months trudging around the dark and dreary Robotropolis. The backgrounds are exquisitely painted and a real improvement over the earlier pages. I'm impressed Salamander can accomplish more and more every week while still keeping to the schedule, but be careful about squeezing too many panels into the page again. Like I said, this is why it helps to storyboard the comic first. Oh, and Tails' window should really have curtains.

The bottom-left panels caught my eye because the background changes to a cooler palette according to the lighting conditions, but Tails just looks like he has been slightly darkened, which is a rather flat way of colouring characters in a dim room. There are more vibrant ways to paint in nighttime conditions, one of which I used recently for the picture below. This Mega Man X fan art shows characters that were painted with a neutral palette on the left, but with a few adjustments it's possible to achieve a look that matches the surrounding environment. The explanation is quite simple.



1. If you're not too sure how to colour your characters according to the ambient lightning, start off with a neutral palette as seen on the right, but make sure the contrast fits the scene.

2. In the middle I made a copy of the coloured layer and brought up the Hue/Saturation menu. I ticked the Colorize option and changed the settings to Hue +228, Saturation +40, Lightness 0. This hue adjustment all depends all what matches the surroundings best. I changed the layer blending mode to Overlay and 40% opacity.

3. I made a copy of this layer and changed the blending mode to Hue (still keeping the opacity at 40%). This gives you the result on the right. As you can see, the palette is much more appropriate and saves me the pain of having to figure out how to paint the characters based on the lighting conditions the first time around. Try using this trick in future.

[salamander]

Thanks for the tips I've done something similar before to do shading, although I usually just take a copy of the layer and fill in the non-transparent parts with a solid colour (usually dark purple or brown), set it at 66% and sandwich it between two copies of the solid colours, and then erase the top layer to get the shaded areas. Kind of cheap but it saves time.
I'm glad you liked the backgrounds, they took a long time to do but they turned out pretty decent. Next week's page will be even heavier on the backgrounds, and then I'm off to plan ahead for the next issue

[Glitcher]

I usually just take a copy of the layer and fill in the non-transparent parts with a solid colour (usually dark purple or brown), set it at 66% and sandwich it between two copies of the solid colours, and then erase the top layer to get the shaded areas.

Uh... run that one by me again. That's four layers in total, right? The original coloured layer, two identical copies and another copy that has been filled with a solid colour. Why do you bother putting one of the identical copies on top if you're just going to erase it? And what's the second identical copy for? Visual aids would help.

Next week's page will be even heavier on the backgrounds, and then I'm off to plan ahead for the next issue

Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that. You're going to have more free time next week, and I guess you want to try and preserve your momentum by drawing some pages in advance, right? If you're painting more elaborate backgrounds, you're going to need all the time you can get.

[LaserX5]

This scene is quite striking. Tails angsting over his usefulness - or lack thereof - can seem quite-heavy-handed, but Sonic's brotherly care injects the right amount of levity. It's clear he doesn't believe his own words, and it will be interesting to see how this incident affects both of them in the future. Besides, Sonic still has some explaining to do to Sally.

It's refreshing to get back to Knothole after spending the last few months trudging around the dark and dreary Robotropolis. The backgrounds are exquisitely painted and a real improvement over the earlier pages. I'm impressed Salamander can accomplish more and more every week while still keeping to the schedule, but be careful about squeezing too many panels into the page again. Like I said, this is why it helps to storyboard the comic first. Oh, and Tails' window should really have curtains.

Very good analysis.

I loved the scene where Sonic and Tails had a personal talk.

Then the scene where Sonic looked outside in anguish was a nice touch as well. He realizes how close he came to losing his little bro. And yes, Sally will definitely have some choice words for the blue blur when she finds out about Tails' near death experience.

Lastly, I agree with you about the curtains. It would be better if he had them.

[salamander]

Uh... run that one by me again. That's four layers in total, right? The original coloured layer, two identical copies and another copy that has been filled with a solid colour. Why do you bother putting one of the identical copies on top if you're just going to erase it? And what's the second identical copy for? Visual aids would help.

Sorry for being confusing, there's just 3, like this:


One on top to erase and show the solid colour below, and one on the bottom to mix with the colour above it.
I could do it with 2 and merge the bottom 2 layers, or just get rid of the top layer and erase the solid colour.. but I like having redundant layers all over the place in case I want to go back and change something, or just do something in a way that's more comfortable (in this case, erasing the base colours to let the shading through rather than the other way around) It's not really organized but it fits my back-and-forth thought process.

Yeah, I've been meaning to ask you about that. You're going to have more free time next week, and I guess you want to try and preserve your momentum by drawing some pages in advance, right? If you're painting more elaborate backgrounds, you're going to need all the time you can get.

Pretty much, I'm going to work ahead of myself this time and be better organized. I'm using the break as a chance to get everything prepared and have some pages made up before the next issue goes live.