Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
First efforts, tough audience
Hours of grinding, and here’s what I have to show:
What I like about it: it does not look completely unprofessional. The composition isn’t terrible.
What I dislike: just about everything else. I don’t feel that I am producing a “convincing” devolved bird (one whose wings have become arms and hands, rather similar to their hands and feet). The proportions are wrong, unnatural. Isen (the bird) is too dark, you can barely see his eyes.
My resident Web Comic expert, Jake, wouldn’t look at my efforts until I had a completed panel. I showed him the source photos and how I had doctored them and put them all together.
“What did you draw?” he said.
“The desk under the book.”
“So you’re making a cut-and-paste web comic.”
“Well –”
“I’d be impressed if you had drawn it.” And that was that.
Next, I’m going to try using this as a faint layer, over which I can sketch a different draft. This will allow me to punch up the detail on Isen and hopefully fix his upper body proportions. I’m hoping that the many-hours-if-not-days-per-panel is a consequence of the learning curve and not intrinsic to the medium.
Meanwhile, I’m having fun learning Gimp.
D.
I’m pretty sure I wasn’t that rude. In particular:
a) I don’t recall interrupting you.
b) I don’t recall implying that I wasn’t impressed. I probably said something more like “I’d be more impressed…” or “I’d have been really impressed…”
But I might be wrong.
I claim artistic license in adapting our conversations to print 🙂
Besides, what’s wrong with C&P web comix?
Jacob should consider himself lucky that he doesn’t have a Scots/Irish parent, for whom all facts are malleable and live in bondage to A Good Story. I am guilty of this myself – there’s something in my blood that takes over when A Good Story presents itself and there is a willing audience nearby.
BTW, I think your C&P webby-comix looks not bad. It doesn’t look as unprofessional as it would I had tried it, for sure. The bird’s face is too dark though, I only figured out it was a bird because you talked about it.
Dean, what browser are you using? I’m at work now, using IE, and I agree — way too dark.
Back to the drawing board. The C&P stuff is too slow. I’d like a technique that allows me to produce a panel a day (ideal for a web comic, as it would be for a blog).
Firefox – way too dark for me, too…
I agree. But IE is worse. Anyway, yet another argument for actually drawing the thing and avoiding cut-and-paste. Or maybe I just need to learn how to adjust my various levels.
I am using Chrome.