General Inking Discussion

[Jim_Campbell]

Hey, I like the look of that Stront Dog piece Jim. Nice panel design.

As ever, you are a gentleman, sir!

I'll be honest -- I'm not a fan of breaking panel borders. I've read interviews with a number of artists whose views I respect unconditionally who've said that keeping all the art inside the panel borders renders the device, the form even, effectively invisible; that consistency in this focuses the eye within the panel.

But ... doing this digitally meant that I was able to try it this way; or with the panel border cropping the image; or with the image shifted to lie inside the panel ... and it worked best this way, by a mile.

I'd never have even tried it with pen an paper.

Cheers

Jim

[Jase]

Traditional inking
Hi Fellas,- can anyone give me a run down on how inking is normally started when doing it the old way by hand-transferring the work from pencil sheets to a new  sheet for inking- are the inks traced off the original?-cheers

[Jim_Campbell]

Traditional inking
Hi Fellas,- can anyone give me a run down on how inking is normally started when doing it the old way by hand-transferring the work from pencil sheets to a new  sheet for inking- are the inks traced off the original?-cheers

Whatever works. In many cases, they're inked directly over the originals (although this -- obviously -- requires nerves of steel!), sometimes scanned in grayscale and reprinted on artboard in 'non-repro' blue, sometimes inked via use of a lightbox onto a new sheet of paper.

I have heard of people using layout paper to ink on, so that you can see the pencils through the overlaid sheet, but I can't imagine the surface of layout paper is particularly nice to ink on.

Cheers!

Jim

[Jase]

Cheers Jim, I'll have to try a few methods and see what works for me, but not directly onto the pencils!!

[mygrimmbrother]

So you've got your indian ink and your heavyweight paper. But what do you guys ink with?

I've still not laid my greasy paws on a wacom, but (going to the other extreme) I have a fondness for my old dip pen. Very time-consuming and the ink can splatter, but you get a lovely quality of line which actual pens don't really emulate.

For my recent strips in Dogbreath and Back From The Depths, I've been inking my pencils with a variety of pens (not the dip pen), just because it's quicker.

But I fancy getting the dip pen out again for some upcoming strips...

[Jim_Campbell]

But what do you guys ink with?

The aforementioned Gillott 303 Flexible for all freehand lines, cheapo 0.1, 0.5 and 0.8mm disposable fibretips for anything that needed ruling, a couple of brushes for filling in blacks. Never, ever got the hang of laying down linework with a brush.

Cheers!

Jim

[radiator]

I use a Copic Multiliner brush pen for long or curved lines like outlines etc. For everything else, I use Copic Multiliner markers size 0.1 and 0.3. These are very nice to use (ink dries very quickly, and they are waterproof), and have changeable nibs and cartridges.



I also sometimes use Sakura Pigma Micron markers sizes 0.1, 0.3 and 0.05.



I fill in blacks with generic permanent markers.

Never got the hang of using dip pens or brushes - far too much faffing around for me and could never get them to do anything other than minimal linework. I read somewhere that Mike Mignola uses only markers, and if they're good enough for Mignola...

For markers I have found that the smoother the drawing surface the better, and they're pretty useless for inking directly over pencils, as erasing will shred your lines. I currently photocopy my pencils faintly onto bristol board for inking, though hopefully I'll soon be getting an A3 printer/scanner, which will enable me to use the blue-line method PJ outlined.

[Peter Wolf]

Top tips there for pens.I am going to definately check these out as i never knew they existed.

Particularly interested in Copic Multiliners and the Gillot flexible.

I just ink straight over the pencil work.When i first started doing this there was always a certain amount of trepidation but that wears off after a while as confidence increases.

I did a couple of landscaqpes recently where i didnt even pencil apart from a few rough lines so that was a bit of a breakthrough.

[SuperSurfer]

Really want to invest in some brush pens. Never got on with dip pens at all. Don't mind brushes. Have read in the past that some inkers chop of the tips of brushes to get a chisel effect (I think). Was always a bit too precious about my brushes to do that.

I've tried all sorts of techniques but haven't decided what I should stick to. So far for the comps I've:
• worked entirely in Photoshop
• sketched on paper, scanned and inked in Photoshop
• sketched in Photoshop, printed out and inked with crap pens on crap paper, scanned
• sketched on paper, inked on tracing paper, scanned

Yeah, just about every variation possible.

The problem I find with Photoshop is that I end up constantly zooming in and working on details which is really time consuming.

[HdE]

Oooh... excessive zooming (or should that be 'zooming to excessive magnification) is a baaaaad thing. I uswed to do this a lot when I first started using Photoshop to colour things. I found it robbed me of a lot of energy, sucked the immediacy out of my work and tested my patience and resolve. I'm wondering what sort of detail it is that you're zooming in to ink like this, 'Surfer? And what degree of magnification are you going up to?

Also, I notice a few folks have commented on Manga Studio 4 Debut. This is on my shopping list. I want it so that I can add nifty tones and manga-style speed lines to black and white art pages. But as I really like to tie everything together in Photoshop, I wonder if anybody could tell me how well the program copes with exporting files? I keep asking folks who own and use Manga Studio, but never seem to get any sense out of them!

[Jim_Campbell]

I keep asking folks who own and use Manga Studio, but never seem to get any sense out of them!

It's fine. Manga Studio will export in pretty much all major graphics formats, including PSD with layers preserved. It has some rather useful tools for laying down perspective grids as well.

Cheers!

Jim

[SuperSurfer]

I'm wondering what sort of detail it is that you're zooming in to ink like this, 'Surfer? And what degree of magnification are you going up to?

Sure, excessive zooming-in does suck out ones life force energy. I tend to work with two windows of the same file, one zoomed-in and the other showing the whole image which helps a great deal. Screengrab of my desktop:

[mygrimmbrother]

'Kay guys, thanks for the pen recommendations. Now then, if anyone has the patience, and at the risk of sounding like a total amateur, can someone explain exactly how these 'non-repro' blue inks work? Many moons ago, I used to work in a paste-up department of a newspaper office (just before it all went computerised), and we drew all over the buggers with blue felt tips before they went to print. So I understand the premise, but I don't understand how to execute it with comic art. If anyone can enlighten me (and you're going to BICS) I'll buy you a pint of your choice.

[Jim_Campbell]

'Kay guys, thanks for the pen recommendations. Now then, if anyone has the patience, and at the risk of sounding like a total amateur, can someone explain exactly how these 'non-repro' blue inks work? Many moons ago, I used to work in a paste-up department of a newspaper office (just before it all went computerised), and we drew all over the buggers with blue felt tips before they went to print. So I understand the premise, but I don't understand how to execute it with comic art. If anyone can enlighten me (and you're going to BICS) I'll buy you a pint of your choice.

Non-repro blue is just a colour that can be dropped out of a photocopy or scan -- scan your pencils in grayscale, darken 'em up in Photoshop if need be so they're nice and definite, create a new layer over the top set to Screen, fill with 100% Cyan (or whatever percentage you're happy with), and your pencils should now be non-repro blue.

You can then print 'em out on art board, ink over the top, and drop the bluelines out when you scan 'em back in, or even on a photocopier if you're going Old School.

Cheers!

Jim

[HdE]

I keep asking folks who own and use Manga Studio, but never seem to get any sense out of them!

It's fine. Manga Studio will export in pretty much all major graphics formats, including PSD with layers preserved. It has some rather useful tools for laying down perspective grids as well.

Thanks for that, Jim. Once again, you're my hero today. It's TIFF files that I tend to stress about. I always work in TIFFS thanks to the file compression options. I found that PSD files tend to do strange distortion-y things.

Just wondered, are talking Manga Studio Debut, or the big expensive one?