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« on: 25 September, 2005, 03:04:30 AM »
Hello all.
Some questions/thoughts for the aspiring comic strip artists amongst us (of which I know there are many).
My ramble....
Having just received my latest (official 2000AD business) round of 'figures too stiff' criticisms, I have been reflecting on some of the irritating drawing ?habits? that I seem to have acquired in the last year or so. My current approach is as follows....
1. Reference every character I draw to within an inch of its life.
This basically involves endlessly thumbing through a large pile of anatomy and figure drawing books to try and get my figures right.
2. Having finally sketched something, I scan it onto my PC, open it in Photoshop, edit it with a drawing tablet, reverse it, edit it some more, print it in reverse at the size I want it, trace it onto the actual page, then ink it.
3. Having done this for EVERY panel (sigh), I then scan the whole page back into the PC (in several parts as I don't yet own an A3 scanner), open it in
Photoshop, then edit everything again until I'm reasonably happy with it.
4. Letter it. Finished (unless I then decide to edit something else later - which almost always happens).
It used to take me a full day to do a completed page, now it can take me easily 3,4 or 5 times that long.
My questions.....
I wondered if any other artists out there (amateur and professional alike)have adopted a method/process similar to the above?
If so, do you find it a blessing - or a curse?
Is it necessary to do all this nowadays to try and produce anything remotely approaching professional quality?
Does it all provide too big a safety net?
Do you think it takes a lot of the skill (and most of the fun) out of the whole process?
I guess I'm just curious to know if I?m alone in this.
Please feel free to tell me 'I just draw it straight onto the page'. I can take it.
Maybe I can't, I?ll let you know.
Regards
Simon.