Tutorials and Tips Megathread

[VinceBot]

Got a specific tutorial people might find usful? Post it in this thread!

Periodically we'll come through here and cull the posts, compile the links and delete the flak.

If you've got an entire text tutorial you want to actually post, you might do better to post it to its own thread, then post a link to that thread in here.

Important Threads

General Art Discussion
General Colouring Discussion
General Lettering Discussion
General Writing Discussion
General Self-Publishing Discussion

Lettering: A Guide to Abode Illustrator by Jim Campbell.
How do I Contact people in 2000AD?


Additional Tutorials

I am not posting a specific link to any particular one, but YouTube has loads of videos of artists drawing and sketching that you can learn a bit from watching.

Dave Gibbons prepares a Rorschach front cover for ImagineFX magazine.
Short, but it includes plenty of interesting tips.

Turkey City Lexicon
A list of cliches that have been collected over twenty years of sci-fi writing workshops and therefore subjects to avoid.

Tom Richmonds Art Tutorials.
MAD Blogs tutorial collection, full of general artisty tutorials and tips.

Imagine FX Forums
A much larger forum dedicated to "Fantasy/Sci-Fi Digital Art". Hunt around a little for a wealth of tutorials and tips.

George Peter Gatis Tutorials.
Tutorials on drawing, inking and lettering in Illustrator and Photoshop.


Brian Bollands Video Tutorials

A cautionary footnote to the Brian Bolland tutorials ... clearly they work just fine for Bolland, but almost no sane person working in comics today would replicate that channel-based workflow for colouring ... it's what Layers were invented for.

Inking
Colouring in Photoshop (Part 1)
Colouring in Photoshop (Part 2)

[Kev Levell]

First off, VinceBot, thanks for opening this subsection of the forum - I'm very happy it's here!

Here are a few starting points for things that I've found informative or useful.

Matt Brooker, better known to most as D'Israeli has from time to time put tutorials, work in progress and some analysis of comic art and artists on his website and blog... I have included a few links to some pretty cool things that IMO, everyone wanting to get work should have at least scrolled through.

This very quick video will tell you about getting started with colour in photoshop.

Searching his blog with the word process for example, should prove most enlightening.

I'd advise a read through of his Low Life: Creation series too.
part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and finally, part 8.

Where Mr. D'Israeli's website http://www.disraeli-demon.com/ is concerned - look at everything because it's cool - but there are some handy hints on colouring in the "education" section.

It's not just Matt who does this informative sort of thing either.
Dave Taylor, Kevin Nowlan, Leigh Gallagher and Dylan Teague have all blogged about their process too.
For the painters out there look no further than Glenn Fabry's website:
and the step-by-step tutorial that's there.

There are many other artists that have reasonably regularly updated blogs. Sometimes you'll see a page of pencils go up, try inking a page of art that a professional has produced. You are guaranteed to learn something about their process.

A fantastic place to find a huge number of links to comic artists and other things of interest is Mark Kardwell's Bad Librarianship Blog.

Hopefully that's got you started - go search, find things - it'll enrich your next round of samples.

[Jim_Campbell]

Very general, but very salient advice for self-publishing and small press from Nate (Blambot) Piekos.

Cheers!

Jim

[radiator]

Advice on the method of converting and printing out your pencils in non-repro blue for inking...

http://scientificartist.blogspot.com/2005/10/pencilling-inking-and-non-repro-blue.html

[Emperor]

John Freeman has created a long list of agencies who syndicate comic strips and the like in newspapers:

http://downthetubes.ning.com/notes/Syndicating_Your_Comic

[Emperor]

Jamie McKelvie's Comic Book Layout workshop, available as a PDF download as it appeared in the Imagine FX magazine:

www.imaginefx.com/02287754331703249440/comic-book-layout.html

[Emperor]

Cartooning Advice: Zippy's Bill Griffith gives his Top 40 List on Creating Comics - all of them excellent covering writing, drawing and lettering, as well as conceptual issues (and it is funnier than my sentence makes it sound ).

Hat tip

[pauljholden]

Via @stephenmdowney on twitter

http://coelasquid.deviantart.com/art/How-to-draw-all-sorts-of-crap-104342407

Great primer - includes link to a printable set of pages (5 pages) - worth printing in colour if you can.

-pj

[IAMTHESYSTEM]

Here's some more stuff:

http://cvcomics.com/video/?p=42

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbFBkJwQ7CY

[johnnystress]

That's great and would make a great poster- nice one PJ

Good stuff there IATS- makes me want to hoke out my brushes and ink

[johnnystress]

How to create a planet

http://dinyctis.deviantart.com/art/Planet-Tutorial-3131869

[SuperSurfer]

There are some very fine tutorial pages by the brilliant Frazer Irving on http://www.imaginefx.com. You can download them as PDFs. Been online for a while but worth reading.

http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754332239536818/get-to-grips-with-panels.html
http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754330255193097/pencilling-a-comic-figure-1-of-3.html
http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754331354269670/inking-for-comics-2-of-3.html
http://www.imaginefx.com/02287754330184954282/colouring-comic-art-3-of-3.html

If you go to the downloads page and search for 'comics' there is plenty more intereting stuff.

[CrazyFoxMachine]

Nice one - cheers Surfer I'll take a peek - Frazer's a goldmine for techniques.

HE SEEMS TO HAVE MASTERED THEM ALL

[johnnystress]

Nice little tutorial for colouring in Photoshop

http://fc01.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2010/158/6/4/Coloring_tutorial_by_Phobs.jpg

[johnnystress]

and a little on brushes