apropos 'of nothing'

This is my contribution to the group exhibition of nothing currently showing at 'Kent River Studio' from the 26 September to 11 October. 

Hand drawn linework digitally coloured and printed on 310 gm archival paper (the grid was created in Photoshop).

getting happier

I've decided I like this better without the outlines in the background. I love the ease with which you can apply tones in Manga Studio and I am having fun learning how to use them.

There is a precedent for this style of course (isn't there always?). I was watching Pokemon today (not much on TV at that time of the morning while I'm having a cuppa) and noticed this is how they do it. The characters have outlines and the backgrounds don't. Although my style of drawing is quite different and limited to black and white, for this one at least.

I'm finding it quite addictive.

skater boy WIP

Had a bit of difficulty deciding on a strategy for the background. I did a ballpoint pen drawing and imported to Photoshop to create a psd file. Then I tried vectorising in Illustrator and even inking with the pen tool. I am not a huge fan of the perfect inked line the pen tool tends to create when you are inexperienced with it (as I am). Finally settled on this - isolated the line and now colouring in Manga Studio on a layer underneath.

I am enjoying the brush because it is giving me a mottled texture rather than super smooth saturated colour. Maybe not as good as the stock background provided by Manga Studio but more in keeping with the figure. I like the layout of the background better too as it gives it more depth. Works for me anyway.

me & manga studio 5

I thought I had it already but couldn't find it in applications (I bought Anime Studio Pro by mistake). So I invested yet another $80 in software to get Manga Studio 5. This was going to be my summer holiday project but I got a bit excited and jumped the gun.

I've posted this drawing here before but I made some changes in Manga Studio today - more shading and applying a texture to the board. Easy as - just select the area with the Magic Wand and drag the texture in. Which is cool if you want to apply the 'halftone' dots you see in comics. The background is an MS freebie. I am planning to do an original eventually. And I haven't finished the soles of the shoes - you can see the clouds through them.

You can import as a psd (with all layers preserved) - which supports my method of hand drawing and Live Tracing in Illustrator to colour in another program. The pencil is much better than PS and the brushes are really nice to use. You can rotate your work easily but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. The interface is a bit different to Illustrator and Photoshop, but similar enough so you can feel your way around until you get to some tutorials. For some reason it saves automatically as RGB which is a bit of a nuisance if you are doing stuff for print but it's easily fixed.

I think this is definitely the program for people who like drawing.

skater boy update

Experimenting with my shading. I bit hesitant at the moment but I reckon I will get better. I've been trying to teach myself this style of drawing for a while - it's quite different to my usual 'chiaroscuro' with the 3D emphasis on shading.

I will be working on the background for this next. Always so much to learn. Brilliant.