Part 3 – Art Directing your Graphic Novel
For those of you who just want a bunch of quick links to get free textures, here are a few I’ve used before.
CGTextures.com
mayang.com/textures
bittbox.com
But for those of you who want your project to be truly you own, it’s not as hard as it seems and the end result will be something unique to you. The textures you use are just as much your art as the pencil lines, character design and dialogue. I encourage you to take it seriously and put in the extra day to make your own texture library that nobody else will be able to easily download and use. I use the above sites all the time for work related projects, but the texture library that has been the most invaluable to me is the one I created myself.
When you make your own textures, you can really art direct your graphic novel exactly the style you want. For instance, when I was trying to figure out what kind of coloring I should do for reMIND, I was walking around the San Diego Comic Con back in 2006 looking for inspiration.
It was hard because everything looked the same. Every book was bright, smooth, flashy and Photoshopped. Sure, back in the 90′s when comic coloring started going digital it stood out on the shelf and was unique and impressive. But now EVERY colorist uses Photoshop, throwing lens flares, motion blur and bright blue rim lighting over everything accentuating every bulbous orifice in all it’s shiny and clean glory. It’s so common now that it’s boring to look at.
There’s a great quote I just heard, “If everybody’s thinking the same thing, than nobody’s thinking very much.” – David Morgan of Silver-Investor.com.
That quote is about investing, but it applies to much more than that. In fact, I’m going to change it a bit for the sake of artists to go something like this:
If everybody’s doing the same creative things, than nobody’s being very creative.
This is the biggest reason I suggest making your own textures and art direct your colors AND textures. Don’t just copy what the majority is doing (unless you really love that style). Find something unique and inspiring and try to imitate that instead. We are in charge of creating the next stylistic wave.
After scouring the convention, the three books I found back in 2006 that inspired my decisions were Youngblood, WildC.A.T.S. and Spawn. Haha! Sorry, I couldn’t resist.
Seriously, I loved the coloring of Spawn and WildC.A.T.S. back in THE NINETIES WHEN IT WAS UNIQUE AND HARD TO GET A COPY OF PHOTOSHOP. Notice I didn’t say I loved Youngblood. That’s another story. Check out this blog.
The three books I found back in 2006 that inspired my coloring decisions for reMIND were:
Mouse Guard by David Petersen – This little comic totally shook up the world of comics as far as I’m concerned. It’s totally unique in content, color, characters and even size. David was a no name artist when he started it. It blew up. How awesome is that!
Sky Between Branches by Joshua Middleton - These are some of the most beautiful comic pages I’ve seen in a LONG time. Joshua is now one of my top favorite artists of all time. I can’t get enough of his sketches and he’s the one who gave me the idea to not ink reMIND. From what I can tell, he either uses pencils as his final lines or just draws on a Cintiq. Anyway, the coloring of Sky Between Branches really stood out to me as the level of quality I wanted to produce with my colors.
LA/SF by Christian Schellewald – This is not a comic but I came across it at the convention. It’s an amazing art book full of quick sketches and gauche paintings of places in California. This is the single biggest influence of how I wanted the textures to look in reMIND. I studied these pages over and over to try to understand why it looked and felt so nice. The details were so sloppy but it didn’t matter because the paints had such energy. My decision to make all the sky color a solid white in reMIND is also because of this book. Christian has a genius approach to compositions as well as negative space.
Orange / Koji Morimoto / Scrapbook – I found this one earlier in the year, but it also inspired a lot of the decisions I made. It’s the best sketchbook I’ve ever seen! I absolutely love this book.
With these four books I found my key inspiration for coloring, compositions, pencils lines, textures and negative space. I had officially figured out the art direction of my book. Now I needed to deconstruct what made it tick.
I scanned some textures from LA/SF and used them in an experiment to see if this kind of painting worked with my line art. At the time, I wasn’t planning on coloring it myself so I asked a designer friend, Jonathan Kim, to take a stab at coloring a page with these scanned textures to see what would happen. Here’s what he came up with.
This got me really excited and I realized I was onto something. Now I just needed to create my own high resolution textures to convey this mood and feel.
Obviously I’m not suggesting you scan other peoples work to use in your own art. It was merely a test for myself to see what it might look like if I were to go through with it for my book.
I had a bunch of Acrylic and Gauche paints from a long time ago, so I decided to have a painting party with my friends. I brought my paint and some large sheets of watercolor paper into a studio where I was freelancing at the time and we all (3 of us) just spent the morning creating a giant texture library. I had my books open in front of me and I tried to recreate some of the same colors and paint strokes. Between the three of us, we must have created 50 painted textures, which I spent the rest of the day scanning and cleaning up for digital use.
I narrowed it down to about 10 quintessential textures that work best for reMIND and it only took a day. I’ve been using these same textures for 4 years now and people still don’t know how I do it.
Until now.
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Coloring a Graphic Novel Series (How I color reMIND)
Part 1 – Multiply and Flatting
Part 3 – Textures – Art Directing your Graphic Novel (You are here)
Part 4 – Creating your own Texture Library
Part 5 – Adding Textures to your Flatted Page
Part 6 – Masking and Applying Gradients
Part 7 – Light Source and Shadows
Part 8 – Dialing it all Together
Hey Jason! Mouseguard is actually by David Petersen. Might make that quick edit! Otherwise, very informative stuff! Thanks for sharing!
Wow, thanks for pointing that out. It must have been late when I wrote that. All fixed now.
I LOVE the Mouse Guard series!
I KNEW IT!!!!!! I KNEW YOU WERE A LIEFIELD GUY!!!!!! hahahah. ok i was too back in the day just like every other comics person. I don't get the hate. The guy was an era.
I love the textures in your work and its nice to see how you do it. I love the idea that you only use about 4 textures and it makes sense. I think it really ties the book together from at art and color pov. If you made a different texture for each panel, that might be too scattered.
I met a photojournalist once who traveled through China for 2 years with one camera, one lens, and one type of film. His philosophy was, the more options you have in front of you, the greater the chance you'll make the wrong one. I think you're using the same philosophy.
I think sticking to a tight theme for any work is really important. I strongly believe in making rules for yourself to follow for a project otherwise it's just too easy to experiment and change it every page. (Unless that's the specific style)
I totally agree with the guy who traveled in China with one lens. Plus the more options you have in the moment, the harder it is to be prepared. Kinda like my GN, once I figured out my rules, it started moving a lot faster too.
I'm already figuring out a style and technique for my next two graphic novels that I can't wait to start….in 10 years when reMIND is finished. haha.
Add this to your comics aphorisms if you like: "Familiarity breeds contempt." What was risky and cutting-edge ten years ago is tired and run-of-the-mill today. The current "in-thing" I've been seeing is Livetraced photographs. What a bore.
For what it's worth, I think that the biggest problem with any kind of art is the infiltration of so many tools that simulate the real thing. It leads to a loss of perspective and scale – artists making things super-detailed for its own sake, and then having it turn to mush on the page when the scaleless world of the computer translates to the reality of transmission from paper to eye. When teaching mechanica drawing years ago, the most frequent "I don't feel like it" excuse was "We're going to be using AutoCAD to draft anyway. Why should we bother to draw by hand?" Answer: if you draw by hand you learn to produce work that has your hand under it. The computer is the great equalizer – it eventually tends to make everything look the same.
That said, reMind is one of the comics I have seen that really bucks the trend, and a lot of it has to do with your linework, which is still hand-produced. That's the strongest guiding element, I think – and it is drawing you towards taking riskier artistic paths, working at the margins rather than in the creamy middle of slick, repetitive, run-of-the-mill "photoshoppy" comics. It's the same reason I like work like The Meek, Aquarium Drinking and Semmie the Forest Gnome and others, because they actually risk something in the production namely, by putting up something that suits themselves instead of what they think will suit some intended audience segment. Not to say that an audience isn't important, because it is, just that there's more of an interaction to be had, rather than it being tailored to a specific "sale."
Anyway. Once again I guess I went overboard, but this was another post that really struck a chord with me.
–M
Oh man, forgive me if anyone loves the style, but I can't stand the traced photographs look. It drives me nuts. And I'm not saying this blindly either, I did a whole line of illustrations in this style back in the mid 90's for Vampire the Masquerade and countless commercials where I had to trace a photo or movie. It's something that has become really big in the design world too. I used to get so frustrated with designers because it seemed like nobody was an artist anymore because they could just trace a magazine image and put a pink gradient fill inside it. (forgive me too designers) Don't get me wrong, there are designers who can do it well and it still looks tasteful and artistic but because it's so easy to do, everyone who has illustrator or tracing paper can do it and you end up flooding the market with a bunch of crap.
Worse yet, like you said, now you don't even need to spend the time tracing with tools like Live Trace in Illustrator. In my mind, there is a real danger for new artist who learn this stuff first and think they are professional because they know a software trick. The hard truth is they will only get work as long as they are ahead of the curve and pushing the software to new limits. You've gotta always be on top of what's coming out next and you never really rely on your own skill. When it comes time to really be creative, it takes more than a plug-in or mouse click.
"The computer is the great equalizer." That is so true. I think it actually creates a bunch of new brainless jobs too for the masses which are disguised as creative. I also think that the artists and people who understand that you still need to put in the time to hone your craft and skill, only these people can take the new software and programs and push it to a new level. Everyone else will just try to copy what they do with a few mouse clicks and trick themselves into thinking they are brilliant.
Great discussion again, Mr. Average! (That sounds like an oxymoron.)
I also wanted to add a short anecdote that i think works with your theme. A few months back I had the fortune of meeting a well known, but young comic creator. I was asking him advice about getting started on my first Graphic Novel. He told me succinctly…make something thats different. Don't try to copy what's out there, because thats what everyone tries to do…and they're just gonna be better. He spoke about the "sameness" in comics right now, and how the medium desperately needs new creative visions. There are too many proven guys who do the same ol thing very well and you're not beating them out of a job or a shot at being published. Be the only guy who does what you do and people will notice. Not to mention when you believe in it, the passion comes through, even if its different.
Ahhh, tons of informative stuff. I'm assuming the next part will go into how, exactly, you cleaned up your paint textures–I'm definitely looking forward to that. I have some photos I took of concrete and wood that I haven't really messed with yet because I don't know how to clean them up. :')
Yeah, I’ll be going into that next. Although I didn’t plan on breaking down the best ways to do photographs like concrete textures. BUT now that you mention it, it’s fairly similar. Maybe I will try to add that to the mix. Thanks for the idea.
Actually, Joshua Middleton works frequently with pens and it looks completely digital and precise because he’s insanely talented. It’s hard to say which tools he uses each time.
He's is insanely talented, isn't he! I love all of his work. I don't know exactly what he does but it's where the pencil idea came from.
I think it always helps to stand out and do things your own way. Textures really take digital colors to a level that makes them look organic and relatable.
The idea I'm working with right now I really want to execute in black and white, and I think that's going to be a real challenge. A lot of B&W books, especially when colored on the computer, look too perfect and overdone. I'm thinking B&W because it plays to my strengths better (line work), but it'll be a challenge to use tones in a way that I feel proud of. Color would probably be an easier option to wrap my head around, but my work never looks good colored :P.
i know what you mean about digital b&w looking too perfect..ever considered ink wash? Eric Powell (Buzzard and Goon) does some pretty nice ink wash stuff worth looking at.
I think if you keep your textures natural, (something not produced in the computer) you will get closer to the look you want. Check out Jon Klassen's work. He has lots of black and white stuff and it's all made with textures he scanned. He taught me tons of stuff when we worked together. Very inspiring!
http://jonklassen.blogspot.com/
Also check out S.M.Vidaurri's comic. It's beautiful watercolor textures and a lot of it is black and white.
http://smvidaurri.blogspot.com/
Thanks! Jon Klassen's work looks great! I'll have to mess around a bit until I get the look I'm going for.
That was a particularly inspiring post :) I started using textures in my illustration work after my first trip to Japan in 2000, which had left me drop-jawed. It was unbelievable how much creativity and good taste was put into the meanest hand-out, and that simple idea did wonders for the children's books I co-author. What I think comic artists/graphic novelists need to realize is also that different projects call for different treatments of both line and coloring. Sometimes I see people afraid of being simple when the concept really calls for simplicity (and it doesn't help when clueless viewers ask "why isn't this shaded?"), or feel obliged to follow a visual trend when full rendering would really flatter their story. People should ignore trends, determine the style that serves the script and run with it :)
Thanks so much for this post. I love the art of your comic and it's great to see what inspires you. I'm still REALLY new to comics, I only really 'discovered' them in college, when my fellow illustration majors helped me to see the light. I feel so behind in the world of comics, but great comics and tutorials like yours are helping me to start to make up the difference.
Great stuff as always…
It's always nice to hear about other artists processes, especially one as unique as yours. ^_^!
Keep them coming…
(…who knows maybe you could even collect this stuff in a book when the real book comes out?).
I agree. I keep the style in mind when developing a new comic series. Basic tones in manga always seemed to boring and overused. Truly any monochromatic pattern could work.
Heck, your flats looked good enough… but with the textures, HOLY FLIPPIN’ DING DONG…
Have you read Blankets by Craig Thompson? he mixes smooth ink lines with dry brushing, and it looks really nice- even though it’s a little *cough* indecent at times.
Oh, I forgot this… the ‘Plastic Man’ books have a zany art style which is really interesting, though the colors aren’t all textured. ’30 Days of Night’ series have a gritty and strange art style that works really well with the environment and theme. The real cake-taker is ‘The Joker’, a GN that mixes panels with sharp, hatchety inking and flat color, and some really nicely painted panels that fit with the dark atmosphere (not all that shiny crap that squeaks when you slide your eyes across it).