Part 5 – Applying Textures Before we jump head first into this tutorial I suggest skimming Part 2 – How I use Flats, because this goes hand in hand with it. Also some of the things I do require Photoshop CS2 or greater (I think). Okay, so lets look at where we left off. We [...]
This week has been overloaded with things to do and making the next tutorial was on my list but…well… it didn’t happen. Aside from spending late nights working on my pages, I’ve been doing research on writing press releases, PR, marketing and distribution. It’s a ton of stuff to take in. In my search for [...]
Starting today is a pin-up contest for reMIND! The winner will be printed and credited in the reMIND book. Some amazing artists are lined up to draw a few pin-up’s of Victuals and Sonja for the printed book, but I plan on having some extra pages to fill, sOOOOoooo, I’m launching a pin-up contest. Anyone [...]
Part 4 – Creating Your Own Texture Library Here’s what I suggest doing if you want to make your own sweet, coveted textures to use in Photoshop. First, find the ideal style you are trying to achieve like we talked about in the last section. I suggest looking outside of comics, otherwise you will just [...]
These last few weeks have been filled with late nights working on my Kickstarter video that soon switched to late nights celebrating at the amount of pledges. Then once the elation settled I spent a few late nights stressing about all the people who are now expecting a book or painting. I need a chiropractor [...]
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 [...]
Part 2 – How I use flats When I first started making comics I was clueless about the coloring process. I would paint under my line art that was set to multiply but that was the extent of my knowledge. It always seemed like such mindless work to paint between the lines, to fill in the [...]
Part 1 – Multiply and Flatting First of all, I highly recommend using Adobe Photoshop in which all the steps below are achieved. It’s an industry standard and will also come in handy for everything else creative you choose to do. I know it’s expensive but it’s worth every penny. If you are new to [...]
Will Publishing Online First, Ruin my Chances of Print? I got this question a few months back from a talented artist. Question: I was just curious to hear your thoughts about whether or not publishing your pages online first, might burn any bridges when looking for a literary agent/book publisher in the future? Just curious. [...]
How do I find an artist? I’ve received several emails from writers trying to figure out how to find a good artist to draw their comic ideas or to team up with. I’ve had this conversation many times over the years and it’s never an easy question for me to answer because I’ve never been [...]
Page Layouts and Thumbnails - How I Started Planning out pages has been the most challenging aspect of creating reMIND and when planning a good set of pages, I always start with thumbnails. I’ve mentioned it before in the past assuming everyone knows what I’m talking about but since every artist is unique with their workflow [...]
Making a comic or graphic novel is quite the undertaking. Making one while having a full time job and family is ridiculous. Although it can seem like a daunting goal, there are ways to achieve a project of this scale in a reasonable amount of time. To make more sense of my following points, I [...]
Here are pages 50 and 51. Click to enlarge. Right click to see it full size in a new window. These pages went through several changes before I finally figure ‘em out. For example, the first panel used to be Victuals at the doorway of his mom’s house and he was in peasant clothes. All [...]
Nearly 6 months ago I started reMINDblog.com and I’ve seen many new comments and I want to welcome you all and thank you for partaking in this journey with me. In hitting the six month milestone, I’ll leave you with a list of my 10 favorite Thursday posts to date. My Top 10 Favorite reMINDblog [...]
Talent – a natural aptitude or skill (Oxford American Dictionary) I get tons of people coming to me asking for advice on how to get into the field of art. I use to get confused when self proclaimed artists would approach me for advice but when asked to see their work they only had old [...]
Pages 47 & 48. Click to enlarge. Help me get back into the top 100 at TopWebComics. VOTE HERE! These pages were a blast to work on because… you guessed it, ACTION! But I can’t help but wonder if I should change the rating of this comic to PG-13 because of crab blood. I guess [...]
Finding a GOOD agent. A while ago I wrote a post about Graphic Novel Literary Agents. After reading all your comments I realized I was focusing to much on the subject of agents and not enough on finishing my graphic novel. Even so, I still want to share some good information I’ve found. It’s linkage [...]
Photoshop Speech Bubbles – How I make word balloons I already talked a bit about Fonts, Lettering and Creating Your Own Comic Font so now I’m going to try to walk through my process of making speech bubbles. I made a video. Not just any video. A video I made really late at night after drinking [...]
Here are pages 42 and 43. (Spread 20) I decided to start calling the spreads "pages" now because I don't like that Google's number 3 keyword for my site is "spread". In case you are wondering why the page numbers don't quite match up to the spread number, it's because I'm using the page number [...]
Here are my seven reasons to avoid using Comic Sans MS in your comic or graphic novel. I learned the hard way. This may seem like a no brainer to some of you but I know that there are many who have no idea why Comic Sans is a bad choice. I know because I [...]
