comics

Process Apps

art

No no no not paypal.

I’m talking artistic process apps.

These include Fresco from Adobe.

This app has been good to me. For more on it, see my instagram account. I use Fresco there MOST of the time. For more examples, the posts I’ll be putting up every Thursday are built there. But! You like visuals. What is with Fresco, Keegan?

Fiiiine.

A recent creation – Umlaut, for a DnD campaign.

So Fresco is where I started Lightreaper and where I drew the first few panels.

What I love about it –

  • Layers
  • Intuitive Drawing
  • Touchpad like subtraction and zooming

What I hate about it –

  • there are limited features for shapemaking, like for example, tracing a circle versus filling one in (which you can do) which make exact art MUCH harder (maybe I’m missing something)
  • my touchscreen with it is finger-based versus pen based/stylus based so I can’t see it as precisely

That said, I’ve made a ton of art on it.

My next App I’ve used is Figma. I love Figma. Sometimes I don’t know why. But I do love it for gutters, narrative and speech bubbles, and layout planning, and for yeeting my text responsibilities over to James, my writer.

I need to get MUCH more used to Figma before I begin breaking it down, but I will say, it can get cramped by large file sizes/ text.

My third app I’m loving is Krita. It’s pretty great if you keep in mind the pixel counts mentioned by such greats as Jamie McKelvie. There are also a ton of useful posts on using it. I’ve found it cheaper than Adobe and as useful on my Cintiq.

So yeah! Those are my apps of choice. There is a HUGE difference between Fresco and Krita, which I will need to correct for as I move forward. I will say, Krita is not great on mobile, and Fresco is therefore more mobile, as it were, even if Krita is far more accurate and adjustable.

Sketches in GIMP

art

Round 1:

Ninja with shading:

That one was pretty fun.

Here’s another, a mutliple color study with light/shadow done in airbrush:A bit smaller and rougher, this one took half the time of the first.

If you plan on using these images, please include a link to this site in your materials.

So much for that plan

Plans

Well, when I said ‘daily posts,’  I had meant daily posts.

Anyway, I’ll be getting back on track this weekend.  Still have some lovely pages to write for some certain classes in which I may or may not have some overdue work.  Let the good times roll!

I’ll be working on getting ideas together for a daily superhero comic that I’ll start posting in a few months.  I’m kicking around ideas for some fun characters:

A metal suit powered hero with a sword that comes out of his helmet.

A superhero with ridiculously huge hands

The Uber Hero trapped in a block of concrete

Various Parody heroes, pun heroes, and spins on common super powers.

Now it’s back to music and theatrical studies!