Sunday, March 8, 2009
Friday, March 6, 2009
Doodle plus Photoshop Equals Colorful Mess
Found this freaky doodle in a folder full of old SpongeBob scraps.
Thought it could use some color.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Digital Inking Tutorial Video #6 - Adobe Illustrator Graphic Styles and Grouping
Click on image - video will open in new window
A Graphic Style is the stored combination of a line's stroke color and brush shape, or a color and fill of a shape. It means you can select anything in your image and instantly apply many different stylistic properties all at once, really quickly.
I have created a few graphic styles that I use when I'm inking comic books, like "Black line, no fill" or "White fill, no line," etc. These are included in the downloadable Adobe Illustrator Inking Template that I made to go along with these tutorial videos.
There are different versions of the template, so whichever version of Adobe Illustrator you are using, you will find the right inking template.
You can download the Adobe Illustrator Inking Template at:
You can see in this video how graphic styles are applied. Graphic styles are easy to create and modify, and I show you exactly how I do it. Then we'll cover the topic of grouping.
Each stroke or shape in Adobe Illustrator is seen by the application as a distinct item that can be moved or colored separately. It's often easier to deal with all of these different elements if you tie them together into groups that makes sense in the context of the illustration. Again, this is kind of hard to explain in text, which is exactly why I made the videos!
Here's a YouTube version of the same video if you're having any problems viewing the high-resolution video at the top of the post.
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In case you missed them,
here are links to the first five
Adobe Illustrator Inking tutorial videos:
here are links to the first five
Adobe Illustrator Inking tutorial videos:
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Gangsters, Gunsels, Crooks, Cops and...Hitler! Willard Mullin Draws Some Amazing Characters
If you want to learn how to draw people in lively dynamic poses...even regular folks doing everyday things..you can't do better than to study these amazing drawings of civilians by legendary sports cartoonist Willard Mullin.
Click any image for a ridiculously HUGE high-resolution scan
As you can see from previous posts on Willard Mullin (see links at bottom), he was the master at drawing sports cartoons that had a breakneck and electrified sense of life. But it wasn't just athletes that received this treatment...Willard Mullin could infuse even the most mundane activity with the breath of life.
These scans are the last batch from the book, "It Beats Working."
The previous sets of boxing, baseball, football and horse-racing cartoons from the same book are linked at the bottom of this post.
Previous posts on Willard Mullin:
 Willard Mullin on Boxing |  Willard Mullin on Baseball &Football |  Willard Mullin on Horse Racing |
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Dwarfs ATTACK! Jack Kirby Nightmare Comics Get Even Weirder
Jack Kirby sure went wild when he got to play around with the topic of dreams and nightmares. Some of his freakiest work can be seen in the pages of The Strange World of Your Dreams.
Dream analyst Richard Temple tackles the nightmares
of Walter W. in this weird two-pager from issue #2.
of Walter W. in this weird two-pager from issue #2.
"In this world of atom bombs,
we all seek the sunlit garden
of your dream."
we all seek the sunlit garden
of your dream."
Man! That Richard Temple is a freakin' POET!
If you missed the previous stories
from The Strange World of Your Dreams,
just click on the links below!
from The Strange World of Your Dreams,
just click on the links below!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Tutorial Video #5 - Using, Transforming and Shaping the Ellipse Tool in Adobe Illustrator
Click on image - video will open in new window
Video #5 - Shape Tools:
Using, Transforming & Reshaping
We're about halfway through the Adobe Illustrator inking tutorial videos, and when this phase is done we will make a brief stopover at Photoshop before heading into some really colorful video lessons on digital painting in ArtRage.
Today's video focuses on the nitty-gritty details of using a shape tool -- specifically an ellipse -- and then using the transform tool and the pencil tool to reshape them. You'll also see how I use copy and paste commands to reuse (and then tweak) various shapes and lines. A lot of it seems like it's tedious, but it goes pretty quickly when done in real time.
The pace will pick up in the next couple of videos because I'll be doing more drawing and less with the jawbone.
By the way, at one point in this tutorial video, I talk about a small X that appears next to the pencil tool in Adobe illustrator. When the X is showing, that means that the pencil tool will draw a new freehand line. When you get the pencil tool close to a previously drawn line that's selected, the X disappears. This means that you can now reshape the selected line by using the pencil tool (N on your keyboard).
Anyway, this screen capture software that I was using was not able to capture the little X for some reason. Here's a picture of it from the Adobe illustrator help site.
If you want more information on how to use the pencil tool to reshape a line, hop on over to:
...And here's the YouTube version of the same video if you're having any trouble watching the high-resolution video at the top of the post.
In case you missed them,
here are links to the first four
Adobe Illustrator Inking tutorial videos:
here are links to the first four
Adobe Illustrator Inking tutorial videos: