Inking tests

[telophase]

Killing a flock of birds with one stone here - practicing inking and trying to get a good, organic-feeling line with digital inking, getting a feel for styles different from my own, finally trying to learn hatching techniques, and getting familiar with MangaStudio 3.0 Pro, the English-release version of ComicStudio, whose beta I used to do Project Blue Rose.

This is panel 3 from Qwan, book 3, page 152.

The original panel:



My version:


I think the original panel used a tone to put down the general blobs of darkness and texture in the sky and partially over the bodies of the two, but I was experimenting with some of the new brushes available in MS3, and used the Gauze brush to do that.

Comments

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

Yours is better. It's crisper.

But they are amazingly similar. If I didn't know better, I'd accuse you of tracing.

[the-z.livejournal.com]

That's a terrific job and with a general, lighter touch with the inking. I personally think yours could use just a little more line width variation, but overall, it's an excellent job.

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I agree. I prefer the lighter crisper look as well. However I like the solid(er?) base "color" of the original dress better then the ### pattern.

[maiteoida.livejournal.com]

I was wondering...how is the toning system with MangaStudio? Is there more variation than with ComicWorks? I'm starting to get a little tired of using the same 20 effect tones over and over again so...

But yeah, I really like the crisp look of this. I never thought of practicing inking by doing that...that sounds like a really good idea!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

And you'd be perfectly right to do so: this was practicing inking and not pecnilling, so I used the priginal as the pencils and inked on a layer on top of them. XD

However, getting them almost exactly similar means that I did a fairly good job of following them, especially since the images was scanned at a much lower resolution than I inked at, and thus was fuzzy.

(But thanks!)

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I have to work out how to get the line to respond more to pressure on the tablet. :D Thanks!

and it occurs to me that I offered to try to get you a copy when I bought mine and I forgot until just now...

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The ### pattern comes from the tone going into a moiré pattern when shrunk to Web size - it's an even shading in the size I inked it at. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

XD Yeah - there's a lot more tones in MS than CW, and they've got brushes sort of similar to Photoshop pattern brushes, with a number of different things - feathers and bubbles and stuff like that, along with the gauze sponge I used. You cna get a demo version (http://www.e-frontier.com/go/mangastudio_hps), but I think it's got fewer tones or something. I know the Debut version has fewer tones than the Pro.

I got the Pro because I had the Pro version of 2.0 in the beta, and there was no way I was going to be satisfied with the debut after that. However ... Academic Superstore currently has an educational price of $94 and change here (http://www.academicsuperstore.com/item/?tname=267684&title=Manga+Studio). You might have to wait until fall to get it, since I think you have to email them a copy of a current something .... here we go:

We require proof of current affiliation with a school. Accepted verfication can include the following: a dated student or faculty ID card, fee receipt, course schedule, pay-stub, or employment contract combined with any photo ID (driver's license, passport photo, etc.) Please feel free to block out any private information such as pay amounts and social security numbers. For Adobe, Microsoft, and SwishZone products, a photo ID is required. For more information see Eligibility.

I got the idea a while back, because I hated trying to ink over my own work, since my pencils are never tight enough, plus I figured it would help me incorporate various style aspects into my own work - I know that if I spend a while tracing someone else's work with pencil and tracing paper, I start to do my pencils a little bit like them. Figured it'd carry over to inking as well. :D

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* although I should point out, in all fairness, that I think CW has more shoujo tones than MS. But you can fill a page in CW with a tone, export it as a Photoshop layered file, import it into MS and make it a new tone, I am told.

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

Oh. Well, I remain impressed anyway!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

** and there's a separate disk of Computones to install with the Pro version (don't think it comes with the Debut), so you get even more tones.