DIGITAL INKING AND COLORING
===========================
Tutorial by Tonci Zonjic (tonchyz@ice.org) (http://tonchyz.ice.org/)
Converted to ASCII text by RaD Man of ACiD Productions (www.acid.org)
HTML version available at http://www.ice.org/tutorials.php?tutorial=9
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п млў ўмўпмллВмўп пў оллБл пў
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пў м Впў
п пў м ўп
Brief Contents:
---------------
- Introduction
- From a thumbnail to final pencils
- Preparing the pencils (inking)
- Coloring
Introduction
------------
Hello there. This tutorial basically shows how I work a picture out- from
a thumbnail sketch to the final piece. The primary focus of this tutorial
is inking and coloring, so conceptually and designwise it's a bit crappy.
It'll do though. Time to start:
From thumbnail to final pencils
-------------------------------
The first sketch was drawn in bed, few minutes before I fell asleep. It
took about 15-20 seconds. That evening we had a paintchat session and did
some evil proctologists- that's where the idea for this one came too, heh.
The first sketch was about 3x4.5 inches big. It served its purpose - got
down the main idea:
[IMAGE 01.jpg] thumbnail sketch
___________________________________________________________________________
Next step is to work it out larger. Sheet of 80g/m2 photocopy A4 (8.5"x11")
paper usually works good for me. For easier upsizing you can draw a grid
over the thumbnail sketch (it's not cheating.). As you can see I had put
up a vertical line and some horizontal ones to get the proportions rights.
Made some changes to the posture and design along.
[IMAGE 02.jpg] upsized sketch. a bit smaller than the full paper size
___________________________________________________________________________
Penciling in progress. Remember to have various line widths to emphasise
the volume. This can be added later while inking, but it's good to get a
habit of doing that when penciling. Thicker lines in the front, thinner in
the back. Atmospheric perspective on work. Also, don't be afraid to make
mistakes (but don't go mad and scribble randomly either :). Working clean
is very good but if you work without a lightbox, tracing the the new steps
on new sheets, or inking manually and erasing the pencil underneath- things
can get messy. Photoshop can clean most of the smudges and lighter lines
with some fiddling on the Image > Adjustments > Levels (Ctrl+L). For other
artifacts we use the eraser.
*Tip: put a paper or a paper napkin under your hand to prevent smudging
[IMAGE 03.jpg] penciling in progress
___________________________________________________________________________
Finished pencils. Now, we have two options:
1) We can clean and touch up the scanned lines or
2) We can put that in a separate layer and redraw the whole mech
Both have certain advantages and disadvantages. The first one gives you a
solid base to work over- sometimes the scan is good enough to require
minimum work on it. On the other hand, sometimes it'll take you more time
to clean up wobbly and gritty lines than to redraw the whole thing.
[IMAGE 04.jpg] finished pencils
The whole process so far took somewhere around an hour. Lots of erasing
took its toll :)
Preparing the scanned linework (inking)
---------------------------------------
This is what the final pencils look fullsized:
[IMAGE 05.jpg]
Technique 1)
------------
Getting a clean look over a linework like this is not possible. So we
start cleaning up. First thing to see is if we can get anywhere fiddling
with levels, as I noted before. After that - the eraser tool. When we are
finished with erasing and touching up some lines, we start coloring.
Technique 2)
------------
No need to touch up the original scan, just make it a separate layer and
drop down the opacity to 40-50%. In a new layer on top of that start
drawing with pen tool/shape tool/small brushes. Whatever you like the
most.
I decided to go with 1. Here's how that cropped part looked after I was
finished with it:
[IMAGE 06.jpg]
After some two-three hours of inking joys the piece looked like this:
[IMAGE 07.gif] all cleaned up and ready for color
Coloring
--------
Ok. The drawing should be one layer, set to multiply. Underneath it you
can have as many layers as you want. Combined with "preserve transparency"
and masks, layers are extremely useful for rendering different sections. I
started with a gradient in the background layer, and a big opaque color
fill. Did it with big brushes, opacity dynamics turned off. Just plain
opaque color. When the color is inside the lines, set the "preserve
transparency" checkbox on for that layer. That way you can paint over it
without worrying about the edges.
[IMAGE 08.jpg] Gradient fill and the big section fill
Next I added a shadow (be sure to make it dark enough where the object
touches the ground or it'll look like it's floating) and some light
definition on the robot body. Big soft brushes used for both.
[IMAGE 09.jpg]
Now all that is left is to render the form due to defined lightsource. Not
that it's an easy task sometimes. I used hard edged brushes, working in
this size what you see as fullsize (accidentally saved the downscaled
version over the original- don't let it happen to ya). Lots of
colorpicking and warm colors added.
*Tip: Keep a finger near the alt key at all times to colorpick
Here's some steps during the rendering process:
[IMAGE 10.jpg] [IMAGE 11.jpg]
[IMAGE 12.jpg] [IMAGE 13.jpg]
Finished image:
[IMAGE 14.jpg]
Photoshop tweaks and some details added after my friends commented:
[IMAGE 14c.jpg]
The last few steps aren't really informative, I'm aware of that, but some
other time I may be competent to explain everything I did. Why did I put
the red blobs here, blue ones there? Why do the highlights look the way
they look? Playing up the materials, texture. Most of that comes with
experience and observation. Paint from life and keep looking at things.
See how the light changes. Then you can apply it to your pics just like I
did here. Still more to learn, of course. It's a life long pursuit.
Anyway, I'm ramblin already :) Hope this 'tutorial' was fun and i'd be
really glad if you learned something. Any comments, crits, praise,
marriage proposals, reply below.
(c) TonchyZ / Lung_bug 2002
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