Fun Stuff > MAKE

Fun And Games In Iraq! Critiques please...

(1/4) > >>

maxcavsm:
Okay, here's the backstory...

Forum,

Here's the situation.

I would go into all the painful backstory and exposition required to get me to this point, but I'm going to get right to it, plain and simple.

I had an epiphany at work yesterday that made me realize that I need an outlet for everything that happened to me in Iraq, and eight hours of video games a day isn't doing the trick any more. I want to DRAW about my experiences over there.

I know, weird.

I have no art background. I have no art equipment other that a three ring binder and a mechanical pencil I grabbed from upstairs. I could just draw a bunch of stick figures and call it a day, but I don't think that would help for a minute. I can see panels of well drawn art/manga in my head, and seeing artists from successful webcomics makes me long all the more to make this sudden pipe dream a reality. I've got a hundred different ideas for different concepts. It's the trick of getting them onto paper that has me a little stumped.


Okay, I wrote that two months ago to the day. It's been posted on a few major webcomic forums. Since then, I've found this site, and I've come to love the QC gang.  I've been posting my daily work on the sites, looking for criticism, asspats and the like. So I figured I'd start doing the same here and see what kind of feedback I get!

Here's the backlog of posts over at CAD:  http://www.cad-forums.com/showthread.php?t=70497

For those too lazy to check the link; here's what it look like two months ago:


And here's two months later:

I'll start posting here as well now, and starting with two of my character sketches for my eventual webcomic:



So, THIS is Private First Class Francis Ezra.  I can't find his profile to give you a lot of info, but he's the squad's assistant gunner.  His scrawny frame and early receding hairline makes him "Jeff" to the "Mutt and Jeff" team that is the squad heavy weapons team (the actual machine gunner is a stout, stocky weightlifter named Mikey).   His love of all things "geek" (Magic, Dungeons and Dragons, painting minitures, Harry Potter) is a topic to which the rest of the team gives him boatloads of crap.  He and his testosterone-driven roommate Mikey are constantly at odds with each other.  Ezra, who is the only member of the team without a catchy nickname based on his last name, insists on being called "E-Rock" but without much success. That's all I've got right now; can't find the profile.



This, of course, was done a day later.  I again didn't spend a lot of time or energy into the 240 (machine gun), the armor, the uniform...I was more interested in getting Mikey's shape and a few poses. I was hoping to do three like I did with Ezra, but his ass took up too much room across the page.  So I just used the extra space to have him patting some Iraqi kid on the head (oh, that's the stick figure).

Okay, enough for now...thanks for any help!

PS. Remember, this is with two months of drawing under my proverbial belt...please keep this in mind!

Narr:
The art isn't bad, IMO, especially for a beginner.  Remember that at least on the internet, stick figures are okay as long as the humor stands up.  Honestly, xkcd is one of my favorite webcomics and there isn't anything that's been on that site other than a few landscape drawings I couldn't reproduce on my own in 5 minutes.  The guy who writes it, though, is extremely witty and insightful so it's a pleasure to read.

Also, I don't think I've read any webcomics done by people with military backgrounds.  One of my housemates served in Iraq and I find his sense of humor hilarious, so I'd be interested in reading more.

maxcavsm:
YEA! I don't suck! Thanks! Seriously though, thanks for the positive input, I appreciate it.  Definately need the support right now.

Lol...no no...the stick figure was just my being lazy.  I didn't feel like drawing the kid out, although he will eventually be a character himself. 

Well, I made the plunge, and I get the feeling that the damn has more or less been broken.

I ordered a used Graphite 6x8 pad from Ebay and saved myself $100.  Seeing as I had money sitting in my Paypal account from selling my Alienware laptop, the second I got in the door, I made the decision to make it happen.  So it's on it's way, and 1-6 business days from now, I take my doodles to the next level...digital inking and the mess that is photoshop.

After getting a hold of forum master and comic guru Azual (CAD), I sat down with the ol' sketchpad and decided to work on another character.  It was a toss up, but I finally decided that if I was going to even attempt working on this comic, I'd better get my number one and two characters sketched out and ready to go.

So this is Mac.  The narrator for the story that I'm going to try to tell, for the most part...and for all intense and purposes, he just happens to look like a comic representation of someone I MAY know...

It amazed me that when I was drawing the figures how much better my hands and feet (or boots and shoes in this case) are getting.  And definately how well the shoulder holster turned out.   I had no reference drawing to imagine what it would look like on a person from the front, but having worn one of the damn things for as long as I did...all I had to do was close my eyes and voila.  Pretty nice, but the magazine pouches on the left were a little...off.

maxcavsm:
Well, it's on now.

Anyway, I just happened to be at Best Buy Friday trolling around, when of COURSE, what do I see in the computer periphery section, but that they sell god damn Wacom Graphire and Intuios pads now. At Best Buy! Since WHEN? Well, wouldn't it figure that two days after I have to buy one online and wait for it to arrive that they suddenly start selling the damn things. I could have tried one out first before actually buying one. But no matter. I immediately purchased that, a new massive 24" monitor, and sprinted home to get to work.

And found myself at a dead stop. Photoshop Elements, which came with the digitial drawing pad I'm "borrowing" from Best Buy, is the equivalent of pulling out a chemistry set or a magic kit and trying to just "have fun" with it. You can tinker around with it, but the chances of you actually MAKING something worth while is slim without a great deal of preparation and RTFM (reading the fkcing manual).

And I don't read good. SO of course, I tear into it, start doodling, and realize that photoshop be hard. I was actually chatting on MSN messenger with Azual (Tom from Ctrl+Alt+Del) from England on how to get the damn thing to work. Layers, filters, magic wand, paint can...messy. I'm glad he obviously was willing to help, because the information and step by step tutorial he walked me through got me up and running for the most part, as my new colored picture should indicate.

Well, the consummate of my weekend of tinkering around with photoshop: I spent the last half hour coloring my old Airborne Lieutenant drawing I did as my new Myspace pic. Really turned out nicely, I think.

Now...the question is, do I actually keep drawing using the ol' fashion sketch pad, and then just use photoshop for inking and coloring, like I did with this picture? Or do I do all of my sketching digitally at 10% opacity using a digital sketch pad...you wanna talk about hard? I guess it all takes time and practice.

Antsan:
Hmmm.
I think, that it looses with the coloring. The depth is missing, if you understand. There are no more shadows, the scribblings up there were just more alive. And I think they are really good, the characters are realy characters, not like my poor concepts.

So I think you should draw on paper and color it digitally. Then you maybe should put the original drawing as multyplying layer over the color layer to get the shadows back.

Just my two cents. Hope, I helped.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page