I have lots of ideas about how I might create the art for Żużel and the Fox. But until I actually try some things out, I won’t know what’s feasible. Or what results in an aesthetically pleasing result.
One thing I really wanted to try was using Google SketchUp as an aid to keeping my backdrops consistent. That of course takes time, and I’ve spent a lot of time this summer building SketchUp models.
So, anyway, here’s one digital art workflow.
Sometimes I have to do quite a few thumbnails to work out the rhythm of a page.
This is the layout I went with for page 27. This is really still just a thumbnail at about 2″ x 3.5″.
Here’s part of page 16’s final thumbnail, cleaned up in Photoshop. I tweaked the levels to delete non-photo-blue lines and increase contrast.
I’m kind of insane, and built models of all my settings. Based on the page layout, I painstakingly arranged camera angles in Google SketchUp, then pasted them onto a comic book page template.
With the SketchUp images as a guide, I “ink” the backdrops, emulating the style of 1960s-70s Disney background art (Walt Peregoy, et al.)
I paint in the backdrops, again, emulating Peregoy’s keen use of limited palettes and slightly sloppy aesthetic.
Focusing on clear lines of action, I sketch in the characters.
I clean them up a bit…
…and then “ink” them as if I were inking an animation cel. I try to avoid tangents.
I managed to “paint” Malutki and Żużel so far, but became indecisive about the painting style. In the future I’ll try adding more texture with the “inks” rather than with the colors.
Here’s the same crop, but with the chair and backdrop at full opacity.
I’m going to try again. These are the changes I think I will make next time:
Add a step when creating the backgrounds: a looser sketch based on the SketchUp screenshots, then hide the screenshots and ink based on the loose sketch.
Do the inking and coloring steps for a whole page, rather than panel by panel.
Stick to color flats for the figures, rather than a “digital painting” look.
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