image © 2007 mleiv
Medium: Pencil/Photoshop
Size: N/A
Another Warcraft comic. This one was actually easier than the last, despite its more polished look and greater complexity. I think the figures turned out nicely, especially the girls. And I love the expressions. The close-up is all Tank Girl-y and wonderful! 
Technical Details:
I did all the images as 4" pencil sketches. For the repeat images, I just sketched the bit that was different and pasted it over once it was scanned in.
I smoothed the sketches out in Photoshop. Top layer: I took the scan and gaussian blurred it twice at 2.0 and set the layer to multiply at 50%. That kinda blurred out the roughness in the middle layer. Middle layer: I did a color-range select on black with 150 fuzziness on the original scan and then pasted that in a new layer, and locked transparency (this layer was used to create the colored lines). Bottom layer: I just filled in the other colors underneath the other two and I was done. Note: this only worked because I started with such a relatively large sketch and shrunk it down after (something like 400%).
In Illustrator, I added all the text bubbles, which I made with a slightly stylized rectangle (rounded corners filter and a bit of stetching to make it look more interesting). I added the little swoopy pointers and bubble joins by simply creating another filled object, grouping it with the rounded rectangle, then using the Add filter, then flatten transparency. There may be a better way to do this, but those steps work fine for me.
It took me about three to four days, start to finish, but most of that was in figuring out the best techniques to get it done. I'm normally more obsessive and spend way too long making sure I color within the lines, but this time I really got sloppy because I knew it wouldn't really show.
****
07/16/2007 - Yay! I got an honorable mention from Blizzard! [link]
Technical Details:
I did all the images as 4" pencil sketches. For the repeat images, I just sketched the bit that was different and pasted it over once it was scanned in.
I smoothed the sketches out in Photoshop. Top layer: I took the scan and gaussian blurred it twice at 2.0 and set the layer to multiply at 50%. That kinda blurred out the roughness in the middle layer. Middle layer: I did a color-range select on black with 150 fuzziness on the original scan and then pasted that in a new layer, and locked transparency (this layer was used to create the colored lines). Bottom layer: I just filled in the other colors underneath the other two and I was done. Note: this only worked because I started with such a relatively large sketch and shrunk it down after (something like 400%).
In Illustrator, I added all the text bubbles, which I made with a slightly stylized rectangle (rounded corners filter and a bit of stetching to make it look more interesting). I added the little swoopy pointers and bubble joins by simply creating another filled object, grouping it with the rounded rectangle, then using the Add filter, then flatten transparency. There may be a better way to do this, but those steps work fine for me.
It took me about three to four days, start to finish, but most of that was in figuring out the best techniques to get it done. I'm normally more obsessive and spend way too long making sure I color within the lines, but this time I really got sloppy because I knew it wouldn't really show.
****
07/16/2007 - Yay! I got an honorable mention from Blizzard! [link]
