Just a Tad

Manga Studio 4 Debut Experiment

As promised, it's me talking a bit about Manga Studio 4 Debut, a program designed to make comic creation easier.

But this isn't a review.  Maybe a little bit.  Okay, here's the review part: After conferring with famed comic artist, Mike "one of the nicest guys in the business" Norton, I purchased the scaled down version of the program rather than the EX, pro, version which costs more.  The cheaper version seems to do everything you'd need to put out a comic, save double splash pages.  I suppose if I was a comic book professional, I'd buy the bigger program, but if you're just dipping your toe in the digital waters, save yourself some coin.

I use a Cintiq so I can draw right on the screen and I gotta say the "feel" of the pen is great.  I'm a terrible inker but now the undo button is my friend.  I also love the "vanishing point" filter which helps immensely with perspective and boy do I need help with perspective (see previous post).  

So with all the experience of this two page comic behind me, I have to say I give the software a thumbs up.  I can only imagine what I'll be able to do when I actually learn how to use it.  End review.

Because this blog is allegedly about the artistic process, that's what I'll talk about even though this comic was just a lark to experiment with the program.

Hellboy Jr and I go way back.  He's a creation of Mike Mignola and Bill Wray.  Or maybe Bill goaded Mike into it.  Whatever, the trade paperback collection has the distinction of having a cover that suggests it might be for kids and yet it's the least kid friendly of anything connected to Hellboy.  I started doing Hellboy Jr drawings on the CBR Hellboy forum years ago  (The earliest are REALLY embarassing).  I just had fun drawing a sassy, loud mouthed, pint-sized version of Hellboy.

I even posted a color comic online which went for several pages and had a guest appearance by Lobster Johnson!  Heck if I can find it online though.  Feel free to search. [UPDATE: HERE IT IS]  Anyway, my version of Hellboy Jr. was more G rated and had a personality closer to a crabby Donald Duck than anything else.

So this comic started with something from my life.  After a financially enforced moratorium on comics, I was buying the Hellboy stories I missed but was determined to "wait for the trades" of all future stories instead of buying all the single issues of Hellboy.  But I was undone by just how crazy good those issues are. I decided to translate that into a little comic.

I had two ideas: Hellboy Jr. opening a comic and being assaulted by the imagery and him being angry at Mike Mignola benefiting from his extra purchases.

Normally I'd thumbnail out the panel layout with rough compositions but the program has all sorts of templates of panels so I just did a "drag and drop."  As far as panel composition, I just played around at full size.

Along with my free copies of Darkwing Duck comics, BOOM Studios comped me a Don Rosa Uncle Scrooge collection which is probably what led to the Scrooge McMike images which really sell the gag.  While I didn't copy panels exactly, that's the famous Scrooge McDuck money bin quote that I have Mike reciting.

HBjr's personality filled in the rest. His belittling of the other comic shop patrons sets him up for the fall.   There's some admitted sloppiness in some of the panels but it was just a couple of days between thought and final execution.  I gave myself a deadline to be done with it; I really should have put more thought and research into the panel where junior opens the comic.  Still in all, a successful experiment and a lot of fun.  I really need to do another before I forget everything I learned.

The word balloons were just dragged onto the artwork and squashed to the appropriate shape.  The text automatically fills the balloon as you type. There's a tool that let's you drag out the tail.   I agree with Mike Norton that in a world where technology can get in the way, the interface of Manga Studio 4 just sorta works.  It made it easy for me to do what I wanted.  

The program has a PDF manual that covers waaaay too much, or at least more than I needed to do this comic.   There was a "For Dummies" book published for an earlier release and additional help about the new edition located online by the book's author.

Okay, that last part was also a little reviewy.  If you have any questions, post them in the comments and I'll try to answer but keep in mind that my experience is very limited.

I'll wrap up the post with a video of Mike Norton inking a comics page on his Cintiq using the EX version of the program.  

Thanks and come again -- Tad

 

 

 

 

 

Storyboard Layout and Perspective

I've completed my house move and submitted my pilot script to the studio so I finally have time to blog again.  Not a lot of time but some time.

I'll start with a quick one.  I loved drawing since I was a little kid.  The first piece of art that I remember doing was a Dimetrodon, an apple tree and a man painted in glorious tempera color in kindergarten.  I also sculpted a pretty cool duck and one kid made a flying saucer the size of a medium pizza pan that drooped because it wasn't dry when he took it home but that's all off topic.

And what topic was that?  Putting your characters in a world.  The dino and man had a horizontal line of grass and that apple tree.  They had a world to romp in, evidently a Creationist world that allowed for a man and finback dinosaur to exist in the same era.  But outside of furiously trying to keep up with the landscape sketches of TV art instructor, Jon Gnagy, I stopped drawing full scenes and just drew characters.  This got worse when I discovered the world of superheroes.  There was so much to draw: costumes with boots, gloves, capes and all manner of utility belts.  Who had the time to design their lair or the crime ridden streets?  

The twists my career took let me get by with only that basic knowledge that Jon Gnagy and the Famous Artists Cartooning course gave me... and I only sort of skimmed that stuff.  But once you get into real storyboarding, layout becomes much more than just rules of perspective.

Allow me to recommend a book that explains in clear, understandable terms just what it DOES involve.

Ed Ghertner has worked on several of my shows, half hours and feature length. He's worked on Disney feature films and is currently designing backgrounds for Fox's upcoming prime time show, BOB'S BURGERS.

And somewhere in there, Ed took the time to write this book.  If you're working in animation or comics or any kind of illustrative art, it's worth picking up this book.

Ed lets the pictures do the explaining wherever he can but does a great job of describing the thought process that should be going on before pencil touches paper.

 In the meantime I bought Manga Studio 4 Debut which is a program designed to help produce comic books.  It was on sale at the San Diego Comic Con for almost half off.  After talking to Mike Norton, exclusive DC comic artist who used the program, I decided to give it a shot.  Like most art programs, the manual is PDF of several hundred pages in length so I did what most artists do... read just enough to get started and got started on a small project, looking up stuff I needed as I went along.

I bring it up here because of a cool vanishing point feature it has.  You click and it creates a dynamic vanishing point with radiating lines.  You can "grab" the lines and move them which is much like changing the camera angle and lens.  Cool feature.  I'll talk about my experiment in a future post.

In the meantime, check out Ed's book.