Project Diary 6/5/11: Read an old Kyle Baker blog-post defending photo-reference; got me thinking about trying to find ways to go faster, cheaper on the visuals. “Faster/cheaper” is the mission statement for this project. I had planned out some of the “sets” in Google Sketchup, with the intention of using the Sketchup as the “pencils” which I’d then ink over. Instead, put textures on everything and then messed around in Photoshop. Ended up with the above, which… I don’t think this example is where I want to end up, especially color-wise, but … It’s better than I could do by hand, and it takes less than 5 minutes versus whereas “inking” takes me 6-12 times as long. It’s ugly, but so are my drawings so. Saw a fight scene in a mainstream comic this weekend where the backgrounds all looked like Photoshop-manipulated CGI elements, with I think some digital “brushwork” on top of it— and that was something that ended up on paper, for paying readers. The problem is going to be if I have spaces that I haven’t put together in Sketchup, it’s not going to look very consistent. To the extent that matters— it’s a talking head comic on the internet, not the Guernica… Feel like I should mark down the example though as maybe it’s a mile-marker.
