Thread "The Making of a Harkovast Page, step by step," in forum "Harkovast- Art"

Posted at 10:12AM, Dec. 16, 2008

If you ever wondered exactly how Harkovast goes from my crazed imagination to exciting web comic, you are in luck!
Here is a step by step guide to how it happens (using a real page to demonstrate.)

Step 1- Crazed Imagination- Daniel thinks of what is going to happen next (making sure it fits into the b ig grand running plot).

Step 2- The Line Drawing- Next, Daniel draws it out in pencil on a piece of paper (simple enough so far).

Step 3- Ink- Once Daniel feels happy with the drawing, He goes over all the lines in black pen, which gives us something a bit like this-

Notice the lack of backgrounds (I hate drawing backgrounds!)

Step 4- Life in Colour- Next, Julie gets out the magic prismacolour pencils and gets to work colouring it and shading it.
This then scanned onto the computer giving us something like this-

Obviously now it is starting to look more like a proper comic! Julie loves doing backgrounds so this is where they get filled in.
However, at this point there are still a few mistakes (the priestess' arm in the bottom corner you can see a line where it was corrected for example). At this stage the colours are rather light and washed out, there is no proper guttering between panels, and there is obviously no text.

Step 5- The Miracle of Technology!- The final stage is Daniel at the computer, going over the image, touching up mistakes or faults, adding guttering, darkening the coluors to make them boulder and addings the text so we can tell what everyone is on about!

Notice that the one colour backgrounds are added in on computer, so they have a nice clean look (and it saves a HUGE amount of time!)
Also, you might note that the edges are trimmed off as the scanner always puts a white boarder around standard size paper.

Well there you go, now you know how it is done.
If learning of all this might ruin the magic for you, you should probably try to forget everything you just read.

Posted at 10:12AM, Dec. 16, 2008

It's quite interesting what a difference Mrs. Harkovast's colouring makes.

Posted at 4:12PM, Dec. 17, 2008

My original idea for this comic was to do it in black and white.
Luckily Mrs Harkovast stepped in to do the colouring and made it all about a million times better.

Posted at 1:01PM, Jan. 10, 2009

Black and white can look beautiful too, you just have to do it right. If you shade and use shades of grey for various colours, it won't look like some 3rd grader's doodle.

(HYPOCRISY is not seen here, see? You see it, you ain't gonna see anything anymore!)

Posted at 3:01PM, Jan. 10, 2009

I've been told that I picked a bad picture as this example, as it gives the impression that my drawing part of the comic consists of bugger all.
I just want to reassure you all that drawing humanoid figures is REALLY difficult! I spend ages drawing and redrawing them.
Especially those funny back bendy cat legs.

Posted at 9:01PM, Jan. 10, 2009

I have tried various alien forms, and found back bend legs the hardest. To a degree, anyways. It depends on how complex I want a picture to be. If I want it lifelike, animal-type legs are really hard to morph to humanoid, but if you're going for silly or less complex the legs are pretty easy to me. You curve forward, ( like that only more pronounced, and sharpen the curve a bit. Bend it back, and you have curvy legs!

I didn't get a good visual picture, did I? Maybe I'll upload some of my demon pictures later. Those are how *I* do it, but they are not that good looking.

Eh.

Humans are tough, ain't weez?

Posted at 4:01AM, Jan. 11, 2009

Humans are innately programed to look for other humans and recongise them.
That is why humans are the hardest thing to draw, because we spot small mistakes in human-like drawings more then we do in other things.
Look at CGI films, the human characters are always the weakest looking element.
It is not that the animates stop trying when they get to the humans, but even the slightest fault seems huge and glaring when you draw humans.
I make my job a little easier by having things that a close to human but not quite human, but I still have a lot of those same problems.

Posted at 4:02AM, Feb. 2, 2009

Not counting toes, backwards legs are made up of three pieces. Look at skeletons of animals' hind legs.

H, you mean you don't already have your entire story written out already~? ("Think of what happens next?")

Posted at 5:02AM, Feb. 2, 2009

Senshu I has enough plannedto keep me writing for years to come (literally), so dont worry!

Posted at 11:11AM, Nov. 22, 2009

I like seeing the evolution of your page. You make the end product look so polished. I only hope to hold to as high a standard.
As for back bendy legs, I hear ya. I first discovered them when I was seven and tried drawing a T-Rex. I got very frustrated. Unfortunately I never got passed that feeling. I guess it just comes down to hours of tortured practice.

Posted at 3:11PM, Nov. 22, 2009

They seemed like such a cool idea, but they make my life hell when it comes to draw them!
CURSE YOU BACK BENDY LEGS!
If you liked this guide, there is an indepth guide to Julies colouring techniques on the Mrs Vast section you should check out.

Posted at 6:06AM, Jun. 10, 2010

what size paper do you draw on? I use A4 which is limiting but I can't really afford a scanner that will do A3 at the moment.

Posted at 8:06AM, Jun. 10, 2010

It's A4 that we use.
If we used anything bigger it might allow more detial but it would also mean the colouring would take far far long , the scanner would cost more and normal paper that fits in normal sized folders wouldn't do.
A4 4 EVER!