@Hippie.
I love that song too. I must learn to sing it one of these days!
@Seventy two
Roku is right- change thy password! Maybe to opensesame? ^_^
Welcome back!
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It's Australia Day! Happy Australia day everyone!
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As an artist, I like to be humble. I know my failings and faults. But occasionally the towering childish arrogance at what skill I DO have rears its very ugly head.
This was one such time. Oh yes…
The super successful webcomic phenomenon that is Scott Kurtz commented on his comic today about the use of layers in his work, using lots and lots of layers and how he works with Mike Krahulik who also uses lots of layers, but can't stand lots of layers so he always flattens his work afterwards, and how he needed some bits from the foreground of Mike's work but couldn't get it because it was flattened.
Well you can see their stuff here if you're not aware of it already-
Here: http://www.pvponline.com/ and here: http://www.trenchescomic.com/
LAYERS? Let alone LOTS of layers? FOR THAT? O_o
Colour me incredulous.
Aside from the fact it's all horribly derivative, it's good simplistic work by design, so you should not NEED a complex process to make it. Ever. Four would be pretty much the outside, excessive, indulgent maximum.
Even for my art, which is orders of magnitude above that in complexity and design, I only use about 6 layers on average (sometimes a bit more depending on need), and I could easily simplify that down.
But what gets me is that Scott describes how he wanted to grab some of Mike's art from another layer.
Have a look at that stuff.
Why would any artist bother? It's not Caravagio man, just recreate it, it would take 5 minutes max. This is simple, simple, simple stuff- not just because it looks that way, but because it's designed to be that way on purpose.
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OK, end of my arrogant rant. They're both genius webcomic businessmen and I respect their success.
Their work is simple on purpose, its engagingly stylised, and very appealing to people, even if it's not exactly to my tastes, but talking about the process as if it's complicated or hard just prickles me.
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Comic Talk and General Discussion *
Rant, moan, rave and share - for all your chatter, natter, ETCETERA!
It's kinda weird how some people need to use overly complex procedures to do something simple. Such as making coffee. I usually just use simple measurements to make my own brew. But I've seen some people who do things like first make a general measurement of the coffee grounds needed, refine that measurement, then repeat it for each of the required spoons of coffee grounds they need for the coffee maker, then make sure the decanter is completey clean before determining which type of water is needed for the brew, then accurately measuring the amount of water needed for the brew, then adding it into the coffee maker. Then they decide how long to wait 'til the coffee is done….
I think you get the picture…
I use tons of layers. Why? For the simple reason that if I want to tweak or change something it's really easy if it's all on different layers. In my case it's no OCD, it is a total lack of confidence in my ability to get it right the first three dozen times and always having seperate layers available so I can go back and fiddle with stuff.
And guess what? The tiny number of panels I did flatten and then accidently deleted the non-flattened file were the ones I had to go back and edit! So there I was editing the hard way on a flattened image and superimposing new layers as opposed to simply fixing the offending layer.
It works both ways. I see multiple layers as the easy way to edit and flattened images as the hard way.
That was the way I was taught. Keep everything seperate so you can edit everything individually without messing up anything else. And I hate masking. Just can't stand it. Lots of bad memories from my airbrushing days.
@Ozone I agree about layers required for making that art, but in the past I've suffered for not using enough layers, or worse still using a lot and not naming them. regardless i always save a PSD file with layers and a seperate flattened file. mistakes do happen though.
bravo1102 wrote:There's a difference in the process and the sort of final product you produce though. Anyone doing your style of complex, highly composited, FILM-style work should be using that sort of process.
I use tons of layers.
For people just doing a simple flat, highly stylised, unshaded, coloured in cartoon doodle though, it's a massive aberration.
ozoneocean wrote:
@Hippie.
I love that song too. I must learn to sing it one of these days!
It's very simple, you just make up the parts of the bird as you go along. "Et le nez, et le nez, et la tête, et la tête, aa-aa-aa-aa…"
Lonnehart wrote:
It's kinda weird how some people need to use overly complex procedures to do something simple.
I'm afraid that I'm one of those people. No matter how many times I make a recipe, or even for loose tea, I always measure everything out. Peanut butter etc has to be spread evenly right to the edges of the bread. I'm also a layer-aholic. I never used a ton for Izzy, but when I'm just drawing in photoshop I always have a million layers, all named.
I just like to be very meticulous about everything.
ozoneocean wrote:But I do use lots of layers for the conventionally drawn comics I've done as well. I do it so I can endlessly tweak elements in the panel and the page. I like being able to manipulate seperate bits and pieces so everything is on it's own layer.bravo1102 wrote:There's a difference in the process and the sort of final product you produce though. Anyone doing your style of complex, highly composited, FILM-style work should be using that sort of process.
I use tons of layers.
For people just doing a simple flat, highly stylised, unshaded, coloured in cartoon doodle though, it's a massive aberration.
But then I'm stuck with a mouse so maybe I can't get the finesse that would enable me to put more stuff on one layer? Also my pen lines are never closed so I can't choose areas easily. I have a sketchy ink style no matter what I do. Even when I thought I closed every line and put a stroke on the image the lines still aren's closed. And like I said I'd rather put every color on it's own layer than have to mask.
That's how I was taught to do it back when I learned to color line art in Photo Shop . If you want to keep something seperate to manipulate later, put it on it's own layer. I'll pull apart my inked page and move everything onto its own layer and then play with the layout.
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SO I went with the wife to pick some stuff from her office and I never felt the temperature drop when someone walked into a room. And when the other sec'y came in? A conversation completely in monosyllables and that sour expression like she was sucking on lemons. But then I started a flame war on another forum about the interior color of a tank. Jeez. Life is too short.
Cognitive behavioral therapy doesn't work when the patient forgets to cognate.
Product Placement wrote:i love this ad so much.
Why yes. This is exactly the type of ad I want to see here.
Thank you so much.
I did change my password, but i had to use my password to get in. to change it.
heh… one of my younger nieces told me about an anime she's watching and it makes me glad that such things are pure fantasy. And I guess a lot of anime takes place in high school because of Japan's apparent obsession with youth… anyways…
What would you do if you found out that the school you sent your child to had some weird… standards? Such as how students who have high grades get to study in clean classrooms with the finest desks and the newest learning material? And on the other side of that coin are those who don't do so well academically… they get the basement with only cardboard boxes as their furniture and old tattered textbooks. Makes me wonder how a school survives with those kinds of rules where the higher your grades the better stuff you get. If there were real life schools like this in the U.S. I bet someone's head is gonna roll…
Lovely. Read the Sims 3 forums to learn that the porn posting troll who messed things up sometime ago is coming back. Apparently he can change his IP address at will and is reportedly creating multiple accounts so he can launch another attack. He's apparently a very sick person who posts porn on the public forums and sends explicit messages to any forum member who's a minor. I hope he gets caught soon…
Ugh… can't sleep. Spent the past six hours staring at the ceiling. Emptying my mind didn't help much either… felt like a zombie ready to animate laying on the bed. Maybe if I took that claw hammer on the desk and used it to put myself to sleep. Hmmm…
I want to wallpaper my room, but I have to wait until my dad does his taxes to see if we're broke or not. The wallpaper that I like is one of the cheaper ones, and my room is pretty small, but it'll still cost about $250. I don't know how people afford it in bigger houses, or with the ones that cost $100 a roll.
I'm feeling too old for my room lately. It's ocean-themed.
Black is better.
So… not much happen while I was gone?
Bali was nice. Even hotter than it is here. Very green and very humid. Prolly much like Lonne's home town. Lots of nice god statues everywhere in the quiet tropical town of Sanur ^_^
I've caught up on my work on DD for now (made easier thanks to Banes and Ayes), catch up on my day time work tomorrow! Bed time now.
Just when I think I've got my bunnies figured out, they go and do something weird. Today Juliet has decided to lick one of the handles of my dresser. Not chew it, mind you. Just lick it. Maybe she's just testing to see if I'll scold her for it.
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I have adblock so all I saw when I came here was black. I thought maybe they were shutting the site down one colour at a time. : P
Do we seriously have a built-in pop up ad(or whatever you want to call it) on the front page now? Yeesh.
skoolmunkee wrote:
Just listening to the newest quackcast. Gonna have to come up with a special abby sanders update.
Banes and Ayes are so nice! I'm sorry my comic ruins my voice acting prospects! I mean, shut up loser.
hahahahahaha!!
ha ha. ha?
yeah. I know. we were naughty.
so yeah, abracadabra - saw Abby is already talking to a big bird. And don't you know about Batman and copyright infringement?
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