Today’s Episode: Reprieve!..Or Not.
Photoshop Tomfoolery
I have to admit it, I have come to rely rather heavily on Photoshop. The above strip is a perfect example. I drew the original on lightweight bristol, inked it, erased all the pencils and then scanned it. I think that is where the problem begins; scanning. I have the typical scanner, it’s about 9″ x 12″, and of course my originals are larger so I scan in pieces and then “paste” them together in PS.
As I said, that is where the trouble starts.
Then, I look at the strip and invariably notice that one of the characters is too big, or maybe someone isn’t exactly where they need to be. This happened in the strip above; Loopus was too small in panel one, the two ducks were too big, etc. I tweaked and pushed and pulled until I had more or less what I wanted. I wound up doing so many tweaks that the strip above bears little resemblance to the original, and this bothers me. I’d like to have nice originals to look at, believe it or not. The other thing that occured to me is that if I just spent a little more time trying to nail everything in the pencil stage, then I wouldn’t have to spend so much time on the back end doing PS fixes.
Well, you live you learn. I’ll be good at this stuff some day. Thanks for reading!
-John
February 4th, 2009 at 10:23 am
Great strip!!!
February 4th, 2009 at 10:03 pm
John,
I remember the first time I ever saw a Walt Kelly original. It had blue pencil lines everywhere and enough pro white on it to cover the state of Alaska. I read somewhere that Kelly only gave each strip about 70% of his capability. To him it was more important to churn out at 70% and draw more strips instead of taking the extra time perfecting it and, thus, losing potential income. Now, that said, It makes Kelly’s extraordinary talent even more amazing. Scanning a large piece is always a challenge. I had a color cartoon I wanted on my online portfolio that was over sized. I took it to Kinko’s had it scanned on a large scanner, and they then converted it to jpeg and tif files for me and put it on my thumb drive. It worked pretty well.
I think your strip looks fantastic. I think it could be time for some Chippy and Loopus merchandise ala Cafe Press. I’m in for a t-shirt and a mouse pad!
February 4th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Hey!!! Ladies and Gentlemen!!! Meet the great Drew Litton sports cartoonist for the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Colorado, my hometown! Mr. Litton gave me invaluable advice as a young cartoonist, once when I was 17 and again when I was about 20 when me and Jay Wortham barged into his office at the News. Both times he was kind, patient and full of indespensible cartoonist wisdom! I owe a huge debt to Mr. Litton! (Sorry to embarrass you Drew, but this had to be said)
You make an excellent point, Drew. If I put too much effort into making the strip absolutely perfect, I will never get it done. It is amazing to consider that those beautiful strips were Kelly at 70%! I dream of doing work that good, and I can’t even when I’m working at 120%! It does give me something to shoot for though. Thanks for the advice about Kinkos too. I might give that a try.
As to the Cafe press store I do have some stuff there already, but its about 4 years old and really lame. I’ll try to put some new stuff up though in the coming weeks. My buddy Jeff Pidgeon says that Zazzle makes some pretty good t-shirts too. I’ll work on it. Thanks for commenting Drew! You made my year!
Larry! Thank you sir! And thanks for the advice you conveyed via Facebook!
Very helpful!
February 5th, 2009 at 7:25 pm
You are a very talented artist.PS editing can get insane with the endless possibilities it offers for the artist today.Artist know their calling and it is to create.Everything else is hard for them.Whether it is editing, publishing, networking, or just trying to figure out what kind of cereal to have for breakfast.I know you must have spent hours on that page and I am afraid I have to tell you I still could barely read it.I don’t have a magic wand but I do use a Wacom Bamboo tablet and it is the best investment I made last year.If it breaks I will buy another one.Save a tree and a squid and try out some of the new toys. You may find yourself drawing in a whole new light.
February 5th, 2009 at 7:47 pm
Hey Adam! Thanks for checking out the strip!
You are right about the endless possiblities that are offered to us in Photoshop!
One can easily become lost in the quagmire of possibilities! It is for this reason that I limit the tools I use in PS: I composite, use the transform tool to correct character sizes, the eraser tool for mistakes, a simple brush to spot my grey tones and the type tool for my lettering. Oh, and I also rule the panel borders with a hard brush and the shift key. I must say I was perplexed when you said you couldn’t read the page. Could you be more specific? What exactly is difficult to read?
I did take another look and noticed that some of the text is a little hard on the eyes. I believe I can fix that by a) just making it larger and b) running it through the Unsharp Mask filter. Is there any other part that does not read to you? I am all ears!
February 6th, 2009 at 3:02 am
Yeah, it was too small.One of the easier fixes.Peace