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Smackwell Comics: Knuckle Down
biffsmackwell
Posts: 4,739 Arc User
So... I'm making this comic book as an exercise in doing a pencil-only book to see how that comes out. I like the results, but all the time I save inking the comic, I end up taking twice as long with the coloring... so in the long run I don't think I'm saving any time.
Anyway, I'm going to be posting the whole thing here, in a black-and-white format. It'll be eight pages. The process is pencils, "coloring", then lettering, and I'll be posting them as I finish them. This one starts a bit slow, but by page 3 there's plenty of action and stupid jokes to get it going.
Hope you guys like it, and hope you get a laugh. All comments and critiques are welcome!
(If you find it hard to read, right click each image and select "View Image" to see a larger version.)
New colored versions of page 1 through 3 are up!
Anyway, I'm going to be posting the whole thing here, in a black-and-white format. It'll be eight pages. The process is pencils, "coloring", then lettering, and I'll be posting them as I finish them. This one starts a bit slow, but by page 3 there's plenty of action and stupid jokes to get it going.
Hope you guys like it, and hope you get a laugh. All comments and critiques are welcome!
(If you find it hard to read, right click each image and select "View Image" to see a larger version.)
New colored versions of page 1 through 3 are up!
Post edited by biffsmackwell on
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Comments
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I'll be drawing page 3 tomorrow. I spent most of today experimenting with digital inking. I like how these pages look on paper, a lot, but I think there's some loss in the scanning. I dunno. But if I start inking digitally, it's faster, and I can do colors a ton faster, so I might be doing that once I'm done with pencils. We'll see how it goes
I'll hopefully have page 3 up tomorry. Not a lot of difficult shots, and will be fun to get some of the better jokes in. :P
Edit: Page 3 has some dark, scummy alleys in it. Maybe a scummy rat guy will show up.
AC
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Block timing explained
Gorgeus!
Dazzling!
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
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Enough about me, what did you think of the art?
Seriously though, great stuff. I can't wait for the next installment.
He hangs in, but is subdued, and then Cake Friends bust in and help him get back on his feet. In the end, deliciousness wins.
Thanks! If you look where shadowy guy's shoulder is, you can get a better idea on how long his arm is. It does look a bit goofy because of how the coat is loose and doesn't stick to the body when it's open like that. It does have a wonky first-read though, so I'll probably touch that up if I move on to inks.
Kid's fingers on that page do look a bit samey, thanks for pointing it out!
https://www.dropbox.com/s/przfu9khm1vxk9x/kk_kd_p3.jpg?dl=0
I went a little farther with the shading this time around (it's kind of a process that's a work in progress so I'm not sure how it's supposed to look yet). Compare to the first two pages, which do you guys think looks better?
Again, all comments and critiques welcome!
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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Oooo, where can we get one of those?
I could actually make that happen... haha.
No one of consequence...
Squeekaboo!
Did you quote the wrong post? I dunno what you're asking for there. :P
I think the shading is better in this one than the 2nd one. 1 & 3 are pretty similar to me in that aspect.
If I were to go back and work on these pages again, the first would have a lot more texture, and the second would have a larger variation in tones. Not sure if I'll be doing that though, since it took quite a while. Not sure what road I'll be taking in the next few pages.
If I do go back and try to finalize these a bit better, though, I'll be starting with digital ink, and then coloring the way I've done my commissions.
Biff Smackwell, proud graduate of the Mighty Hercules School of Sound Effects. Fun stuff, man. I'm really enjoying this!
They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Its a method of super heroics I approve of.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I did a search but couldn't find any pages of the comic or it's sound effects. Would love to see other sound effects like this! I like a good variety of sound effects. I'll pretty much throw anything in there that makes me chuckle when I think of it. SPACRAP was one of my faves here. :biggrin:
It's not that he likes violence (okay he likes punching bad guys, that much is true) but more like his mind is always racing thinking about one thing or another so he loses focus in what he's doing. ADHD meds wear off in the evening, so the later it gets, the less likely he is to contain himself when his adrenaline gets going.
Freaking brilliant, man. :biggrin:
- David Brin, "Those Eyes"
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They're not there in the beginning, but when your story ends / Gonna last with you longer than your friends
Hahaha, I love when the letterer can have some fun!
So he is like a Sunny D fueled Popeye, those damn E-numbers XD
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Damn those red dyes!
I should have the next page up today. Was trying to finish it last night but we had a blackout and that put the kibosh on the coloring I was doing.
I think page 5 has the best shading so far. I used only two main shading colors, one for the background and another for shading the characters. There were only a couple other times I made a new layer for shading a different thing. I like the results, keeps the page from getting too busy, and it doesn't take a whole ton of time to get it done.
Hope you guys like!
Yeah what the heck?! :P
When I have enough pages and issues done, I'm gonna try and see if there's any interest out there. Might publish something on my own and stuff, too. We'll see.
Page 6 should be coming tonight. I'm not happy with the dialogue on the page. Not enough jokes, and the jokes aren't good enough either. All the stuff that I've been posting is pretty much the "First Draft" of dialogue. When we write these, the dialogue usually gets like five or six passes before we're happy with it. Since I'm posting these up as I finish them, it's just the first draft and it can seem clunky at times. So far I haven't really had much issue with it, but this page came up a little short, so I'm putting some extra thought into it.
Anyway, glad you're liking it, hope you enjoy the next few pages too!
The little details on some of the panels really add a good touch, keep it up Biff! ( ; u ; )b
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Champions Online.. where we sell lockboxes by the dozen.
Sorry for the big delay, guys, had some other stuff to do. Anyway, pages 6 and 7 are up! One page to go!
I am however confused on last panel...is he so distracted that he forgot his mom is right there?
And good lord..that super sayian hair!
And yeah that hair happened because my kid refused to get a haircut for like a year and that's what happened. :P
So, again I'd want to do another pass at the dialogue on this page, because this stuff was still more rapid-fire like the rest of the pages, but this is what I have for now.
I think I nailed down the style for pencil-only art on Page 5 and onward, and I want to go back and redo pages 1 through 4 and recolor them in the newer methods. What I did in the latter half of the story was a pretty easy-to-follow structure of adding shadows, highlights, and tones, which I thought was great since not working with straight black-and-white documents makes coloring harder. I might still try to color these, since my newer method made it easier to block out different colors and stuff. Would be nicer if I could just pay someone to color the pages, but this will have to do for now! Haha.
Hope you all liked the art and my dumb jokes, and thanks for staying with me through this dumb ol' thing.
AC
I'm working on recoloring (in black-and-white) the first four pages, and from there I'm going to actually color them (the B-W stuff adds a fair bit of groundwork to the colors, and I want both versions to look good, so yar). I hope to post up the updates soons.
Oh, and as far as the "schtick" mentioned in the last page, it really doesn't make sense here, as its the third comic he's done this schtick in, but I can't post the others. So it's kind of a lame joke unless you've read the previous stuff. Not like all the jokes aren't lame, but whateva!
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Also I've updated the first page for the colors to reflect the later pages a little better. I think it looks a lot better, and less washed-out. The rest of the pages will be coming soon!
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I've updated page two. I think it looks much, much better. If anyone wants to do a side-by-side comparison, here are the proper links to page 1 and 2, old and new:
Page 1 Old
Page 1 New
Page 2 Old
Page 2 New
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Way to raise the bar for the rest of us, Biff.
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