Tools » Illcraft

Double Vision

Dec 112007

When I’m drawing close-up on the page and I’ve zoomed in really far to see close-up, I lose the ability to see the full page at the same time.

I need to see how what I am drawing affects the entire composition. Without having to zoom out and then back in to finish what I am doing I use this time-saving little tip…

I open the file I am working on and draw from afar with the whole page in my sight. When I need to zoom in I open the file again and reduce both documents on my screen so I can see them at the same time.

With one image close-up and the other image zoomed out I can draw looking at the zoomed out and checking my line quality on the close-up or vice-versa.

It works great and saves time by not zooming in and out.

I FEEL THE NEED FOR SPEED…lines

Perspective, Pro Tips, Special FX 9 Responses »

Mar 022007

Now that my Iron Man Hypervelocity series is shipping from Marvel I’ll be able to show you some of the new tricks and techniques I’ve deleloped.

As a recap to some new folks who have linked to this blog, I’m showing how I have used Adobe Illustrator 10 to draw comic books. I draw directly in the program using a Wacom Intuos 2 on a PC. The best way to get the most out of this blog is to start from the beginning lesson. I cover all the basic things you need to do from the get-go to get up to speed using Illustrator. I cover all the tools and palette options that I use while drawing in Illustrator.

I’ve also stuck with Illustrator 10 for the most part because the pencil tool is better there than in later versions. It’s in wider circulation than the newer programs and won’t cost you a lot of money to get if you don’t own Illustrator already. I’m sure you can find cheap versions of Illustrator 10 on eBay.

While I’ve been drawing Iron Man:Hypervelocity for Marvel during the past year I’ve found a need to draw tons of speedlines in many different directions. There are many ways to create speedlines.

Here I’ll show you a really quick and simple way.

CLIPPING MASKS not just for HALLOWEEN

Basics, Pro Tips 2 Responses »

Sep 162006

This will be a quick lesson with no pictures. Sorry. I know I can’t read anything without pictures so I hope you’ll bare with me.

I have been working with a better layer structure by using CLIPPING MASKS. It really helps to keep everything more organized.

SO—as I start work on my new pages I indicate where my panels will go. I block the gutters on the top layer by using black boxes all the same width. Just to be different than the average bear I put a 2pt. White Stroke in the middle of the black bars. I’m all for comics with black gutters, but when I am using a lot of black in the panels already, the panels and the gutters will run into each other and be too hard to see what’s going on. I got that tip from Jim Shooter at Comic-Con a couple of years back. That’s where I started putting the white line in to seperate the panels. Most of the ELSINORE work I did has the white line between the panels. Look at the work on www.briandenham.com to see the Elsinore stuff.

With my gutters indicated I now create my CLIPPING MASKS for each panel.

I start a new LAYER for each panel. I use the MARQUEE tool to draw a box in the shape of the panels. If the panels are odd shape I use the WHITE ARROW (direct selection tool) to grab the points and duplicate the shape of the panels. Then at the bottom of the LAYERS PALETTE I click the CREATE CLIPPING MASKS button and this makes my shape turn into a CLIPPING MASK.

—What the heck is a clipping mask? Well it’s a hole in the universe that allows us to see all of the art in the hole but nothing outside the shape of the hole. So once the clipping mask is created on a SUB-LAYER I lock that Sub-layer so we won’t mess with it again. Then I create a bunch of new Sub-Layers on this main PANEL LAYER and keep all of the art for this panel in those other Sub-Layers.

When I am ready to draw a new panel I got an do the same steps for that panel. Now I have a Layers just named P1 for PANEL 1 and keep all of the art for that layer there. P2 and so on for each panel.

I can’t believe how much of a benefit this is to keep everything in it’s place. I had to go back to do corrections on Iron Man 1 and I was amazed at how messed up I had all of my layers. It was so hard to find stuff when some of the layers were named 157. LOL

Pays to get organized.

So now all of my pages have the layers organized this way. If I have anything else I need in an exact shape I will create a new Layer and use a clipping mask for the shapes. Like I drew a jet with specific speedlines on the shadow areas of the jet. I drew all of my shadows out and created a clipping mask for them. I then drew the speed lines and placed them in the clipping mask and they only showed up where the clipping mask was. This was important for this specific effect because the area behind the jet had a different set of speedlines in the opposite direction. If I did it any other way the speedlines would overlap or I would have had to cut the ends of the speedlines off and that would take way too long.

ISO la-me-O! ISOMETRIC PLUG-IN

Cool Tools, Pro Tips 3 Responses »

Jun 092006

I got this great new Plug-In for Illustrator 10. It’s called ISOMETRIC LINE TOOL and it’s available at the link below.

The programmer who designed it used it for building train track plans. I downloaded it along with everything on his site. I didn’t think I would use it SO I made myself play around with it so I knew WHY I wouldn’t.

Well, that did not work out because after the first 10 lines my brilliant strategic mind told me to design building facades with it and them use the FREE TRANSFORM tool to shape the buildings into perspective.

The top picture is black and white is how the Iso plug-in drew straight lines at right angles wherever I laid them down.

The light blue is on a layer below my buildings and it’s used to block out the background. On the page I would color it white to blend with the page.

The darker blue color is on a layer below where I drew out the backsides of the buildings after I stretched them into perspective.

What a dream come true this is because I really love adding detailed realistic backgrounds but I hate making grids and then erasing them and all of that. Now I don’t have to.

Why is anyone using PAPER?! This plug-in is fantastic as well as everything on this site… http://rj-graffix.com/software/plugins.html#IsoLineTool
I also spent last weekend (my Birthday) downloading a ton of Plug-INs for Illustrator. One dream Plug-In allows me to quickly make speedlines and more. That Plug-in alone is worth all the money I spent on every single plug-in I bought.

I can’t wait to show you what I have been up to. I’m leaving notes on all my Iron Man pages so after the books come out I can show you waht I was doing…and so I can remember. LOL

I’ll get to that promised COMPUTER TERMINAL tutorial as soon as I can.

KEEPING IT IN PERSPECTIVE

Cool Tools, Pro Tips, Special FX 10 Responses »

May 052006

ta-Da! A new tutorial entry. yeah!

The picture to the left is a way to make bricks in perspective, but if you just need grid lines follow along…

PERSPECTIVE GRID LINES

1.-Draw one line. Make a copy on that line directly under it by Holding ALT (on a PC) and pulling it down.

2.-Keep it selected and hold CTRL+D and everytime you hit “D” it will duplicate the line as many times as you need.

3.-After you have as many lines as needed select all of them with the BLACK ARROW (Direct Selection Tool) , PRESS THE “E” KEY, and hold CTRL and pull them anyway you need perspective lines.

4.-Duplicate steps 1-3 and make new lines in perspective going the opposite direction. You will then have a criss-crossed, “x” shape pattern great for using for perspective guidelines in the background.

Pro artists don’t always draw perspective lines all the way to the horizon line. You need only have some criss-cross for your panel.

Here is a shot of how to make a picture out of some bricks. This spacewalk shot took less than 10 minutes. The squares were WHITE FILL and BLACK STROKE. The background was a black square on a lower layer. The lines in the back were created with my new buddy; the DASHED LINE.

Next time, I will show you how to make some crazy computer terminals with that little gem!

HARD LIGHT, BIG CITY

Basics, Cool Tools, Pro Tips, Special FX 5 Responses »

Dec 162005

I’ve had to draw over some layouts lately that were scanned in the computer. Now drawing over my pencil line art from Illustrator is one thing. I know where my lines are and if I get confused I can simply place my sketch layers on top of my inking layers so I can see where I am supposed to ink. working with a full blown scan of a sketch is a bit trickier.

One simple solution is to just place the scan on the top layer and place the layer in MULTIPLY mode. After I did that some of the layouts were still hard to work from. Mainly because I had to ink an area black and then draw white computer panels on top of the black lines.

The solution for this, (I’m sure there are many, but this worked the best for me.) was to place the layer in HARD LIGHT mode. You see in Illustrator where it says NORMAL on your LAYER options, just click there and scroll down to HARD LIGHT. I still left this layer on top but it made it easy for me to ink in black on layers under it and still see what I was supposed to be inking. I could also see the areas that needed to be white! That was crucial for what I was doing.

If you want to practice drawing on a tablet or in Illustrator then scan in one of your drawings or someone else’s if you want, and do this trick. It sure helped me out a lot for the art I needed to finish.

MULTIPLY generally works well for the same thing. However with having to ink the white areas over black ones this sure helped me a lot. I also did another piece where I made my Perspective lines in red and turned that layer on HARD LIGHT so I could see them on all the layers under this one.

Let me know how it works for you. I’ll have some gray tone effect tips as soon as I figure out what I did that made stuff worked. I experimented and got some cool effects. Now I have to go back and try to redo what I did. Oops! I didn’t keep notes.

Be well!

SUBTRACT FRONT TOOL

Basics, Cool Tools, Pro Tips, Screenshots, Special FX 6 Responses »

Jul 252005

This is a really great way to create rain or power effects or some really cool speed-lines.

Step 1.) Grab a brush with a thick middle and thin edges and quickly touch the screen in a pattern that makes some cool lines like in the picture. Under the Step 1 title you can see what the brush looked like by itself.

Now SELECT them all with the BLACK ARROW(Area Selection Tool.) then go into the MENU bar at the top of the screen and select OBJECT>EXPAND APPEARANCE this converts the brush lines into solid objects that Superman can look through. While you are there in the OBJECT menu go ahead and GROUP the brush lines.

Step 2.) On a new LAYER above the speed lines you just made draw a MARQUEE like the one shown. What we will do here is chop off the top of the speed lines to place them inside a panel.

Step 3.) With the ol’ Black Arrow select the brush lines and the Marquee and go into the PATHFINDER menu and select SUBTRACT FRONT. This subtracts the shape of the Marquee we made from anything under it, hence the name SUBTRACT FRONT.

Now we have this really cool Speed Line look with a straight edge that we can place against the panels edge.

If you really want to add some sweetness to this effect you can grab the splatter looking default BRUSH and a WHITE STROKE and splatter some white over the tips of the lines. It really looks cool!

Here is a Close-Up of the SUBTRACT FRONT tool in the PATHFINDER PALLETTE. It’s the one with the handsome Red Circle surrounding it’s little picture.

This effect works really well in Illustrator 10 as well as Illustrator CS2.

THE QUICKIE ILLUSTRATOR TUTORIAL

Basics Comments Off

Jul 142005

THE TOOLBOX

The BLACK ARROW–it’s not the latest superhero villain from DC COMICS. No! The Black arrow is also known as the AREA SELECTION TOOL. If you drew that red star from the previous lesson you would use this tool to grab the whole star in one mighty click and move it wherever you want to. Or you can draw a big rectangle or square around the star and the Black Arrow will grab the entire thing.

The White Arrow-or as his friends call him behind his back, the DIRECT SELECTION TOOL. If you don’t want to move the entire red star from the earlier example but you want to torture the poor star and bend it to your evil will then this is the tool you use. This tool is good at grabbing individual points on the star and moving those specific ones. For instance you can select one corner and pull it into the star until it cries out in pain, “UNCLE!”, or you can stretch it in any direction you want. When you click on a side of the star you will notice the WHITE ARROW goes all doppleganger on your ass and becomes the BLACK ARROW. You can then move the whole star.

If you select one point with the white arrow and hold down the shift key you will be able to select multiple points. All of these white points will now be a solid point and will be able to move. All the other points you didn’t click will remain in position until you decide to play fair and move them all.

Some of the other tools, in left to right order, are the MAGIC WAND, the DIRECT SELECTION LASSO, (Good at wild keg parties), The PEN TOOL for drawing those crazy Bezier Curves. “Freedom Curves as we call them in the States. You’ll also see the TEXT TOOL, LINE, MARQUEE, BRUSH, PENCIL(YEA! Our favorite!).

Also we have the ROTATE, SCALE,WARP which is fun to play with but won’t call you back after a one-night stand, and MOVE which um…can move things. Not a great superpower but can always get books down off of high shelves.

SYMBOL which is the little Homie style Spray Can, which I haven’t found a good use for as yet, Graph which I would use if I had a “real job” I suppose.

MESH which is cool for tweaking the perspective of Superman’s “S” Diamond logo for instance. Gradiant which can do some cool effects especially over a mesh. EYE DROPPER is great for changing the color of items, but one of it’s best features is matching text. If you write text one way and do it again in another font and size, but then you decide you want all your text to match you just select the text you want to change and then place the eyedropper over the good text and faster than you can say “Shazam” without looking silly your text changes and it’s all the same. Great for comformists conventions. Next is the BLENDING OPTIONS tool.

The 4 colored tools in the middle are from the Plug-ins I mentioned earlier. They are not standard in Illustrator.

The last 4 tools are scary and tell a grim tale. KNIFE, SCISSORS, disembodied HAND, and LOLLIPOP of the damned. Some people think the last one is a MAGNIFYING GLASS but there is no way in Galactus’s Shorts you can get me to click the LOLLIPOP of the damned.

The 2 boxes o’color…..ah…we have finally arrived at our destination….The full square box is FILL and it’s used to obviously fill a shape with a color. The square donut looking one is our friend STROKE…ah, s t r o k e …mmmmmm it’s nice to think about…Stoke fills the outside of a shape with the selected color, but not the interior which is FILL’s job. Fill is union so there is no way that Stroke can do his job. Even though he works harder…alas.

Under that we have the 3 Micro button brothers. First we have COLOR, then gradient, then EMPTY. You can click on these for instant access to the selection of your choice.

The 3 buttons below that deal with screen stuff and it’s best not to talk about in polite company.

There we have covered the basics. If you have any questions about this stuff please ask below. Some of the tools have fly away boxes that give you more options. Just double Click the tools to reveal if you are a winner.

If we are all buckled in then we can move on to what you’ve all been waiting for, DRAWING NAKED CHICKS, but before that…let’s start with a simple shape or 2 to get you in the mood to use your pencil…um double entendre not intended. Bad spelling not intended either.

COMPOUND SHAPE-Ta-Da!

Basics, Cool Tools 3 Responses »

Jul 142005

Ta-Da!

It’s our new COMPOUND SHAPE! I placed a red star on a lower layer so you can see the magic of the Compound Shape.

Once you create the compound shape the previous 2 seperate layers named PAGE and PANELS now merge into one single layer.

You can rename this layer something dramatic, something silly, or you can keep your stuff well organized and just give it the plain jane monicker GUTTERS.

Place this sucker on the TOP LAYER and don’t move it!

Draw everything in the panels on the layers below it. You can sperate your art into seperate panel layers if the mood strikes you.

If you are into a goth book, or want your stuff to look like Ultimates you can fill your GUTTER with a BLACK FILL and BLACK STROKE. To do this just touch the Compound Shape with your Area Selection Tool, the black arrow at the left corner of your TOOLBOX. The set the Fill and Stroke to black.

I have this Compound Shape set to a WHITE FILL and a 1point STROKE.

What’s that? You don’t know what the heck I am talking about? You are new to Illustrator you say? Allrighty then, next lesson–the Quickie Illustrator tutorial

CREATING PANELS

Basics, Cool Tools, Pro Tips, Screenshots Comments Off

Jul 142005

Once you have your document open and you are ready to start drawing comics you’ll need to decide on a panel layout that best serves your page and story.

Create a layer called PAGE and another layer on top of that one called panels. The PAGE frame should be as big as your page. (Remember the red outline from the previous step?) The layer named PANELS should contain the shapes of the panels you’ll want for your story.

Once the PANELS layer is on top of the PAGE layer you’ll need to go up to the MENU bar and select OBJECT>COMPOUND PATH>MAKE to create a compound path.

A Compound Path is basically a stencil shape that will overlap the artwork. Where the holes exist in the stencil we will create our art on underlying layers.

Once the Compound Path is created we will color it with a WHITE FILL and BLACK STROKE or a BLACK FILL and BLACK STROKE.

Now that we have our page setup we are ready to start drawing our comic art. If at any point you want to change your COMPOUND PATH you can go back up into OBJECT>COMPOUND PATH>RELEASE and this will turn it back into the panel frames. They will keep the same colors so you’ll need to select them carefully to change.

Another way you can change your COMPOUND SHAPE is to use the DIRECT SELECTION (The White Arrow tool at the top Right of your TOOLBOX.) and select specific points (Corners) to move that into the shapes you need.

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