Characters: The Infiniteens

[Zukum]

I cannot believe that no one else has responded to your posting, eliseu. What a tremendous labour of love you have completed. Congratulations and all my best on further success.

Any for those interested:
http://www.committedcomics.com/comics/infiniteens.htm

Good job and good luck!

[Navel]

Congratulations! Wish you much success.

[eliseu gouveia]

Thank you, Zukum.

Thank you, Navel.

I´m really glad you´ve liked it (and thanks for the linking :) ), creating this series sure was one hell of a ride.

[keight]

This looks wonderful! Welcome back to the "world away from the studio", and enjoy the sunshine while you may. Best wishes towards getting this published.

[eliseu gouveia]

Thanks, Keight. :)

Someone asked me how I did this, so I´ve cooked up a lil´tut on my M.O. (woo-hoo me :) in case anyone wanna take a looksee; of course, since I´m not exactly the ultimate authority in all things digital colouring, I´m always opened to new methods, tips and tricks. .)

Introducing the Infiniteens cover according to Eliseu "Zeu" Gouveia
1. Lineart- I scan an inked page into my computer, clean it up and fix mistakes here and there with my trusty Photoshop 5.5.Since the Infiniteens was such a daunting task(198 pages, whew!), I had to make compromises in order to preserve my sanit....er, stamina and one of them was the inking. No cross-hatching, no shading, just clean lines a la Tintin. Actually, many pages of The Infiniteens weren´t inked on paper, but I rather scanned the rough pencilled breakdowns and then digitally inked them in Photoshop using the pencil tool and my Wacom tablet Volito.
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0681069201/i1.jpg

2. Flats- At my top speed I was flattening and "letering" 4 pages a day. As the name says, flattening is basically selecting key areas in the page and applying a flat colour on it; skin is salmon, Luther´s glasses are green, Nadia´s hair is dark grey, etc, etc. It´s a very simple process.
(Note that Luther is bald here; you can thank Lazy Me for that, he figured that since the forcefield would cover most of his head, why bother?
On a last note, flats are usually dark so artists can work from dark to light, much like an oil painting but I chose to leave all my flats brighter; no reason, It´s Just Another ´Me´ Thing.
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0681069201/i2.jpg

3. Colouring- This is the fun (and hard) part; after selecting the key areas I want to colour with the magic wand ( I usually paste this selection on a new layer set to preserve transparency and work on that one) I use Photoshop 5.5´s regular airbrush tool set to 40%-60% hardness to start shading the different areas. (the overwhelming majority of digital artists seems to prefer the paintbrush tool, but what can I say, [Rex Harrison]I grew attached to this one[/Rex Harrison]).
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0681069201/i3.jpg

. SFX- A new layer (sometimes 3 or 4 at the same time) is created to handle the SFX like Twinblast´s sparks, Dreadnought´s forcefield, pupils´highlights and other such things like dust, etc, etc.
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0681069201/i4.jpg

5- Round´em up, boyz- Throughout the work, the layers are continuously hidden and revealed, according to how messy the result is: I sometimes prefer to hide all layers but the lineart layer and the one I´m working at, but you´ve guessed it, I.J.A.M.T.
http://pwp.netcabo.pt/0681069201/i5.jpg

6. Check it out- Checking for mistakes is done thousandfold throughout the process,
but nothing beats that last shock when it´s finished and the mistakes pop up all of a sudden
like these colossal, monstruous zits. You pray that nobody will notice them and then it´s time for......
7. Shave the Paige?- If you haven´t saved your work at least 324 times during the coloring, then you deserve to have your computer hit by a power surge.
J/K
Nevertheless, that last "It LIVES!!" save always feels like a national Event, doesn´t it?
I save it as a PSD document to preserve the layers information since you wouldn´t believe how easier it makes further down the road when time comes to correct things (and there are ALWAYS things to be corrected). Now of course 198 PSD files take a LOAD of space in your hardrive 817Gb), so make sure that your silicon servant can tackle these demands. And backups, loads and loads of burnt CDs and DVDs stashed here, there and everywhere, just in case.
Hope you´ve like it, whaddya know, my very first internet Tut.
This calls for a cigarette. ;)

[kaffo]

true marvel-comics-style, looks cool.. the lightning-fx really added some depth

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