Monday, February 17, 2014

Valentine's day - vector comic

For the first time I decided to actually make a comic rather than a stand-alone vector graphic. I figured it would be good practice for me. So I sketched up very loosely what I was going for:



As I was sketching I was also figuring out which parts are going to be reused and assessing how much work I would need to do in Illustrator. One thing was decided from the beginning - this wasn't going to be a point by point build. I decided best way of going about this would be to just sketch it up with a stylus and color with a blob brush for the most part - for small separate details I could always resort to point-by-point or shape-building methods.

I didn't finish sketching out the final frame but I just knew it would be an easy build based on previous content so I left it alone.

I started with the tree - traced the trunk, and used a blob brush to make the leaves. I put the darkest green behind the tree trunk, and the med. green and light green shapes in front. grouped it up and copy pasted it everywhere I needed it. Then made a couple ellipses and applied clipping masks. In retrospect I could've waited to build each frame and then apply the masks but this was more helpful visually and the area wasn't cluttered with unnecessary details.

Then I drew the girl, the bird, and the bear - all just traced and colored. Even though I had drawn the bird a couple times I just re-used the one from the first frame and added details were needed (like the tail and spread wings), or moved parts of it where necessary - like the beak and eyes. Same goes for the girl. The bear I had to draw 3 times as he appeared completely differently in every frame and there was  no way around it.

The rest was little details here and there that were quite easy to make anyway.

The layout is what took another 1-2 hours after the fact - since my sketch was too loose and I changed some stuff around the layout I had in mind just didn't work. I grouped everything by each frame to move it around without a hassle. And copied al those groups onto one new layer and turned all other layers hidden. Finally I got a composition that I was happy with and the work was done.


So this took me about 5.5 - 6 hours with one smoke break (without counting fixing the layout later). I was almost glued to the screen the whole time. The first frame probably took me the longest. Looking back I probably could've saved some time if I wasn't organizing my layers and sub-layers in such a meticulous way. But it's a habit that I've worked hard to acquire and which pays off in most cases - especially if you are to reuse pieces of your work later for something else - then instead of a giant tangled mess you have a clean neatly ordered set of layers.

Point-by-point build would've taken a lot longer for this because my sketch was so loose. If I had spent more time drawing on paper the point-by-point would've been the way to go probably :)

Sunday, February 2, 2014

Surface 2 Pro setup for drawing

This is my setup for drawing / vector graphics / etc.


Surface 2 Pro by itself is great - full blown OS, small and light yet as powerful as my Desktop PC. Stylus support is amazing so naturally I was very excited to draw on it rather than a Wacom tablet - Finally I get to look at where I'm drawing rather than my hand drawing somewhere on the side and my eyes being glued to the screen in front of me.

But for using Illustrator or Photoshop the screen is to small. What do to do? Get a docking station. And not just any docking station - Microsoft docking station specifically for Surface. you just slide the sides in - and immediately everything connected to the station is working - no hassle.

At first I just set it up on my desk normally - but the tilt wasn't enough for me so I came up with this idea of setting it flat on the table - just like my Wacom was. It turned out to be surprisingly sturdy and convenient to use.


And when I'm doing web-development or don't need to draw with a stylus in general I just set it up normally to my left. with Type cover attached - docking station doesn't get in the way so especially when I'm not mirroring the display it's actually kind of nice to have to keyboards :)



And when I need to leave I just slide the sides out ...


And I'm good to go!



My poor PC doesn't get any action any more. It just sits there sadly with a Scorpion tattoo on its side. And the only time it gets turned on is when I'm moving more files from its hard drive to my sky drive (it's a long process - I have a lot of photos :) and want to filter out the baddies before I put it on SkyDrive.) Oh yeah and with the purchase of Surface Pro you get 200 GB SkyDrive space for 2 years.

Ah, and for people extremely loyal to the Wacom tablets - be happy - you can install the Wacom drivers on your Surface. I personally haven't done that because I just don't feel like it's something I need to do. Surface Stylus support hasn't let me down - pressure, tilt everything is perfect (for me anyway).


This is not part of my normal set up but 'it' keeps flying onto my desk and pushing keys. He is very drawn to the clacking of mechanical keyboard keys, and anything shiny...

I've got one more thing to write about which arguably isn't very related to this post. On the other hand it was the last piece of the puzzle and essential gear for having a very convenient set of tools for drawing. A light tracing pad.




I looked at a couple options and this one seemed perfect for me - it's very thin and light, has a brightness setting and is LED. It was $80 on Amazon for 8' x 12' size (it's actually slightly bigger so is perfect for both A4 and Letter which is pretty much what I draw on). There were cheaper options - Autograph had a 40$ one but it was more like a box that seemed inconvenient to use over longer periods of time and used a white light bulb - don't know how evenly it would be lit up so I figured if I am to buy such a thing I'd rather get the one I want. Really you can just build it yourself - take a picture frame and put a lamp under it :)

This makes my life a lot easier - I make a rough sketch than trace it and make necessary adjustments then scan it in - which takes out the guesswork when rebuilding in vector (guesswork as in hmmm which one of these 10 lines in the sketch is the on I'm supposed to build).