STORYBOARD PRO: Calligraphy Brush

 I was looking at some rough storyboards by Alessandra Sorrentino and wanted to try and mimic a sort of brush that is similar to what she uses. I don't quite think I have it figured out :P But always good to think about finding new ways to shake up your process. Here was my effort at replicating it:

This is the level of detail in the first pass she showed, still very minimal line mileage but very expressive. I may try and match it in a test sequence.

As far as I can make it there is some slight transparency on the brush, so it needs to be a textured brush, so I edited one from a standard round brush.

and a couple of sketches of Bixie

Drawing cars : Plymouth Fury

I ...don't know how to draw cars! Who does right? :D See like a sucker I used to work from 1 or 2 images and try to work out what the car looks like from different angles....but now...we have SketchFab! I've mentioned it before, and I really love this easy access resource, I am sharing it again:

Since I have to draw a car in my stiory project, it comes in super handy to have a reference handy !

https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/plymouth-fury-1958-christine-draft-941b53251e0143eb811ce82ac6dfe581 

You can turn the model in the browser, so no need to download anything! How great is that! I would still always say to be careful when using reference, because you can easily get too realistic and use the gestural energy that should be in a board. Usually I draw a few angles "to study" the shape (like above). And then I'll draw it from memory.

Blender - Beginner Tutorial

 Since using 3D models when boarding is becoming more standard (especially when boarding on 3d series), it really pays to learn the tools. Since Blender is free, that's my go to option. And for anybody starting out, I would recommend this tutorial by Grant Abbitt:

(I am putting this on my blog so I can myself find it in case I need a refresher :P)

I work on my iMac, so it's essential to enable the Emulate Numpad and Emulate 3 Button Mouse

Then navigation on the Mac mouse:

Option + LEFT CLICK = Rotate

Option + SHIFT + LEFT CLICK: Move

Option + control + LEFT CLICK : Zoom in/out

I also had to enable a secondary (right) click option on my mouse, which you will need. I had to go into system settings on my Mac to enable that.

SHORTCUTS to move objects:

G = move object around

(while in G, press X for X-axis restricted movement, Y for Y-Axis and Z,... you get it).

option + G: reset movement of object

R= rotate

S=scale

X= delete object

N= side panel menu

Personally though, I prefer using the Gizmo, which you can activate in the sidebar menu:

SHIFT +S : Bring up pie menu which allows to reset the Cursor to origin.

Another set of preferences to change (from another source)

(NOTE: DON'T TURN ON Orbit around selection!)

TIME LINE NAVIGTAION (MAC)

option+ drag mouse = move timeline

option + control + drag mouse left/right = zoom in/out

0 while in timeline = reset!

FINDING THINGS IN OUTLINER WINDOW:

select object in scene, when in the outliner window, press "." (dot) and it will jump to it in the list!

GENERAL

CTRL + OPTION + SPACEBAR is make window FULL SCREEN!

CHALLENGE: Draw a comic page... TODAY!

So today I decided to challenge myself to draw comic page. No planning, or overthinking, just draw one and focus on getting it done as practice.

IDEA: So the idea I had was that when you wake up in the morning with lots to do, my impulse is to go for coffee and go into overdrive mode, but often the opposite is a better approach. Just wake up, have a pint of water and sit down for a 10 minute meditation session before you do anything else. 

Characters: I just picked 2 existing  characters I had drawn before for other ideas.

Location: Just set it in my home space -> No need for research / reference. 

STEP 1: THUMBNAILS

All I knew was that I wanted the final image to be the 2 characters meditating peacefully..

STEP 2: PENCILS.

Unfortunately I really didn't have a good grasp on the characters, I also weirdly broke the left to right reading order in the 3rd row. It really doesn't work. I did decide that the last panel should be an open frame, so no borders. Because the characters are meditating, and so they can breathe beyond the borders of a panel. 

STEP 3: PANEL BORDERS + TEXT.

I think I read somewhere that you do those first..

STEP 4: INKS!

With the loose pencils, I had to make things up as I went along, not a great decision but it means I could keep up the tempo.

STEP 5: ERASE and DONE!

And so I completed a page today! I have procrastinated for years over doing a comic page, so finally ripped the band aid off :P The page itself will probably end up in the bin, but it served a purpose! I proved to myself I can do a comic, and yes it will suck..but do it enough times and it will get better :)

I hope anybody out there who ever thinks of doing a comic, takes some inspiration from this. Get your first page today, don't think about what you're doing too much, just focus on finishing and look forward to another one :)

Learning how to INK! Breakdown

 So, I've been wanting to learn how to ink for a while and I figure the best way to learn a skill is by copying artists you love. So you don't need worry about what to draw, and you can just focus on trying to break down the "How". Obviously this involves a lot of sucking, but that's the fun part! 

1) These are my tools: A 2B pencil for sketching, a god quality nib pen, and a sharpie (I want to use a brush, but I'm not ready yet :P)

2) Start with the loose sketch and flesh it out. The quality of the drawing is not so important as it's just practice. In fact it probably feels less precious if it's a bad drawing :P

3) Then using the pen nib I draw the linear, leaving blacks and thick strokes to be done with the brush (in my case a Sharpie).

4) Finish it off with the sharpie and erase the pencil marks! Now my plan is to do this every morning for 50 days and hope I a better at the end of it :P

Just Make Your comic !

 So I stumbled on this video on YouTube where this artist outlines a structure / plan to create a full 6 page comic. He says that of course you need technique to do a comic, but you need experience just making comics, so that you know what technique you need to develop. So anybody who can hold a pencil, please, let's just make some comics this year! I will definitely follow this. 

Frame Study : Rough to clean

 A LITTLE HOW TO, OR HOW I DO MY STUDIES:

1. First I draw the perspective grid, then I draw the BG, THEN I drew my characters shapes/gestures in red:

2: Now I draw the characters over it:

3: Fill the characters with white to stand out clearly from the BG:

ANOTHER ONE:

1) Look at how clear these simple stick figures are. 

2) We could just have 40% opacity on the BG and the characters 100%, it's clear enough I think.

3) But I think a grey tone and white fill for the characters is even clearer?

TRANSITION SHOT : PAN & TRACK

 Looking at the Dragon Prince, and noticed this nice little shot, good for transitioning into a new scene / location.

We start looking up at the sun, then tilt down to get the boat in frame, and as it comes towards us we track along with it.

Here's a little schematic:

And the brushes I used in storyboard Pro for this quick result - clouds, sun & gradient for sky.

SHOTS: FOCUS IN / STORYBOARD PRO

 I'm reading this book: MASTER SHOTS. And trying to actively apply the shot ideas into practice. 

This one is on page 80, called FOCUS IN, which discussed an interesting idea that when we focus in on the character we should make sure that one eye stays in the same spot of the frame or it will look wrong. 

So I took this shot from my Stranger things study:

And first do a standard zoom in with the camera (which is wrong - we feel like we're drifting away from the character)

So instead, I created a guide of a point on the face I want to lock into :

We'll lock this layer (with the guide) to the camera, so it doesn't move when we zoom in:

(select the layer properties window in Storyboard pro), and select the little PIN symbol.

Now when you zoom in you can line up the guide with the point you have selected:

The result, we stay locked on the character: 

Camera Locking Storyboard Pro : Test #2

 So using this scene from Dragon Ball Super : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6a7RND2mRk as an excuse to test out the Camera Locking Function in Storyboard Pro. 

This time I did a right to left pan, followed by a rotation and a wip down with the camera. And the effect is pretty cool I think!

So step 1:
Just draw your entire scene, making sure you keep your character art on the same layer for ease.

And don't forget to pin your layer to the camera in the "Layers window"

Step 2:
Then add in your background. Make sure it's large enough so you can move your camera around.

Add in your camera keyframes, and your characters will remain locked. So cool!

STORYBOARD PRO: Locking characters to Camera

 This is a bit of a simplistic example, but for shots where the camera follows your characters, storyboard pro has a great feature that allows you to lock layers to the camera.  Meaning you can pan across a background while your characters stay locked in place. 

So first draw your background art, and your character art. Then you can lock your character art layer to the camera by going to the "layers window" (windows> layers if it is not visible). Select your layer (1) and click on the icon with a pin (2). 

Looking forward to experiment a bit more with this, to see how it can be used. 

Actually, here's a second example. I locked the black borders and the character art to the camera, with a pan on the BG (based on a shot from Dragon Ball Super):