Friday, October 19, 2012

Domination Catalyst (Special Features)

Hello again and welcome to another Special Features, first off here's the entire page of the initial sketches I did for this week's cartoon "Domination Catalyst":
I did have some initial problems naming this cartoon as you can see, the first title was "Not So Cute Now Are They?". I did like that title, but I always try and avoid long names where possible, it just complicates things. You can see down the bottom where I've done a few quick cat sketches and decided to keep them simple and basic, which honestly helped a lot as I had to draw so many damn cats in the end. I also had the main villain cat in the background more animated with his arm up and doing a big laugh, but in the end I liked the more creepier, calmer type villain. So once I got the basic layout sorted I moved onto the pencil drawing:
I've been really disappointed with my lettering of late as I've been going for a more casual, cartoony style. But it's been all over the place so this week I went back to using my old tried and true method of ruling lines, but still handwriting the text to help with consistency. Still tossing up whether to just go back to doing it in Illustrator like I used to. Then we move on to the final inked version:
I go through phases with how I do my shading on cartoons, at the moment I'm purely doing it all in Photoshop, by using darker colours as shadows. Other times I use hatching and linework during the inking phase. For some reason I always jump back and forth for periods, so expect the linework to come back again at some point. Over the years I've experimented with lots and lots of different paper to use when inking my cartoons. I know a lot of pros use drawing board, but it tends to be expensive so I've always searched for more cost effective paper. The main issue I always have is bleed, I hate it when my lines bleed and cheap paper bleeds like a bitch. I've tried Bleedproof paper, tracing paper, you name it. The best paper I found for me? Glossy Laser Jet printer paper is awesome, not too expensive and doesn't bleed at all. For years I used to use Matte Printer paper, but it had a kind of coating on it that used to mess up all my felt-tip pens. Plus matte paper isn't very popular anymore and it's hard to find, but it made me find something better anyway. The only real issue I have with it is, that, especially with felt-tip pens, the back isn't very dark or 'black'. But once I scan it into Photoshop I just crank the contrast and fiddle with the brightness and it's all good. Try it, I'm a big fan of the paper and it's probably something most wouldn't think to use honestly.

Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes look and found it interesting and informative, see you all again on Monday!

Mike



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