Category Archives: Sketch of the Day

This started out as a female Green Arrow like the female Flash, but somewhere close to the beginning it turned into just a generic ranger type female, then at the end it turned back into female Green Arrow. I think the resultant muddle pretty clearly reflects that lack of vision.

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Yeah. This color thing is hard. Black and white lineart after the jump.

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Why a female Flash? Because I said so, that's why!

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I have to say, this turned out to be one of my favorite illustrations I've done, except for her left arm which is bugging me beyond all measure. It's just kind of lumpy and shapeless. Other than that, though, I think it's pretty decent. One note, the use of a more vibrant yellow in the hair for the line color came from messing around with a HeroMachine character I was building to test out some stuff. I liked the effect and want to explore its use more as I continue trying to figure out this whole coloring thing.

This is using the "new" (well, new to me anyway) Photoshop coloring tricks from MelissaClifton.com. I'll put the black and white lineart after the jump for the curious.

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(Click to embiggen.)

Apparently I have a thing for the Rocketeer. Note I stole the background from the contest prize for Captain Thorn and the jet pack from Backplane-Standard. Sue me.

I also tried doing more "advanced" coloring right in Flash. The main problem I am running into on that front is getting the line color right, as Flash doesn't have a nifty "preserve transparency" option like Photoshop does. There's a way around it with Masking but it's crude and hard to work with. It's fun learning, though.

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(ETA: Headline changed, I unwittingly used a derogatory term originally. Oops. I blame Bullwinkle.)

The old D&D rules about the crazy possible consequences of drinking two active magic potions at once used to fascinate me. I don't know what is about to happen to this fellow, but it ought to be fun finding out. For us, if not so much for him.

I'm still trying to learn how to do color for comics-style panels using Photoshop. I found a couple of tutorials with good tips, so on this one I was trying to figure out flats (big blocks of single colors that serve as the base) and having line art on a separate layer with no white fill for coloring, and so forth. Some day I'd really like to learn how to do a full-on painterly style of image, without black lineart, but just color serving as the borders of the shapes.

You KNOW he's got sandwiches in that utility belt somewhere ...

After the discussion with Imp in the last thread, I wanted to try doing all the coloring in Flash. It can handle gradients, but for nicer shading you really need Photoshop.