A long, long time ago, in another life it seems, I was an art major. Now that I am in web development, I rarely get the chance to pick up a pencil and draw. Sometimes, I get to incorporate some cartooning into a design. Those who have seen timches.com over the years have probably noticed the evolution of the caricatures of my family in the header of the site.
I have always admired web comic artists like Scott Kurtz of PVP online, Mike Krahulik of Penny Arcade, and Scott Johnson of Extralife. Lately I have been reading up on the techniques that comic artists use nowadays for producing their strips, and have been itching to give it a try. I am pretty pleased with what I came up with:
Now for some of the process. It all starts with a sketch, of course, and sketching the drawing is probably the easiest part for me.
Tracing the image in Illustrator takes a bit of finesse, especially without the luxury of a tablet. This tutorial on Vectortuts.com introduced me to the notion of creating my own custom brushes, to get the “hand-drawn” feel, rather than the computer-perfect line-weights you’ll see in the timches.com caricatures.
Coloring really brings the art to life.
Drop in a nice background–my favorite color blue–and done!
What a cool-looking guy…
Using iOS 2.2.1
Awesome! I shouldn’t admit it, but I’ve always admired your sketching ability.
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.8 on Mac OS X 10
So awesome. I do see the Scott Johnson influence in the art, but that’s definitely a good thing. You should do a comic strip like once a month to have an artistic outlet. That way you don’t go insane, AND we get to see cool Kuya art.
Using Opera 8.01 on Windows XP
Deep thought! Thanks for cnortiutbing.
Using Mozilla Firefox 3.0.10 on Windows XP
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