DC Conspiracy[dots pattern]

1.11.2006

Useful Tutorials

My friend Tony Moore could now be called a successful comic book artist. He has two monthly comics these days, FEAR AGENT at Image and EXTERMINATORS through Vertigo. Anyway, he has attended art school and can do it all - pencil, ink, paint, whatever. I was talking to him and he passed on some websites that have incredibly helpful information. Figured it couldn't hurt to pass it on.

Understanding light and shadow

PhotoShop tricks

PhotoShop shortcuts

Adding "tv grain" lines to artwork (very cool effect)

Painting awesome planets

Creating cool stars in PhotoShop

Free textures

And then Tony set up some lineart for folks to practice coloring if they'd like.
***The above lineart is NOT for print or sale. It's to practice on only.***

Tony's advice on setting up your lineart for color:
Take your lineart and adjust the threshold to bitmap it to your desired level, or convert to bitmap and then back to greyscale. whatever works for you. Then convert your image to CMYK or RGB. i personally prefer the control of CMYK, despite it being more taxing on my system and that it blocks the availablity of certain filters.

how to set up for color holds:

go to your lineart layer and hit select>all then edit>copy
go to your channels window and click add new channel, and into that channel, paste the lineart you just copied. (for safety's sake i usually run image>adjustments>auto levels just to make sure the white is pure white and the black is pure black.) then make sure you're back on the CMYK view and not just looking at your new alpha channel. in fact, make sure your alpha channel is hidden.
go back to your layers window and over the lineart and shit, add a new layer and call it "color holds." and just have it set to normal mode

now, from here on out, you can go up to your new layer when you want to hold something and use the pencil or airbrush or whatever to just kinda paint some shit over the lines you want to hold, in whatever color you want to hold 'em. then to clean it up, just go back to your channels, hold down ctrl and click the new lineart channel. it should load it as a mask (actually and inverted mask, but i found it works best inverted). when the mask loads, just click edit>clear and boom, all the excess is trimmed away and only the colored parts over the lines remains. it reads like a lot of words, but it's actually just a few actions. once you do it a couple times, you'll get the hang of it. if you end up needing to do this shit a lot, i'll teach you how to automate your entire setup process using actions!

how to set up for trapping and backed blacks:

click the color box at the bottom of your tools to open the color picker.
in the color picker dialogue box you'll see a buncha number fields in the bottom right where you can enter the CMYK values for your paint color. pick C0 M0 Y0 K100 (all black, nothing else) and go to your lineart and pick the flood fill bucket from your tools. uncheck "contiguous" and "antialias" and "all layers". flood fill your black in the lineart layer with this new colorless black.

then create a new layer beneath the lineart, maybe call it "black backing" or something you can remember.
Then, re-click the color box to re-open the color picker. this time pick something to the tune of C75 M60 Y50 K0 (blue-grey with no back) and go back and fill your new layer beneath the lineart.
then, go to the channels window and ctrl+click the lineart channel again, but make sure your stay on the CMYK view. you just want to load the channel as a mask, not select the channel to edit it.
when the mask loads, go up to select>modify>expand>3pixels (at 600 dpi, only 2 if you're at 400) and hit edit>clear. Boom! you're done. That should trim away everything that isn't lineart, and then eat a little inside the lines to back up the heavy shit and allow for a slight plate shift in the printing.

keep this layer set to "normal" and always keep it right under the lineart which should be set to "multiply." For safety's sake, once these layers are set up, i always lock them (click the little lock above the layers in the layers window) so that i don't accidentally screw them up while i'm working on other stuff.

I've actually boiled the process down into a very formulaic setup and recorded it as an Action, so i can just hit Play and go make some KoolAid and come back to a file that's ready to roll.

Chris at 9:29 AM  |  link to this     

4 Comments

The light tutorial is outstanding.

JJ Kahrs at 1/11/2006 11:23 AM   

This is killer, Chris! i feel like Frank Miller when Dark Horse told him the secrets of the printing world....

Dembicki at 1/11/2006 11:58 AM   

Glad it's useful to some folks. I agree that the lighting tutorial is the best of the links.

Chris at 1/11/2006 4:58 PM   

wow that starfield generator is really impressive. I'ma hafta give that a try.

Jacob at 1/16/2006 11:33 AM   

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