Paint Brushes in Photoshop/Illustrator

A really important setting when your drawing freehand in photoshop/illustrator is the type of brush your using with the brush tool. It really makes a difference. so i am on a mish to find wicked brush presets on the net. I found one called ‘stumpy pencil’ and it is totally wicked. Ill try to keep a list of all the web addresses that have given me good brush presets.

For a look like this….

go to this….

http://stumpypencil.blogspot.com/2006/03/stumpy-pencil-photoshop-brush.html

this one has some goodies…

http://photoshop.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=34412

COPY PASTE INTO THE PROGRAMME’S (adobe or illustratr) FOLDER CALLED TOOLS. in photoshop this is found in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS3\Presets\Tools. you’d think you paste them into the folder ‘brushes’ but you dont…well for me it doesnt work in that folder…

The Process of Constructing the final images…

There are many different ways to create the final images in a comic, each one changes the over all style and aesthetic of the art. I am focussing on a really clean bold look for my comic art. From research and advice I have chosen to use Adobe Illustrator to create my comic. I am not sure on how to use it… I  need to learn how it works first. But also learn about the process from the sketch to the final image. I have found a great site that has a start to finish tutorial of making a comic image using Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator. Hopefully in this post i can get a bunch of tutorials I can refer to when I get stuck making my images….

http://danidraws.com/2007/08/07/the-complete-digital-comic-part-1-sketching-and-pencilling-in-photoshop/

these images are a  more traditional style. I would be looking for something that looks a tad different, but i could get want i want from this process…

Also a slightly different technique that involves scanning in sketches…

www.maxriffner.com/parlor/how-i-create-comics-in-illustrator

Different ways of Presenting a Comic…

I was looking at a talk by a comic artist named Scott McCloud. He explains to the audience his understanding of comic books. McCloud created the new medium: web comics which he calls “infinate canvas” . It is made possible by web browsers. It is a very different waying of showing a comic, one that is very effective. McClooud is an avid user of the medium: My Obsession With Chess was widely popular online, as was The Right Number. This new way of showing comics (also known as hypercomics) is something i should look into..

Here is a great site by Daniel Merlin Goodbrey who has a range of awsome Webcomics and Hypercomics. (The Link is for his page on Hypercomics…)

http://www.e-merl.com/hypercomics

Freeman Dyson and Kwabena Boahen

I looked at some videos of a physicist called Freeman Dyson, in his 60 plus years in the game he has become a renowned and best selling author. His most recent book, A Many-Coloured Glass , tackles nothing less than biotechnology, religion and the role of life in the universe. He revealed some really interesting ideas to me; The Theory that we could design animals to live on other planets in the outer solar system where it is obviously too cold for any animal to live.

The story could introduce this idea. Maybe Mars can only be inhabited by the genetically engineered, maybe they were first used to terraform the planet to make it possible for life on mars. The conflict could come that the creation of the genetically engineered didn’t stop..they were just imported to mars as slaves for creating structures and so on. but then, why not robots?.. If Technology is at a point that there is a computer with a smarter brain than humans why not make robots do most of the humans work. Maybe there is a law…but then its already illegal to have G.E humans (according to my story).

There is a talk by  Kwabena Boahen that discusses the issue of creating computers with the capacity of a human brain..

Kwabena Boahen on a computer that works like the brain

Investigation into life in the Future

For me to further my comic’s storyline i really have to create a complete world in the time zone i am looking at.  Im going to try to update this blog all the time with information that helps me understand ideas that are socially, politically and philosophically connected to my world which is set in the future year 2522.

Here are two great videos from tech enthusiest Kevin Kelly who talks about his ideas of  technology.

his talk about the evolution of the internet sparkd new ideas for my story. It got me looking at the internet the way he sees it being. Really powerful and our lives will completely be dependant on it. Everything we use and own will somehow be linked to the net. I began thinking.. yes security would be an obvious thing the internet would control but why couldn’t it also control the Laws of government. It could be a court judge, making logical judgements with outcomes more precise and acceptable than any human would make. And if thinking all of that, why couldn’t it be the government? Everything is connected to the internet so it would know everything!

The reason people wouldn’t eccept it would be because its too perfect. No one could take advantage of the system so there could be no corruption. If this was the case, a sci fi tail with a utopian government would be boring! So there has to be a breakdown somewhere to make conflict. But i am not for the idea of humans against machines because…if the human race didn’t have control, it would throw out all of my ideas, and i want to use this sci fi to investigate how humans would live with technology. Not how technology would live with humans (but that could be debatable in my comic). It would have the twist that Humans still controll the internet ( the rich corrupted businesses) and could still use the earth as a monopoly.

A time line of the internet system of government’s history would be something like this:

Internet government called ‘the system’ made.

followed by a lot of conflict and all of that jazz by people scared of control by machine.

then comes faith in the system for its success.

Then businesses would gain control of the ‘system’ and subtly use it for their own gain. This would soon become apparent to society but it would be totally hopeless to reject the ‘system’.

centuries would pass and it would still be the same. the utopia of the computer ruled world would be long gone and forgotten about in the eyes of society in my comic’s story.

Here is another talk by Kevin Kelly on the evolution of technology

Development of the Storyline

Storyline is’nt very important for my presentation as i am only showing an opening scene (where the viewer would have no idea what is happening until later on in the story)

But in a very brief and unformal way ill jot down some of my ideas (that probably arn’t very original).

Rough Outline of Story ( Ideas on paper basically)

OK so it is set far into the future. so far that everything from the 21st century are either in books or in museums (year 2511). obviously Technology is amazing and the way people live their lives through technology is a major influence in designing this world. It will be based on a character who is forced to hide his identity because his parents were both genetically engineered.His parents were created for the military along with millions of others (for a cold war or something) and were labeled Advanced Human Defence Soldiers and owned by powerful companies and hired in bulk to what ever country paid the most(US was the only conutry to hire them). They were made faster, stronger and smarter than a normal human being. Society didn’t like this, they were threatened by them. A law was signed almost straight after their creation that stated no G.E humans were aloud reproduce and if they did they would be killed along with the child. This law was’nt enough to satisfy most people and 12 years after the birth of the A.H.D.S they were ‘dismantled’. Of course this started an uprising from the G.E humans and they managed to take over military bases and held countries at gun point warning that if the law wasnt dropped they would Fire off nukes. But they got dominated, the military’s computers were hacked into and disabled any chance of a nuke firing. Robot Soldiers then went in to take down the resistance. They were only successful when they overwhemed the A.H.D.S with numbers.

governements don’t exist anymore ( well they do, just a tad different( even more corrupt) and they’re known as ‘systems’

It was almost impossible for the A.H.D.S’s to go into exhile because they were constantly being tracked by the mechanism that was born inside them. But it wasn’t impossible offspring of the g.e humans.  (this comic is set when there are still organisation of the systems hunting them down.)

security: it is law to wear a ‘secure’ bracelet on your arm. these work basically like barcodes. you are constantly being scanned when wearing one. every door will scan you as you walk in checking to see if you are a threat or not. this obviously would lower crime and all that jazz. but crimes are still at large. crims ( well anyone not wanting to be caught) can update their secure bracelets with fake i.d codes but they usually need to get them updated regularly because system departments use updaters to track the fakes (obviously im etting the idea from computers, something that i will always do when looking at this sci fi) . Since the G.E offspring wern’t registered when born they have to deal with this ‘secure’ issue all their life.

‘gangs make money out of selling fake secure id codes, it is an easy business for the  debt collecters because the clients can’t afford to not pay because they wont get their next id code which would result in ‘dismantlement’ by the system.

i could go on. i really could, i will metion one more concept.  Humans terraforming mars(making it livable for humans) but it is just recently colonised so there is millions of people a day immigrating to mars(because earth is an dirty unkept overpopulated planet). this brings in the idea of smuggling. but i also have an idea that it is a compalsery on-way-trip so if you go you and your family will never see earth again. (except for wat is shown on the meida.) this would mean the system would have complete control of communication and information between the two planets. this idea creates a lot of different scenarios that you could apply into this sci fi story. eg. a massive cover up; earthlings not knowing that there is a massive war going on on mars. all they hear is “mars is a paridice, come join us!” and when they get off the ship on mars BAM!! they are chucked into slavory or something (i dunno…)

ok enough talking shit…

Research for Story

my Project Drawing research last year helped me a lot. But apart from that i feel too hesitant to research any sci fi stories because they all just seem to be different verisons of mine. If i ever want to develop this firther im going to have to do some research that involves learning about sociology and systems of government. technology seems to come when you think logically. But yes with the story and with the more detailed stories (an episode) i will have to intensly look at comics for examples.

The story board of my comic:

This storyboard is about an insignificant character refered to as ‘Mr. Crow’,  this scene is basically showing the viewer that this comic is full of excitement! leaving them wanting the answer to why was mr. crow killed..

after creating my first page i realised how hard it was to compose the images into an interesting and effective page. I learnt pretty quick that it is really important to make a layout plan of the page before making the images.

these two are just the storyboards above dislpayed in a final page layout(minus like the last ten comic strips).