Comic Book Innovation

Comicmag.net No More

2007-03-13T14:59:00.000+01:00

I decided to let go of comicmag.net and that's why this blog looks like crap now. I've got all the files on back-up at home so I'll work it out somehow.

Light Table Delivery

2007-02-14T13:27:00.000+01:00

I've just gotten the delivery of the light table that I ordered. I previously had my eyes set on a huge light table but settled on a smaller one. It would be great to have a large drawing area but I just won't fit that kind of gear in our apartment.

Further Down the Index

2007-02-08T18:37:00.000+01:00

OK, I've started the construction of my comic book index and after indexing 10 comic books and already working with a set of 16 binary genes I've come to the conclusion that my method is somewhat flawed. You need to limit the selection of genes and not just pick new ones by comparing comic books two and two.

I'm thinking of dividing the gene-pool into three tiers. The first tier should be enough to identify similar comic books. This tier will focus on idea, form and idiom. The second tier should be used to separate similar comic books. This tier will focus on structure and the craft of making comics. The last and (perhaps) the least important tier will focus on the surface of a comic book and this should be used in some other way that I haven't figured out yet. Anyone that is McCloud-savy would recognize that I'm using Scott's six steps of comic book creation.

If we divide the gene-pool like this you could look at each comic book from three different perspectives: that of the comic book creator, that of the comic book fan and finally that of the uninitiated.

Indexing by Likeness & Difference

2007-02-03T17:53:00.000+01:00

Naturally, just a couple of minutes after posting an early draft of an indexing sheet, I come up with an even better approach. Instead of trying to create a complete genome for comics let's instead create a comic book index by comparing books individually and let the genome grow when an extra "gene" is needed.

Starting with any two random comic books we'll write down one thing that is similar and one distinct difference in these two books. We then pick another comic book and make sure that we find at least one likeness and some distinction towards the other two books respectively.

We keep doing this with an ever growing genome. Every so often we will have to go back to previously indexed books to consider newly found genes. As long as every comic book is uniquely indexed we don't have to add new genes, only when two books have the exact same index we'll look for new distinctions.

This approach has one major advantage in that we only consider properties that are actually used so the genome will grow organically. I'll try this out for a couple of hundred books and see where we land.

Intense Indexing

2007-02-03T17:37:00.000+01:00

I had to write this down or I'd forget about it. Here's a list of questions that could be used to categorize a comic book. The idea is that you check all the boxes that fit, yes or no. I get the feeling that any type of ranking system will fail miserably because it would have to rely on evaluation. My guess is that there will be between 200-400 questions that you will have to answer for every comic book before I'm finished.

Hiatus

2007-01-14T21:24:00.000+01:00

Comic Book Innovation is temporary closed for an unknown amount of days/weeks/months. I have too much on my plate to think about how comics are made and how the process could be made easier. I hope to be able to post interesting stuff again sometime but for now it's just as well I stay away from here.

Mannerisms

2006-12-30T11:02:00.000+01:00

It's pretty hard to understand the creative process sometimes and even more so if you don't get the results that you want to get.

Why did I draw better before?

I've got a bunch of mannerisms that I feel sometimes works to my favour and sometimes work against me. They work to my favour in the sense of giving me a distinct style. It's subtle but there is enough in there for most of my friends to recognize something I've drawn. On the other hand it holds me back in the sense that everything I draw gravitates toward the same iconic drawings.

This also means that when I look through my old sketches I see a lot in there that I think is much better than what I'm drawing now. Perhaps I spent more time drawing then but I also get a feeling I drew with a less conscious mind back then. How do I get around this?

How do I control this?

I see only one way out of this and that is to get even more conscious of what I'm doing to a level where I can choose or not choose to follow my own mannerisms or the mannerisms of others for that matter.

Currently I'm trying to think of in what order different mannerisms are or should be applied. I get a feeling that the order of how you do things is really significant. I for instance often draw the nose in the face first and then add the eyes and mouth, then the ears and the hair and then the chin and finally the rest of the body. This creates a result that would be pretty OK for a comic strip. The artwork is nothing but design, there were no artistic decisions made and the final piece will reflect that. It doesn't have to look stiff but a lot of the time it will.

If mannerism is design keep it out of your layout

I think I know what I'm trying to tell myself. Mannerisms are copying something that you or someone else have drawn, relying on artistic decisions made before. If this is going to work the way I want it to the mannerisms have to be purely aesthetic and should not dictate the construction and layout of a frame, the pose of a character or anything like that. I'll at lest keep this in mind.

Sketch till it hurts, design till it works

2006-12-29T22:25:00.000+01:00

I came up with an exercise today and noticed something interesting.

The exercise is simply looking up images on flickr and trying to copy them on paper. What's interesting is that I've noticed that when I draw with a reference I add a lot of detail in the beginning while sketching but then at some point I stop sketching and start to make design choices reducing the level of detail leaving me with a cartoony representation of what I was drawing. I've always assumed I was adding detail the more I drew and not the other way around. (I'm not sure the image posted here really reflects that but it is still the case)

The reason I find this significant is that I often think too much about what the finished result is going to look like and draw too stiff. It freaks me out thinking about it now because I should know about this since it's so obvious. It's even the first lesson in every book I've read on drawing but I keep forgetting it. It totally freaks me out.

In programing there is a saying that goes "Normalize until it hurts, de-normalize until it works". For me to remember how I want to be drawing from now on I'll "invent" the following saying: "Sketch till it hurts, design till it works". What this means is that I will try and draw loose sketches that I can then apply style rules to. I currently don't have that many style rules but I'm trying to translate my mannerisms into rules so that I truly can understand them and use them or discard them.

Comic Language as Writing Tool

2006-12-12T17:39:00.000+01:00

Neil Cohn talks about images in sequence as an actual language and what better language to use for describing a language than the language itself. You can also look at a comic book as a mapping of events in a story or as a map over a possible reality. This is how I mostly see comic books. I am a visual thinker so it's more natural to look at comic books from the perspective of beeing a map. If we combine these two similar ways of looking at comic books can we then use comic book language to create a map of an actual comic book?

Can we create a simplified dialect of the comic book language

that can be used to describe a comic book?

The artist might work from a simple thumbnail to a sketch before the final artwork is finished. Can we create a visual language that the writer can use before the final script is realised? What we need is something like thumbnailing but without focusing on the look/layout of a page but instead holds the story and whats happening in center stage.

I'm quite sure this language could also be used when indexing a comic book in relation to other comic books. If the language is clever enough you could be able to deduct patterns that could be compared to other published works.

Serius Seriebokhandel

2006-12-12T12:39:00.000+01:00

It's been a while since the last post. The reason for this is that I've spent the last couple of weekends working on an online comic book store for the Swedish market. We won't open until early next year and I myself won't be involved too much in the actual business part of the store. The plan is to have it pretty much run by itself.

Anyhow, this gives me an excellent opportunity to get on with the comic book indexing service I've been day dreaming about. The best way to utilize such a feature would no doubt be in a comic book store.

Researching the Art of Writing

2006-12-02T15:53:00.000+01:00

I've just picked up First Draft in 30 days by Karen Wiesner, "a novel writer's system for building a complete and cohesive manuscript". This weekends comic book related exercises will be plowing through the 200 pages or so. After checking out 5-6 shelves of books about writing, literature analysis, stage drama and writing for movies this book seems the most no nonsense to me. Reviews of this book are harsh and most writers would probably frown upon her methods but to he honest I don't give a damn. From what I've read so far it looks good and could at least help you get a little bit more organized when it comes to writing your stories.

Xerox Innovation Useful to Inkers?

2006-12-01T12:23:00.000+01:00

Is this the inking paper of the future? You print the bluelines on this special paper and then you have less than 16-24 hours to ink the page before the bluelines have faded.

And there's more to this innovation when you start to think about it. If you're not adding ink to the paper but are actually making the paper itself change color you can print new bluelines over a page at any time, even after you've started to ink the page. And who says you'll need a Xerox printer to do this, I'm quite sure there will be a pen that can be used on this paper. All you need is a light source of a certain wave-length.

source

Sick as a Frog, Hog, Dog?

2006-11-29T11:34:00.000+01:00

I'm not sure it it's good practice to write excuses in your blog to why no entries are coming but I've been terrible sick for the last four days and I'm still not well.

Brain Reset

2006-11-25T11:49:00.000+01:00

I'm back from vacation. During which I read Maus (the collection) which made me not work at all on my own comic script. I guess there is only enough space in my brain for one great comic book. Instead I wrote several pages of notes for my retro platform game. To be fair I was on vacation.

One Week in Morocco

2006-11-13T20:25:00.000+01:00

Me and my girlfriend will leave for a week of vacation in Morocco on Thursday and I have other chores to do so this blog will be on hold for a week and a half. I'll bring my handheld with me so I might write on my script and I hope to spit out a couple of character designs and/or thumbnails.

Property Windows

2006-11-09T23:23:00.000+01:00

Yesterdays exercise made me create these property windows (you have to close the window using the X-icon in the title bar to see the next one). The dropdowns should all work so you can see an example of what they could contain. Naturally these are combo boxes so if you don't find what you want in the dropdown you can type something from the top of your head.

From Abstraction to Precision

2006-11-09T08:31:00.000+01:00

I'm trying to be less abstract and really untangle the devices I'm working with. Please if you disagree with me let me know. This should be simple but for some reason it doesn't come easy for me. One good thing that has come out of this exercise is that I'm dropping the Act metaphor in favor of the Chapter metaphor that is already de facto in comic books.

Story
A story is what we're telling the reader. A story can have a plot or it might seemingly lack a plot. While the story takes a whole comic book to tell the main plot of the story can be summarized in one or two sentences. The story can also be explained in a synopsis that omits the plot as to not create any spoilers. The synopsis is selling the story.

In short: Story > Synopsis > Plot.

Scene
A comic book scene is an event spanning one or more panels with a common purpose. A comic book scene differs from a scene in a play or a movie in terms of detail but not necessarily in length. The pattern of a comic book scene also differ from a play or a movie. A comic book has to be more to the point and efficient. The scenes are telling the story.

The purpose of a scene is tightly connected to which part of the story the scene belongs to. The scenes sets the pace of a comic book. With shorter scenes we get a faster pace. Compare this to how the size of a comic panel can effect timing and the perceived passing of time.

Following this definition a comic strip is, as far as I can see, exactly one scene long.

In short: Scene = Description of event, Purpose of event.

Chapter
A comic book chapter is a number of scenes that are bundled together much like the acts of a play. I would not compare a comic book chapter to a chapter in a written book. The chapters are the carriers of the dramatic structure of the story. While the scenes tell the story each chapter represents different aspects of the story. The chapters are pacing the story.

In short: Chapter = Aspect of the story.

Plot
A comic book plot directs the string of events that is told by the story. A plot is generally a conflict that has a beginning, a number of twists and an ending. I see the plot as being vertical to the story creating the fabric of the story. With several plots we get a thicker fabric but if the subplots do not indirectly effect the main plot they work against it. The plot is explaining the story and thus must make sense. If the plot is too thin or too obvious the story gets uninteresting.

In short: Plot = String of plot elements.

Plot element
Comic book plot elements are the building blocks that create a plot. While scenes must have a purpose that tells the story a plot element pushes the plot behind the story forwards. I also want to include plot devices like foreshadowing and hooks in this term. The plot elements should be woven into the story.

In short: Characteristics of the plot, plot devices.

Breaking the Color Code

2006-11-05T17:50:00.000+01:00

I'm slowly understanding how I need to handle colors. Here is a RGB conversion of all the CMYK colors I'm interested in. These are 25% increments of every color.

You can also see what happends if your black k-channel isn't backed up by the other color channels. You get a muddy black that doesn't print as nicely as it should.

Bone Armature

2006-11-05T14:40:00.000+01:00

Here is a male bone structure armature puppet dummy thingy. This one is based on the action cartooning teachings of Ben Caldwell but with my own twist. I've got a 3D armature renderer that I will put this guy into and then I'll create a poser program.

If you're really interested in 3D posing there are several open source projects that render humans with muscles and that junk that I don't care about at this moment.

Process Breakdown

2006-11-03T22:34:00.000+01:00

This diagram shows one way that you could create a comic book. The studio will not dictate that you work this way and even though the process in drawn like a waterfall there shouldn't be anything stopping you from jumping back and forth reorganizing stuff.

One way to implementing this process is to use a big paper and write an opening premise in the middle of the paper. Other ideas and events are then added to the paper. When you think you have enough these are sorted, grouped and weighted. From this paper you should be able to start working on thumbnails.

This is the process I will use for my comic book. Instead of using a big paper I will use different programs and tools that can be incorporated into the comic book studio.

Print and Scan Approach

2006-11-02T16:51:00.000+01:00

David Seah have created a lot of nice looking printable forms that are great for keeping track of your own progress and for planning your workday. I have been using a couple of different time report and project management systems and for some odd reason I always end up making notes on sheets of paper that I then have to transfer by hand at the end of the week. David Seah has not only realized this, he's embracing it.

Having to transfer the notes on paper to a project management system is the only drawback to having printable forms. And what to do about this if not to use your scanner and some clever Optical Character Recognition to make a check in a box turn into a value in a column of our database.

This idea is so good (I can claim this since it's not truly my own idea) that I see no reason why this shouldn't be applied to every step of the comic book creation pipeline. I touched on this subject when I did the brainstorming session way back but I never saw the full potential of using a "Print and Scan" approach.

Consider the penciller printing out blueline guidelines complete with panel borders and perspective grids. This has been done before but if we add codes to the page that automatically files the scan in the right place we make scanning a whole lot less time consuming.

Now consider the letterer first creating a mock-up design digitally and then printing a coded lettering documents that has the lettering areas individually organized complete with any guidelines you need (be that actual bluelines or text) . When the lettering is completed these lettering documents are scanned and every individual balloon and caption is transferred to the comic book project where the finishing touches can be applied.

The writer prints out a bunch of script forms that he can carry with his everywhere he goes. These include forms for "registering" plot ideas, scene structure, dialogue well everything that is not an actual script but that can be used to model a script. The writer checks the right boxes and codes the document for scanning so that when all script documents are scanned there is a nice collection of information that can then be reviewed and transformed into the final script.

There are hundreds of other scenarios that could use this approach. And if you dislike scanning altogether perhaps the Anoto pen is an answer for you.

Visitor Survey

2006-11-01T13:22:00.000+01:00

Colors are Driving Me Nuts

2006-10-28T13:49:00.000+02:00

I'm about to explode form working with colors. I can't figure out how the heck they work. I know the theory behind RGB and CMYK but it's a whole different ball park to select colors. It's totally impossible to get balanced colors since the different primary colors have different wave lengths. If it looks good it's ok but I would be a lot more happy with a 10 second decision that looks fine than a 2 hour decision that looks super.

Colors schemas are like musical cords.

Now I have to figure out what the instrument looks like.

Analyzing Scenes

2006-10-27T23:01:00.000+02:00

I've had a hard time lately working on my script. Mostly because I don't know where to start. For this reason I've been thinking about scenes, mostly while not being able to go to sleep.

I've been looking at a couple of different comic books to see if I could pick something up. Kind of like this...

Amazing Fantasy #15
Page 1
Splash scene, introduction, 1 panel

Page 2
Family, introduction, 2 panels
School, conflict, 6 panels

Pages 3 -4
Infection, enticing moment, 5 panels
Wall crawling, revelation, 8 panels

Pages 4-5
Wrestling, challenge, 10 panels

Page 6
Costume, development, 7 panels

Page 7
TV scene, development, 5 panels

Page 8
Burglar escape, setup, 5 panels
Family, development, 5 panels

Page 9
Fame, development, 5 panels

Pages 9-11
Ben killed , crisis, 4 panels
Warehouse, climax, 12 panels
Bens killer, twist, 5 panels

I honestly don't think I learned that much by doing these. and I'm not even sure that anyone would apply the "scene" metaphor on comic books. It's interesting however to see how effectively Stan Lee and Steve Ditko uses the few pages that makes up this first spider-man issue.

Normalized Sketching

2006-10-21T09:42:00.000+02:00

I've been sick for almost a week so I haven't been able to work that much and this being a spare time project I haven't done anything related to Comic Book Innovation. Anyhow... I'm going to take the time to discuss a theory I have about something we'll call normalized sketching.

If you sketch with pen and paper you run the risk of saturating the paper with too much lead. The paper gets messy. Enter the light table. With the use of a light table we can create multiple iterations of the same piece of art until it's tight enough to go to ink. If you don't have access to a light table you can also use something like a kneaded eraser to take enough lead off the paper to keep working on the same paper.

When working with a normalized (digital) piece of paper the lead is never fully saturated. This can be achieved in a number of ways.

My first instinct was to create some kind of brush that adds lead at the tip and removes some lead at a proximity of where you're drawing. This way you're both drawing and erasing at the same time working your way towards tighter and tighter artwork. If you use this with a mask won't erase any areas that you're fully satisfied with.

You can also regulate the amount of lead that you put on the paper. If you divide the distance between the current saturation of the paper and the full saturation of the paper for every pixel you add to your sketch you will never have a fully saturated paper. I'm afraid this will feel like drawing with a failing ball point but until I've actually tried it I won't dismiss it.

I tried to replicate some of this in Photoshop but I didn't manage to. The prototype posted here is the best I could do with this little time. As an added feature the erasing factor is bigger the faster you draw and affects a smaller area if you're drawing slower with added control.

Studio Workspace Redesign

2006-10-15T18:54:00.000+02:00

This evening I spent a couple of hours figuring out the look and feel of the studio. I've now got a design that looks more like an actual application. The current arrangement of tools and widgets are much more in tune with how I envision the studio is going to be used.

The theory behind the design is to have the different steps in the creation of a comic book blend into each other and not have any one step overshadow the others.

The round widget at the upper right corner is used for zooming in and rotating the art board. I can admit it looks a little strange with the paper rotated like that. I'm not sure I would be working like that at any time but it's just to illustrate that you can do just that.

Slicing Panels 2

2006-10-12T22:38:00.000+02:00

I've now got a panel cutting routine that works pretty well. You can now cut gutters that go through multiple panels so that you can create symmetric pages with 2x3 panels in just three cuts.

You can now move gutters by dragging them but only along the entire width of a cut. If you try and move different gutters you'll notice the difference. I don't know exactly how to explain it but the gutter cutter routine remembers in what order different cuts are laid down and will honor those cuts when you move a gutter.

I'm pretty bored of panels right now so I'll guess I'll go on with something else now for a while.

Oh, I almost forgot. If you move gutters by their intersections you can move multiple gutters at a time, even if they are on the other side of a panel as long as they are currently aligned. As I said, it's hard to explain. Perhaps I should record some tutorials.

Slicing Panels

2006-10-09T22:40:00.000+02:00

I took some time to give you some of what the panel editor is going to be like. So far I've implemented a method of drawing gutters. Hold down the button and drag it either horizontally or vertically before letting go and you've slice the panel in two.

I haven't yet implemented resizing of panels which will be done by dragging the gutters.

There also needs to be a way to join panels. I'm thinking that if you drag the mouse over a gutter that gutter should simply disappear.

Panels and Gutters

2006-10-08T23:14:00.000+02:00

I've figured out now that I most likely will compromise on how panels are drawn. I've been experimenting with two ways of drawing panels and both got their pros and cons.

The first way to draw panels is to simply draw individual rectangles.

The second way to do it is to define the gutters and let the panels be formed in the gutters negative space.

Drawing gutters actually works best and is probably suited for 90% of all panels drawn. Since we need those extra 10% we need a back-up method for overlapping panels and what not.

I've been working with both these methods this weekend but I have nothing to prove that it works. The big problem here is not the math or anything, the main obstacle is creating a intuitive user interface. For this I'm trying to work with mouse gestures.

I'm not sure either if I'm going to allow arbitrary panel shapes or If I should only allow rectangular panels. What do you think?

Addicted to Diagrams

2006-10-04T23:00:00.000+02:00

I'd like to add a couple of diagrams to the Studio.

Timelines are great for larger comic book universe's but might also be nice for any other comic book. Making a plot diagram is mostly just to make sure you don't mix things up too much.

Having a diagram that shows the pace of different parts of the comic book is also something that might be useful. A schedule is unquestionably a good idea. And finally I snuck a couple of elements in there that you could sprinkle over the different diagrams to emphases different aspects of the comic book.

Revised Script Editor

2006-10-03T23:34:00.000+02:00

The script editor is slowly taking shape. I feel the need for a stylesheet because at the moment the script editor doesn't look as fun to use as it should. I need to go for a more traditional comic script look with more space between different elements. I also can't rely as heavily on icons as I'm currently doing.

At the same time I should relax since I'm still only at the part where you pin down the story with plots and scenes and what not. I'm sure a lot of writers skip that step anyway so I'll start to worry when I get to pages and panels. If I decide too early on fancy stuff I'll probably have to change it anyway. Currently functionality is first priority.

The Role of the Editor

2006-10-01T11:50:00.000+02:00

These last days I've been thinking about the comic book editors trying to figure out how we can help ease their burden. Since I usually don't waste time I'm going to assume that the editor does some or everything that this article states which in my eyes would be the following:

Product Management

Bouncing ideas, story arcs, plot twists and so on
Critiquing
Maintain continuity
Spell-checking
Verify dialogue for readability

Project Management

Responsibility for the schedule/deadlines
Contact with publisher
Contact with freelancers
Contact with printers
Trafficking of resources such as scripts, artboards etc
Promote team spirit

Property Management

Protecting the francaise
Commission freelancers
Representing the comic in media

This is probably a quite naive analysis but it's enough for now. Here are some tools that might be useful:

Product Management

Commenting tool
Spell-checker
Timeline tool

Project Management

Resource manager
Project schedule, Gantt
Messaging service
File repository, File reservation
Version control

Property Management

Timeline tool
Archives

The question is if we're trying to make the work easier for the editors or if we're trying to eliminate the editor all together. Either way someone has to own the production and call the shots be that the editor, the writer or any one of the artists.

Digital Approach Study

2006-09-30T05:19:00.000+02:00

Today Brian Bolland is my hero not only because of Camelot 3000 (perhaps the best sequential novel of all times) but mainly for this tutorial that I just happened to stumble across while digging the Internet for comic artists that actually do it all digitally. I knew it could be done! This is just the first time I've seen it done with such control. The final result doesn't look stiff at all.

The good thing is that Brian explains both what he thinks works and where the digital approach falls behind. I've already figured out that rotating the paper is something that needs to be implemented. I think Painter has that feature, where you can rotate the view of the artwork without actually resampling the bitmap so that you always can return to your original pixels.

It's also interesting to see how Brian works with paths, specially for the perspective stuff. I've always hated paths in Photoshop because they are so inferior to strokes. However... Brian uses his paths like a ruler (or a curved ruler at times). I think there is a way to combine these two techniques where you end up with a path that is partially filled in with a stroke that you still can adjust.

Bollands pattern technique is also interesting. In some way it's similar to how I think about colors. He has a circular splatter pattern that he can sample ink splatter from. For all that I know we can create similar circular patterns mathematically. I never thought of it that way before but it's genius. Now I know what the feathering tool should look like.

Counting Heads & Bluelines

2006-09-26T18:21:00.000+02:00

Today I've been mostly sketching on my tablet. It wasn't as bad as I first thought after I turned down the opacity on both the pen and the eraser to 50%. While sketching along on different character concepts I started to think about proportions.

Take a look at the diagram to the right. Half of the image is what I first sketched out (using Ben Caldwells suggested female proportions) and the other half is my digital mapping. I think perhaps that my guidelines aren't perfect but it still would be a nice tool to have. You select how many heads tall your character is supposed to be and how wide the character should be. Then you specify where the shoulders, the pelvis and the knees are and sim-sala-bim, there you have the bluelines you need to get the proportions you're looking for.

The next step would be to create 360 degree turn-arounds from our guide. And if straight lines look to stiff (as if your bones weren't straight) and you want a more dynamic feel to your bluelines there is nothing stopping us from making the skeleton bendable.

Resources Gallery

2006-09-25T21:46:00.000+02:00

When creating a new comic book story or developing a new character you might want to keep all your sketches and references in a folder. This is at least what I'm doing myself right now.

If we're building a Comic Studio we got everything we need to quickly create model sheets and sketches with descriptions and what not. If we just add some kind of search functionality it will be easy to find specific model sheets when you need them. This way we don't have to order these model sheets hierarchically in the same way that we do with issues, pages and panels. Instead we can tag model sheets with its subject matter the same way flickr and all other digital albums work.

We can also apply this search functionality on all pages we create within the Studio. This would make it possible to search for individual characters down to every panel in all publications. If the script is written in the Studio it will be easy to use the script as input to the index of the search motor. If nothing else it's pretty cool to search for all panels that includes some character saying their catch-phrase.

The Right Curve for the Job

2006-09-24T22:49:00.000+02:00

Today I've been working with digital ink strokes again. After a couple of tests in Flash I have (almost) decided on using cubic bézier curves to generate brush strokes. Sadly you can't, for all that I know, draw cubic bézier curves in Flash. At least not with the standard graphic libraries. I ought to be able to write a library myself but perhaps it's not as easy as I think.

The nice thing with cubic bézier curves is that they have four handles per curve and if you've ever uses Illustrator or Freehand or Xara this is what you are used to. You define two end points and then you've got two guide points that define the curve. My previous brush stroke prototypes where both quadratic bézier curves (that only have one guide point) and they have the tendency to not look so good when you draw strokes with more than one segment.

I'm sorry I couldn't show you a prototype this time but I'm afraid these things are gonna take some time if I'm going to get it right. All tests that I did today came out weird and not as smooth as I wanted. Before I can decide I'll have to verify that you can create advanced strokes with a dynamic line weight using these kinds of curves. It's all about line weight really. Drawing curves is nothing new. The trick is to make a convincing brush stroke that we can control exactly the way we want.

Even though it's terrible boring to work on these damn curves I'm looking forward to when they work the way I want so I can go on to making convincing feathering. That's when it gets alot more interesting.

From Idea to Basic Structure

2006-09-21T22:12:00.000+02:00

Today I've decided on the basic structure of my story. Naturally I had to see how it plays with the Studio and how it would look. By doing so I found that I had the scene metaphore wrong. A scene in a comic book can be much shorter than a scene in a play. A scene might be just one or two panel at times. It gets pretty weird when I get these labels mixed up all the time.

Making Comics

2006-09-20T23:05:00.000+02:00

I got my copy of Making Comics today and since I own half of my hits to Scott I guess I don't feel bad about making a post just about that.

On the other hand I had an idea for a mini series (that could possible grow from there) that I just have to do something with. So it suits me fine to use this story to try out a couple of theories I've had about making comics. How can I build a studio if I haven't written/drawn at least one comic book?

Initial Idea

The basic idea circulates around a female protagonist with a father who is in prison for a bank robbery that he committed several years ago. Our main character is driven by this guilt by association to look into a missing child case and finds herself more and more involved when the supposed kidnapping mirrors some events of the hostage situation during the bank robbery that separated her with her father.

These two parallel plots is accented by a sub plot where the main character stumbles into another character that is driven more by revenge. These two characters join forces, after a proof of loyalty, for the final showdown.

My plan is to base the story in Stockholm and to borrow heavily for the superhero genre and use a crime noir theme.

I'm going to store all notes and drafts and what ever I create and publish them here side by side with all the other posts I'm writing.

Panel Elements

2006-09-19T22:40:00.000+02:00

Today I did an analysis of the 22 panels that always work by picking out all the different elements in each panel. Then I couldn't resist to add a couple of elements of my own. After arranging them I finally came up with this mindmap.

Video Studies

2006-09-18T21:29:00.000+02:00

After watching loads of videos of Nick Bertozzi on Google Video and Adam Hughes on YouTube I'm trying to digest what I've seen and pick up some of the methods used. Watching really good artists and how they work is overwhelming and inspiring to say the least. I suggest that you go botanise yourself, it shouldn't be hard to find lots more.

Perspective Grid 0.2

2006-09-17T23:02:00.000+02:00

I've been experimenting with different user interfaces for the Perspective Grid and here is the result. It's now possible to zoom in and out of the grid by using the mouse wheel. All other new features are pretty obvious.

It's also apparent, if you look closely, that the 3D representation is a bit off. Either one of the axes is scaling wrong or I've forgotten some step in the 3D transformation.

COMYK Comic Color Mode

2006-09-17T16:06:00.000+02:00

I've written a white paper on this new comic color concept. For all obvious reasons I had to name it COMYK. Download the pdf here.

Flexibility and Control

2006-09-16T14:04:00.000+02:00

Currently I'm in the process of trying out different ideas to see how they "play" so to speak. During this process I'm trying to have an open mind and not restrict myself to ideas that has already been proven.

If the comic book studio (I'm open to name suggestions) is going to be a success the system needs to be highly flexible and give the comic creators more control than they have with the current tools of the trade.

There must be flexibility so that you are never forced to work in a special way or use a special method to create your comics. I wouldn't want to create something that makes for "cookie cutter" results. We're not looking for a new "lens flare" filter or anything like that.

Adding control does not mean to make it possible to draw straight lines. More control could be making it easier to draw expressionistic artwork that you can't distinguish from hand drawn artwork. It's easier to sketch on paper than it is to ink on paper but in the digital world we can use the mechanics of sketching to control inks as well.

There are a couple of tricks you can use to control if the artwork you're working on is "correct". I think most of us have tried the mirror trick, holding up a drawing in front of a mirror to see the drawing for a different point of view. Such a feature is easily transferred to a digital studio but we don't have to stop there.

The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics talks a lot about the principles of colors and how colors work together and I want to integrated these theories in the studio as well. Making it easy to check the colors on a page for color value, or saturation or temperature would be useful.

It would also be great if you could try out different colors next to each other and then adjust the color swatch and have an already painted area update in real time. In other words, if you paint with a color and then make changes to that color swatch all artwork that is painted with that color should also be updated.

In Photoshop this is usually done by painting on different layers but this is a solution that comes from the fact that Photoshop is used to handle high definitions photos. If we're coloring for comics we apply one color at the time so we can keep a channel of every individual color that has been applied to the artwork. This means that we can go in and adjust colors individually at any point. The finished product will have the same number of colors, it's just that we're given more control over how they are mixed.

It's Called Shaders

2006-09-16T11:36:00.000+02:00

After reading Shea McCombs tutorial on shaders and the Blender documentation I now have a better understanding of what we need to create some excellent comic color swatches. I think what we're looking for is something along the lines of:

Color = (Shading * (Lamp Color + Material Color)/2) + Incandescence + (Specular Value * Specular Color)

And for this we also need a little color mixing box where we can add multiple light sources and store different settings to be reused later.

Come to think of it perhaps you should be able to store these settings for every individual panel if you want to. Features like this would need the user interface to be highly intuitive otherwise the whole studio would look like a helicopter cockpit. That is far from what I'm aiming at.

Perspective Grid 0.1

2006-09-15T09:44:00.000+02:00

After struggling with the math longer than I feel comfortable with I've finally got a first ultra simple version of the perspective grid. This is nothing more than three triangles that that you can move around while you hold down your mouse button.

Don't think to much about the colors, they where added while I was debugging the matrix multiplications. I'm still not sure I got all the math right but it looks pretty ok.

Currently rotation around the Z-axis is locked, I'm not sorting the triangles (I made them transparent so it's not that obvious), and there is no way to move the grid. We also need a better zoom and some way to input the degree of the cone of vision.

I'm not sure about how I want the actual grid to look. Should it be like an endless chess board or do we want a more complex structure?

3D Color Swatches

2006-09-14T18:05:00.000+02:00

Here is a simplified version of Yesterdays color globe. Since I myself often color animation-stylee why bother about thousands of colors when I mostly only use a few. There definitely should be an option to jump between a full set of colors and swatches.

I was going to color something to prove my point but sadly it didn't came out the way I wanted. Perhaps this was to be expected since a green color with a red highlight is far from the most useful. Before I can truly test my theory I need to create a few accurate and useful color globes like generic skin tones and such.

Mixing Colors in 3D

2006-09-10T23:32:00.000+02:00

As you might have noticed I'm trying to touch on everything that has anything to do with creating comics. Todays topic is coloring ,and to be more specific, selecting colors.

My theory is that you should not normally be looking for one single base color or one shade or highlight. You're instead looking for the color of the fabric you're going to paint and how that color reflects light in the scene you're painting. We need a base color AND one or two colored light sources and how this object we're painting reflects light.

Take a look at this green globe that is lit by one light source and also reflects an amount of red. To me this is can be treated as ONE unit. The color of the globe lit this way. We could create similar color mixes for skin under moonlight or spandex lit by green neon. All we need to do is select one base color, one or two light sources and a reflex value to calculate a huge amount of different colors that we then can use depending on what angle the area we're painting is supposed to be at.

I'm not sure how that works out but if we were using a wacom board the angle of the stylus might control where on the globe we sample the color we're currently painting with. This means that we track the surface normal of each pixel and map that to globe much like in ray tracing.

I'm pretty sure there is a more scientific and correct way of explaining what I just said but I figure it's just as easy to just show you. I'll do that as soon as I've read up on how ray tracing works.

Updated Studio Workspace

2006-09-09T22:02:00.000+02:00

I've been working a lot with the Comic Book Studio since the last post about the studio workspace. I hope that you instincts can see what I'm trying to do.

The first five buttons are toggle buttons that show you the script, pencils, inks colors and letters.

After that we got five issue buttons that switch the following 22 page buttons.

If you look at the tree with all the elements you'll see that I've tried to stuff a lot of them in there. To be honest I don't think anyone will use all of them but on the other hand I truly can't predict who will use what.

Drawing Balloons

2006-09-07T23:30:00.000+02:00

If you're interested in how you can use software to create comics you need to check out Smith & Tinker's Balloonist. My ego is a little bruised by the fact that they've done it the way I'm going to organize my Comic Studio. It almost feels like they've beat me to it. On the other hand it's fun to know that there are others that believe in this kind of product.

Here's a sketch of how I envision the balloon editor to render balloons. Not too different from the Smith & Tinker approach. I'm just not dealing with semi-oval balloons.

I left out rectangular caption boxes but it goes without saying (well I'm telling you now) that those are the first ones to be implemented since they are the easiest to handle.

The thought balloon is completely mathematically calculated (by a brush in Xara X) that I created back in 2002 for a strip I made called Birch. The Comic Studio will have a similar widget.

Quick 3D Guidelines

2006-09-05T00:08:00.000+02:00

This weekend I spent working on a 3D renderer for creating guidelines to backgrounds. If you haven't read David Chelseas book Perspective! for Comic Book Artists I highly recommend you buying it. But as long as you understand the theory behind perspective there really should be no need for you to do the math and measurements yourself.

I'm currently experimenting with how you will define the horizon and the field of view. The user interface must be simple so you don't get scare out of using it and it should be faster than drawing a one, two or three point perspective by hand. There should also be a simple way to add additional guidelines to a given grid. Perhaps you should be able to drop boxes into the grid to represent buildings or cars or people even.

I have no intent to make this into a 3D modeler so I'll just start with a plain 3D grid and we'll see where we can take it from there.

Comic Format 1st Draft

2006-09-04T23:21:00.000+02:00

Here's the first draft for a comic book format. I figured I can't hold things that I'm working on until they are perfect and also I've heard that "the first attempt is the most difficult" so why wait?

The theory behind this Comic Format is that most of the information is optional and that you use a program to edit these types of files (i.e the Comic Studio I'm building). Every piece of information you add to the file should feed the next step in the process until you've got everything you need to stitch the entire comic together.

This format is more of a model of what you're doing than what the finished product should look like. It is not designed to describe the comic book, it's primarily designed to store the information you might need when creating the comic book.

It's more of a road map than a blue print I guess.

Comic Format

2006-08-26T12:41:00.000+02:00

I've started to create a file format for the comics created with the comic studio. I'm going to use XML for this and even though I like the efforts made by Jason McIntosh I'm going to create something that differ quite a lot from his ComicML. That's the nature of formats I guess.

The big difference I feel between Mr McIntosh approach and my own is that ComicML is more a description of a comic book or a comic strip while I need a format that lives through the creation of said comic. It's like comparing a service manual for a car with the blueprints for the same car.

I also want my file format to be easily browseable in a tree view. This means that all information should be stored in attributes and that the only tags needed should be things that have a corresponding physical comic book metaphor. Tags could be "collection", "issue", "page", "panel", "balloon"/"caption" etc while width and height, color and line weight etc should be attributes.

Actually I might have to break that rule when it comes to marking up actual dialogue where such tags as "scream" and "whisper" will be needed.

I don't want to post any examples yet because it's very much in the making right now.

Segmented Brush Strokes

2006-08-22T20:42:00.000+02:00

Here we got a slightly more complex stroke. Or rather a segment of a stroke. The plan is to string segments like this one together to generate longer strokes.

The more segments a stroke is build up by the more organic the result might be but at the same time it might become increasingly difficult to handle. My hope lies in finding a simple way to control both how the segments of the stroke is distributed but also changes in the line weight.

Talking about line weight (i.e width) I found that it wasn't as easy as I hoped to apply the line weight to the stroke. As you can see in this example the weight at the middle of the stroke has a different value than a similar weight at the end points. It's hard to explain but I need to adjust the weight/width at the middle of the stroke depending on the angle of the curve. This is most noticeable if you try to create a really steep curve.

Creating a Brush Stroke

2006-08-20T14:58:00.000+02:00

This looks really simple but it's actually a bit tricky.

The stroke is created by drawing two curves with an offset depending on the weight of the line.

The direction of the offset is important to achieve a nice stroke and in this prototype I align the offset to touch through the red point between the two end points. This red point divides the line between the endpoints relative to the length of the triangles two other sides.

Finally the paper effect is created with a simple displacement map.

The boring part about vector graphics is all the draging of endpoints and what not. I hope to create a better way to do it that involves nudging of the endpoints so that the drawing process becomes more like sketching. You'll understand what I mean when you see it later.

Comic Book Studio Workspace

2006-08-15T08:31:00.000+02:00

I've done a lot of work on the Comic Book Studio lately. There's a lot of prototyping, moving things around, but there's great progress every day now. I take my time though, keeping the code simple and managable, since this project will never end and there will always be things that can be improved on.

Here's a screenshot of what the userinterface looks like right now. That's a menu bar, some toggle buttons, the script editor, the art board and a area for an property tree.

Structure: Wake the Devil

2006-07-24T11:01:00.000+02:00

Here's a rough analysis of the structure of Michael Mignolas Hellboy: Wake the Devil.

My hopes were to find something that would help me in creating a structure view for the Comicbook Studio. Sadly I can't say that this exercise brought me something that I hadn't already thought about. It seems like Mr Mignola has structured his story pretty much the way I had suspected a well formed story to be constructed.

The analysis says nothing about the tapestry of themes or the unique juxtaposing of images that Mike Mignola is famous of. That analysis I'll save for later.

Brainstorming Session

2006-07-20T20:25:00.000+02:00

Here's a list of features that might (or might not) be helpful (or terrible harmful) to the process of creating a comic book. I am aware that I might be writing a "page twenty-one" (dead poet society) but at the same time I've got to be open to anything at this point however stupid an idea might appear.

The goal of this excersise is to find new qwerky ideas.

Line that shows in which order the panels should be read also suggesting how each individual panel should be read.
Timeline that specifies how much time has passed between different events/actions.
A diagram that shows the dramatic structure of a comic book with raising and falling action.
An easy commenting system that let's you attach comments to any part of the script, artwork or any other part of the comic book in production.
Selecting a premise of the story on the form "Ill-temper -> leads to -> isolation".
Adding proofs of your premise to the story.
Mathematical calculation of inking strokes with both hard attributes (line weight, pressure, outlining etc) and relative soft attributes (distance, speed, control etc).
Mathematical calculation of feathering.
Thumbnailing using placeholders.
Personal portfolio for each individual contributor.
Page designer for panel layout.
Possibility to use all existing material as a template for new material.
Realtime resource sharing.
Simplified scanning process. Would be top-notch to use OCR to identify coded information such as page number (for pages) , character (for turn-a-rounds) etc.
Color analysis and charts over which colors have been used before on a certain title, character or object. We want the actual colors used in the coloring process, not the mixed colors that end up in the final artwork.
Full wacom support.
Using a bitmap to indicate line weight of inks. If this is done in realtime we can paint lightsources and use rendering colors to calculate the shape of the ink strokes.

The more I brainstorm the less I understand exactly what I mean but it's a fun exercise and I'm quite sure I got a few ideas that I will keep developing internally.

Story Vs Script

2006-07-19T13:59:00.000+02:00

This is a very simplified versions of how I visualize a story versus how I visualize a script.

Every story/script would obviously have their own footprint, this is just an example in no way based on an existing comic book.

I'm quite sure I'll find something interesting if I would create a breakdown like this analyzing a mini series.

Comics Mindmap

2006-07-14T11:10:00.000+02:00

To make it easier to see the whole picture when it comes to everything "Comic" I've created a draft of a Comics Mindmap. This inventory is far from complete, or accurate. I've tried not to draw too many conclusions at this point but rather just get the different concepts on paper.

I suspect that I'll keep working on this one for a long time. Later on I hope to be able to make conclusion about how to create an index, or a genome rather, over comic books and also find out how to best create a comic book studio suite.

The Big Triangle

2006-07-03T11:44:00.000+02:00

Originally Invented by Scott McCloud "The Big Triangle" measures artwork according to visual resemblance (e.g., photography and realistic painting), iconic abstraction (e.g., cartooning) and picture plane abstraction ("pure" abstraction).

Above we have a Flash implementation of this map where the axis have been labeled abstraction, iconicity and realism. Each axis measures from 0 to 255 making it possible to generate an hexadecimal index much like RGB is handled.

Interesting enough since the map is triangular the sum of all vectors will always make 255.