Thanks to the Clip Studio Paint liquefy tool, I was able to enlarge Kitty’s eyes in just a few seconds.
In the right page, I added in the birds perched on Mr. Moai and on Dylan’s snout. Adding the birds was necessary for continuity. They first appear in page 25, then reappear in page 59. I’ll add the birds to page 61, also, showing them fluttering around Mr. Moai’s head as Kitty revives him from his 300-year sleep.
I’m going to find a place in the story for this image. The reader needs to know that the volcano demon’s rage is implacable and heartless. Overly dramatic? Oh, how can a fictitious volcano demon be overly dramatic? This beast has turned an entire island’s population, save for one boy, into stone statues.
The story needs a villain and the villain’s redemption, and that’s what it will get.
My plan is to turn these make these pictures work together. The beach scene will all of the residents of Easter Island, the reanimated Moai the the little volcano demon, waving farewell to Dylan Dolphin, Betty Burro, and Jimmy Jay. Since these are two unique scenes, I’m going to extend the ocean (in the beach scene) to behind the jumping dolphin. I’ll have to correct some colors and lighting. I can sense that I’m going to complete this book in the next couple of months.
It’s a bittersweet feeling. I’m happy that I’m coming to the end, and I’m sad that it will be over. I’ve been working on this book for 17 months, far longer that dreamed it would take. There are so many ways it could have been better, if I had only had the skills to make it so. So it goes.
Did some basic flatting today. I’m not happy with Dylan Dolphin’s pudgy belly but otherwise, I’m pleased with this composition.
I used Clip Studio Paint Ex to create this vector sketch. One thing I haven’t figured out is how to simplify the lines. That is to say, I want to remove some of the nodes to create smoother lines. I read on the Internet that there’s a way to do this, but this technique seems to be a well-hidden secret.
Next up, I’ll flat this image and put in some shadows.
Cuter means rounder, chubbier, big friendly smile, and big, bright eyes looking right at you, brothers and sisters!
The line work is all vector using Clip Studio Paint’s efficient vector tools. They don’t have all of the features of Illustrator or Affinity Designer, but they’re perfect for doing comix.
I still have to do the shadows and highlights and background.
Today’s inch of progress was to move each the characters to a separate layer. To do that I had to learn how to select more than one object at a time. It was a deep and murky dive into the Youtube miasma of Clip Studio Paint Videos (I almost wrote “Clip Studio Pain”). The problem was solved with a video named CLIP STUDIO PAINT useful features : Drawing with vectors. Thank you, Internet.
I’m finding that CSP vectors are rather limited, but they’re probably good enough for anything I’m capable of drawing at this time.
It’s always fun to throw some paint on the page. After spending several weeks to draw some simple characters using the Paint Studio Pro EX bezier pen, I feel that I deserve a little amusement before I continue working on with this page. It’s the drawing background scene that’s going to be hard — there’s going to be a crowd of Moai leaving the soccer stadium.
Thank you, Color, for making my day. Oh, I should mention that my work load at my contract job just tripled. It’s part of the job. That’s life!
Another day, another inch. Nothing clever or deep to say. Just learning and trying to get to the point where my brain doesn’t hurt when I use the pen tool.
I spent an hour trying to get this guy’s hands looking right, and didn’t succeed. Working with Bezier curves is a challenge, but I figure if I keep hammering away at it, I will prevail. To quote myself, “If they can do it, I can do it.” Of course, I know that I can’t sing like Pavarotti or dance like Baryshnikov. But just maybe I can learn to trace over my drawings using the pen tool if I practice every day.
