Outlines are the Future

Hey all, guess this would be the first proper post which isn't me just uploading new pages.

If anyone's been reading this on Drunkduck where the story is further ahead then anywhere else, you may have noticed that from the second half of chapter 2 (from Page 8 onwards I decided to alter the art style, giving (too) much emphasis on the cel-shading, and abandoning outlines, Samurai Jack-style, however this didn't work out so well for me. To be completely honest, the first couple of pages (8-11) the cel-shading is over-the-top, and so I tried toning it down for the remainder of Chapter 2. But I'm sick of not using outlines. So, from Chapter 3 onwards you can expect to see characters having outlines again.

I think that the best style I've done so far has to be in the unreleased Chapter 21 of Draft 2/Draft 3 in which I did the inking and colouring on Photoshop (Elements 8, in case anyone was wondering). I found it gave me smoother looking pages, I could still have a cel-shaded sort of look and best of all, the Eyedropper tool, something not featured in Manga Studio unfortunately. It's likely that post-Chapter 3 I will return to a painting-style, with cel-shading. If not the characters, definitely the backgrounds.

Chapter 2 Page 11

Probably one of chapter 2's worst looking pages. For some reason I felt compelled to have 2 layers of shading regardless of anything else. Now I would just edit these, but if I edited everything I wasn't happy with I'd be editing everything, and I really want to get into the story. Plus it's supposedly good to look back and see how you were at the time of drawing this.

Chapter 21 Page 1 Panel 3

By no means is this perfect, however it's a whole lot better than the page above it. It's rather ironic, as this was drawn 5 months earlier. If you look on Canu's right elbow you see 2 layer cel-shading done correctly, rather than the horrible mess I made on Gesen's face.

If I seem really critical or harsh about my own work, I'd suggest getting used to it. I can't look at my work without wanting to be better than I am. I'm all for self-improvement... perhaps a bit too much...