Shiny! Plus FEET!! 22 Sept 04

[FireAza]

This has to be the first time we've seen a character's feet. I gotta ask though, how did you do the soft tones in the new comics Greg? May I suggest a new version of the "How Real Life is Made" article with info on how you do the shiny comics?

[tq]

I'm pretty sure they're just common-or-garden gradients using colours that are slightly less saturated than we're used to seeing in this strip, plus the outlines are a lighter shade of black, if you get my meaning. The backgrounds might have been done with vectors, then rasterised and filtered somehow but having never used Illustrator I'm not completely aware of how far the program's functionality goes.

[Sandman]

The new visual style for this plot arc is brilliant, but it's not the first appearance of feet, people regurarly (sp?) have there feet up on the coffee table etc.

[Mae Dean]

Doing the Sky Captain look is actually fairly simple, with a little bit of effort put in for the backgrounds, obviously.

Essentially, once you have everything the way you want it, you take everything that is going to have a soft filter applied, copy it, and paste it directly above the originals (preferably on another layer, so you can turn it off and on as you please.) You then blur it to a sufficent degree (couldn't give an exact number, since it's all relative to the size you're working with). Then you turn down the transparency of the blurred layer to 50%, and voila. Instant soft filter. I also added a layer above all that which is set to "color", and select the most prevalent background color (in this case, brown), then turn that down to 30%. It helps to equalize the tones between all the colors. It's subtle, but it has a definite effect.

And yeah, I draw feet all the time... I just generally try to avoid it. I always feel like they don't look right.

Posted Wed Sep 22, 2004 8:04 am:

Oh, and tg: the backgrounds are all done in painter, using a tablet.

[tq]

Ah, hence the hand-drawn look.

I've always loved the crosshatch pattern on the soles

[mrchapel]

I think the really funny yet very subtle joke in this comic is the fact that when Dave/Dex takes off his welding goggles he has his his glasses on. LOL

[FireAza]

By "FEET!" I was talking about a side view, not the up on table we've seen before.
Greg: Ah, that's how it's done is it? Simple enough, but looks bad-ass
mrchapel: Heh, it's like the professor on Futurama, you never see his eyes

[Accer]

/me takes notes

[tq]

Actually, there have been several comics where Dave's eyes have been visible, including the first 6-panel colour strip way back in week 2...And the ski trip...and so forth.

[hazzamon]

Reading these series of comics makes me feel like my monitor' has been smeared with petroleum jelly

[fuzzmanmatt]

Wouldn't surprise me if it WAS covered in jelly...

[Kits]

/me refrains from commenting...

[mrchapel]

[quote="KitsuneMusume";p="400760"]/me refrains from commenting... [/quote]

lol, lol, lol and lol

The backgrounds look awesome. From the first comic of this series I though they might be actual screen shots from the movie (with RLC superimposed, as far as I remember Greg wasn't in the movie). Although recently I see the journal post at the bottom explains that it is done by hand and takes quite a bit of time.

/em bows to Greg for his dedication to the comic.