Resolved Screen Brightness Issues

So, a bit over a week ago, it came to my attention that my images were printing too dark.

I wasn't sure if this was a problem that had plagued me for a while because my work mostly seemed to come out alright and the majority of my work was only ever shared online anyway. But after looking over the front cover to the Christmas Bertie Blue book, I noticed that the problem was indeed rather glaring. It made a pile of crumpled army clothes look like a snail. Not quite what I was going for.

So before I went on any further, I decided to turn to social networks for fresh eyes in helping me with my brightness issues. Someone suggested that perhaps my work monitor wasn't at is brightest. So I decided to turn up the brightness.

It didn't get any brighter at all. Mystery solved there. But now I was worried that my images in general were showing up much too dark on other monitors. So to look into this, I presented people with the below image. The one to the left was the original image and the one to the right had been brightened.

I immediately noticed a big difference but wanted to see if others had the same opinion. The one on the right was indeed the more popular option and I've been using the brightening method ever since. It really makes things more vibrant, as well as more visible. Which is obviously important.

Yeah, this is the title page for the first Crumbs arc. 15th September is approaching.

Thank you to everyone who has provided feedback on various social networks. And who says Facebook ruins lives? Pft.

Crumbs: Comic and Title Page Art Comparisons

We all know what I'm going to say about this late entry so there's not really any need to say it. Onto progress!

In terms of the Crumbs buffer, the main issue I'd been having with it was how long it would take to do one page. If you recall, I used to do lineart in Illustrator before doing everything else in Photoshop. Here is an example from the previous edition of the comic.

God, Pink was such a blabber beak.

As my colouring/shading methods have developed, I've noticed that I take way too much time on one individual image, let alone an entire comic page. So I have come to the decision that the in depth shading/textured images will be saved for posters, title pages, concept art, basically anything but the actual comic pages themselves.

I'm hoping that doesn't come across as false advertising. Eek.

Now, at first this left me with a dilemma as I'd used that method to create artwork for a while now. It was basically like learning how to breakdance after only doing tap for so long. Rather different methods. But I've played around with some techniques and I'm quite happy with this one. It'll mean comic pages are done at a much faster pace. And it's a lot easier than breakdancing.

I've always loved the artwork from Rayman Origins and wanted to see if I could recreate such a design for the comic pages. Obviously they'll have their differences but I loved such a contemporary look for the characters and with it being much quicker for me to do, I'm feeling a lot more optimistic. I still need to work on the lineart skills but I'm having fun with it, which is nice.

The pose of Lilac and Twig is from the title page of the first arc. It was originally the one with all the pigeons and Tita in the rap pose but as they're not heavily focused on until the second arc, I've decided to make that the second title page. And maybe a poster design.

I want it all up in my wall.

Crumbs: More Concept Arts

To everyone who has had a look at the Crumbs website so far and offered feedback, thank you so much! I knew there would be a few things I'd miss such as links and typos so the fresh eyes have been extremely helpful.

It's also good to note all this down now so I can develop my vlog discussing the website and comic. I'm hoping to have all that out by next friday, possibly. We'll need to see.

You can still have a look and offer feedback if you still want to/haven't already!

Anyway, I didn't get a LOT of work done yesterday cos I made the mistake of buying Plague Inc for my iPad for 'research reasons' (sort of) and uh… well, yesterday kind of flew by. SO I figured I'd share a few pieces of concept artwork from Crumbs today. Normally I just share one piece per entry but eh, I'm feeling generous. And also I have other upcoming things to discuss.

So, lets have a looksee at some story/character developments. Mostly character.

~~~~~

Some further playing about with this adorable couple and their designs. I kind of picture this being them in college or something as they look a bit young here. Whether they were dating or not at this point is still undecided but they're known each other for so long that they were pretty much into the sweet old married couple territory anyway. So it's hard to tell.

Anyway at this point, Jude is studying Zoology and is planning on obtaining a PhD to study pigeons specifically. As you can imagine, bar from going to college, she doesn't get out much. Carrie studies Sociology and volunteers at the Wingview Softpaws kennels. She's a huge dog lover yet not a big people person. Way to spend your lolly on the wrong degree, numpty.

Every wannabe ornithologist needs a 'birdbrain' t-shirt. And pretty much every piece of clothing Carrie has bears the Softpaws logo.

I hadn't actually drawn much of these two together and I'd done virtually nothing on Fizz so it was about time I introduced the two. Not much to say really, just a little something showing the besties together.

Blue works more out on the field, fetching any pigeons who need protection and bringing them back to the coop. Fizz is banned from field work as she'd go right into the Breadwinners building and take no prisoners so she's being trained for counselling the plague victims.

To anyone wondering what the hell kind of pigeon Fizz is supposed to be, she's one of these lovely Sherazi pigeon beauties. The concept art doesn't really show her off very well so I need to do a little collection of sketches entirely for her. She'd love that.

Urgh, THIS picture kicked my ass and I'm still not entirely happy with it but eh, it was mainly a shading experiment. Gone a bit wrong. At least in my opinion. Ho hum.

I seem to like drawing all the main dogs together. Although Rocky should PROBABLY be with the blind person he's supposed to be helping. Friggin slacker, no wonder you're finding it hard to get work.

But yeah, not a huge point to this one. I guess I do like how the dogs themselves came out. I'm getting a bit better at keeping Tita consistent. And Snaps is so derpily adorable.

~~~~~

So progress on Crumbs is coming by nicely. The buffer is starting to slowly chug away now and I'm going to battle not to have it slowly taper out like last time. At least not before the first story is finished. But I'm feeling a lot more in control this time round rather than "I have no idea what I'm doing". Lets hope that keeps taking.

Just a quick question to everyone though; I'm not sure if I should have all the characters on the one subpage, after the one telling the reader what the story is about. Does anyone have a preference?

Anywho, now to script the vlog and the rest of the comic.

To everyone who has had a look at the Crumbs website so far and offered feedback, thank you

Bertie Article In the Journal ft Crumbs Website Open for Testing

I know I said I'd update the blog on Tuesdays and Thursdays but that was mainly for something to show on the days when Crumbs doesn't upload. As it's not gonna do that until the 15th September, I've decided to blog on Mon/Wed/Fri every week until Crumbs pages can fill that slot. Then I'll update here on Tues/Thurs to be all super productive.

And I'll have weekends off. Cos I gotta sleep sometime.

Anywho, lets get to business. It seems fitting to discuss the Bertie Blue article on this date in particular.

Bertie Blue in the Journal

Remember when I briefly mentioned that I was called by someone at the Journal newspaper to discuss the Bertie Blue series? Well, it was featured in Saturdays copy of the paper! I was quite surprised at the spread, I didn't expect it to be as big as it was!

It even briefly mentions Crumbs a little! Barbara Hodgson, the woman who interviewed me, was quite interested in the story and in the Bertie Blue books as well. I'm quite satisfied with the spread and I'm hoping it helps the series and even my own work take off. Thanks to everyone who bought a copy and helped spread the word!

And yeah I totally mentioned this in my 'about' tab under the 'press' option. With Bertie being mentioned in two papers now, I figured it would be good to mention. Can't hurt, after all!

Speaking of tabs, you might have noticed a bunch of news ones/old one gone missing. I've basically decided to combine the 'about' and 'contacts' pages, leaves less clutter. I also decided to put a new tab specifically to purchase the Bertie Blue books through. I'm considering making an online store for the books and my own potential merchandise (once I get that up and going) but until then, the books can be bought through the super alliterative 'Buy Bertie Blue Books' tab.

Also there are donate tabs for PayPal and Patreon for those who want to lend some support and also a tab for Crumbs. Speaking of Crumbs…

Crumbs Website Opening (Without Comic)

As it says on the tin. I am opening the website up, sans comic, for people to look through, test the links and pages for me and let me know of anything I might have overlooked. I have a few beta testers but if anyone wishes to look through it for me, I'd appreciate it! The more feedback, the better.

Click here to be directed to the website!

Just a quick note, there will be a 'comic' tab and the 'Latest Page' option at the bottom will lead you to the comics current page. Once it starts uploading, of course. Then I'll have the vlog launched by the 15th August talking about the features, the comic and my intentions with it. Like that really crap one I did for college that we will never discuss ever again.

I'll close this entry with a bit of concept art for the comic. Jay is the one who designed those weird plague doctorish masks that Crumbs uses to protect themselves against the toxin so I wanted to do a little something capturing that.

He totally used Blue as a model, fyi.

Also, this is the image I'll probably use for the 'coming soon' image when/if I close the site again. It seems kind of fitting, in my opinion. 

I'm really getting excited about these projects and I hope everyone else will find them interesting. I'll update again on Wednesday, probably with more concept art and sketches.

Until then!

Crumbs Website And Bertie Article

Website

I told myself that I would get everything on the site (bar from the comic itself) ready by the end of this week and I'm pleased to announce that I've actually managed to get most of this done much sooner than I had planned. All the little details are complete and I'm beginning to add more and more artwork to the Concept Art page. I'll share some of them in the following week but for now, WEBSITE.

As well as focusing on the comic pages and the Bertie Blue illustrations, one of which I'll be showing you later, I'm also planning on quickly developing the vlog that will discuss the website. The vlog in itself will give me more practice in editing, animatics and speaking to an audience, as I have been getting less confident in that when it comes to my own work. So there IS something of a reason for it.

As of right now, here is a teaser of the home page with screenshots terribly stuck together in Photoshop. I was trying to get the whole thing in. I'm sure there's an actual way to do that but I ain't smart enough for that.

The vlog will discuss the features in more detail but you kind of get the gist of what I was going for. Before now, I wasn't entirely sure about webcomics that didn't have the reading material on the home page until I realised the opportunity to share direct updates with the comic, social networking sites, other projects and share things in more interesting detail.

There WILL be a comic tab at the top, with the other links. The latest page at the bottom is another option for the reader.

After this weekend, I am going to open the website for a short time in order to give people the chance to look around and offer feedback. I'll let everyone know when this will happen so they can basically test everything, make sure all the links are right and share their general opinions.

Bertie Blue

I've also been quickly developing more illustrations for the next Bertie Blue book. Obviously I can't share many of the illustrations with you but I quite like this little one so eh, what's the harm.

It's certainly made me crave more tea, anyway.

The artwork is really starting to come along. However, I made a list of the ideas both myself and the author had and the number of images came to about 18 which is the most I've done for one of the stories so far. I don't think the book is that much bigger than normal either so some might have to be cut or combined with other pictures somehow. I'll figure it out as I go. I'm hoping to reveal the cover as soon as I get it approved.

One last cool thing about Bertie is that it's ALREADY showing up in the papers! I was surprised by a friend of mine on Facebook when they told me the News Post Leader has printed up a small article.

This one mainly seems to quote from the press release (I can't take credit for the 'let the pigeon out of the basket' line, that was the wordsmith there) and I'm guessing any others than the Journal will most likely do the same (assuming they do print it) as they were the only one to get back to me for a chat so far. But hey, as long as information about the books are shared, I'm hardly going to complain.

There's your Thursday update! I'd eat some pop tarts but I don't have any of those in. Pink 'n' Whites will have to do...

New Crumbs Poster and Branching Out

Yep, I'm sticking to the Tuesday/Thursday blog upload schedule. Time to take self employment seriously.

So, there's not a huge bunch of things to cover in this entry but they're still pretty exciting in my opinion. First of all, with the different direction Crumbs has taken, the original poster didn't really match up. So I decided to do something about that.

Naturally I've kept the whole rap pigeon theme cos how could I not?

Strictly speaking, all of the pigeons would be wearing masks but they
aren't in here because advertising and shut up.

Tita is much more prominent in the story than originally planned so I figured she had more of a right to be there than a few others. Also, as this is mainly the poster for the first arc, these characters are come of the most important in the story at that point so it makes sense that they'd be featured first.

So I'm pretty happy with how it's come out and I appreciate feedback if you have any.

In terms of 'branching out', I did something a little different last week. On Friday, I was introduced to someone who was looking for a custom tattoo design and I figured this would be a fun little thing for me to do. Definitely something different as I'd never designed a tattoo before. Anywho, I worked from a rough photoshopped idea that the commissioner had and this little dealio came from it!

Watermarked cos while I have permission to share the design, I don't
know how personal it is to Ian so better safe than sorry!

Ian has promised me that he will send me a picture of the finished result when he gets it done. I must say, it's pretty exciting to think of something I helped make being etched onto someone's skin forever. Feels… oddly powerful.

At the very least, it's inspired me to look into creating more tattoo designs. If anyone has any ideas I could use to get started, I'd certainly appreciate them. And if you'd like me to design a tattoo for you personally, we'd be looking somewhere between £25-£100 depending on how complex it is. The above was rounded up to £25.

I'm going to mention this briefly because I'd rather talk more about it once the article/feature/thingamajigger is out. Last week, Ruari sent out some press releases about the Bertie Blue books books to some of the local papers in the North East to anyone looking for some stories. Yesterday I was contacted by Barbara Hodgson from the Journal who was interested in the books and wanted to phone me to ask me some questions about myself and the series. We had a quick phone interview/chat dealio and I was told the story would show up in the culture section. She told me she'd be back in touch nearer the time and of course I'll fill you guys in once it's published.

So yeah, WOW. What a week. Further Crumbs development, tattoo art and interviews. Now to get started on this week, where I'll hopefully finish the Crumbs website to be able to focus on the buffer and vlog.

… after I've had a sandwich.