Come and Get it Travel Time

Traveling action

Visual Vocabulary for Comic Books, Graphic Novels and Comic Strips

When you have big travel, keep it consistent with the compass or geography.

If your story requires an airplane to travel from San Francisco to New York, then draw your plane traveling from west to east (left to right).

Keep travel in your story consistent. If your chase scene starts off left to right, then maintain the action in that direction until you show a definite change of direction.

If a character is going into a building, we don't need to see the whole process as in film. At a minimum we show character leaving current location, exterior shot of destination and character has arrived - this may be inside an office or on the roof for example.

Visual Vocabulary of Graphic Novels and Comic Books

Time to Catch Up

I got side tracked from this, so here are links to what I've discussed so far:

Panels

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Balloons and Captions

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Sound Effects

One

Two

Three

Next I'll be discussing:

Actions

Expressions

Feelings and emotions

Symbols

Glyphs

Keep reading and  +1 me. Share with your friends. Follow and Comment, so I know this is not going into a black hole. Just create!

copyright 2013 H. Simpson.

Drawing with The Blob and Calli - Adobe Illustrator Tutorial

Vector Drawing Part One

Tutorial showing how to draw and create brushes using using Adobe Illustrator software. How to use the pen tool, blob brush and calligraphic brush.

Remember to share this knowledge with others. Publicly follow so they know you like it. +1 it.

Gentleman Color Theory

Knowing color theory is important to give direction to your compositions. There are three elements you must know to create color harmony. If there is no harmony, then one or more of these is out of whack.

Hue - The name of the color. (Red, Yellow Blue, etc.)

Value - The light or darkness of a color. (Dark Red, LIght Red, etc)

Intensity - Level of brightness or darkness of a color. The amount of light reflected or transmitted

Color

Red, yellow and blue are the  primary colors for ink/pigment and red, green and blue are the primary colors for light. A primary color cannot be made from any other color.

Secondary colors are made form a combination of two primary colors.

Tertiary colors are made from a combination of three colors being primary or secondary

Color Descriptions
Saturation - The level of white, black or gray, ranging from neutral to brilliant.

Warm colors comes forward and cool colors recede.
Warm -Yellows, oranges, and reds.
Cool - Greens, blues, and violets.

Tint – Base color plus white.
Tone – Base color plus grey.
Shade – Base color plus black.

These are the basics you need to know to start making sense of color and to begin a  more thorough study of color theory.

That completes our brief look at composition and color theory.

Now, I also took a detour when I began discussing visual vocabulary, so I will get back to that.

Dark and Light

Use the previous exercises and widen the lines. Another opportunity for brush practice. Draw the wider lines in one stroke. There should be no line that stands out.  Whether there are few or many lines they must all contribute to the whole harmony.

Next… Color

Practice, Practice, Practice

Practice makes perfect.

Work with the 5 principles of Opposition, Transition, Subordination, Repetition and Symmetry as  long as you need to in order to understand them. Become aware of how they appear around you in nature and architecture. Practice all kinds of line arrangements. Don't just look at them, really SEE them.

SQUARES and CIRCLES

Create an enclosed shape and break it up into harmonious groups of smaller areas with lines. Squares and circles work best because of their unchangeable boundaries and allow you to focus on the interior lines. This is a good time to practice your brush work and draw lines of  equal weight.

Make some pencil roughs first and select the most harmonious and then ink them without a ruler.

The purpose is to create harmony.

RECTANGLES

Squares and circles only allowed you variations of the interior lines. Rectangles  now add many variations to the exterior lines.

Next… Dark and light