Tools and Products

[Prateek Agarwal]

Folks,

I have not created a web comic but I love to read them. Primarily I am blogger and often I create visualizations. It started with using a UML tool to make sequence diagram (all IT people might know them better :D ) for typical orkut interactions: http://thequark.blogspot.com/2008/02/aurkuchhorkut-nahi-chahiye-mujhe.html which many of my friends liked. 

After sometime, while studying management course and after being frustrated at protector's of bharatiya-sanskriti I made this SWOT analysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis)  http://thequark.blogspot.com/2009/10/swot-analysis-of-bharatiya-sanskriti.html using Microsoft Visio :D 

I have created a separate tumblog for visualizations and hindi cinema quizzes http://thequark.tumblr.com/ Now I want to make a comic, not a series just something in the style of Champak comics (remember them? ;) ) but with a twist so I want to know what tools do people use to make toons, esp with animal figures, with lots of details (like shades, background items, blockings etc)?

Regards,

Prateek 

[Narasimha Vedala]

Hi Prateek,

Tools:

1. Wacom Digital Tablet (or any other brand. iBall has come up with their series which is cheap and works good. I've one at my work place for quick sketches. Wacom is the best out there).
2. Photoshop (this is one expensive piece of software) is used by professionals. You may want to try out freeware like GIMP, Artweaver, Pixia etc. I personally prefer GIMP. Artweaver is similar to Corel Painter with natural media painting experience. If you are looking at printing the comics, then go for Photoshop. It has support for CMYK. With GIMP you may need additional plugins which are not on par with Photoshop.

Lots of tutorials on the internet shows you how to do digital coloring, shading, half-toning, tone halving, throat gargling et. al :)

cheers.
simianart.com

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