Basic Ali Comics Pdf Download

[Mireille Duhon]

Afew people have already expressed to me that they cannot seem to get the brushes right with their setup for comic book work. So to help out a bit I wanted to share my basic set of Procreate brushes with you. Keep in mind that these are only brushes that came with Procreate that I have tweaked to my own settings. So be sure to try them out and let me know what you think. The artwork in this image was created entirely in Procreate and witch these three brushes. I will produce more along the way so be sure to follow me for updates.

The above storytelling starter is adapted from the work of Lynda Barry and Ivan Brunetti. I use that exercise with medical students, patient groups, high school and grade school kids. It never fails to spark some great comics.

So many people email me to ask, are there any tips and tricks for doing that work, for bridging the gap between the comics I make today in my sketchbook and the comics I want to present to the world, or use in my research, or publish as my memoir? How can I make my drawings and comics communicate what I want to communicate?

The first thing we need to consider when building a page of comics is page flow, or how we read comics. In this culture, we read them left to right and top to bottom. Cartoonists always need to keep this knowledge at the front of their brain. It will affect how every panel is drawn.

This formula seems to be the most popular one, especially in pre-code romance. The basic idea is that our heroine makes a bad choice that nearly ruins her chance for true love. But in the end, everything works out.

The first published example of the plot structure #1, from Young Romance #1. Here Toni learns about the importance of a good reputation, one of the most common lessons preached in romance comics.

Romance comics often have titles that are far more risqu than the actual story. Masquerade Marriage (written by Dana Dutch, and drawn by comics master Matt Baker) lives up to its name. Pat and Jetta learn a hard lesson when (SPOILER!) two no-good boys from the waterfront trick them with a fake marriage!

Alright so I've been cranking out some pages for my new comic Removed, and I've been doing basic shading on all my pages by just putting in some gray on a layer with a lighter opacity. I use this method since it's quick, because a big priority at least for me is being efficient with my pages so I can get them out quickly. However, I haven't really been liking the way my pages have been coming out lately, and I'm considering just switching to flat colors. I'm also considering doing partial cell shading, such as only on backgrounds or only in the case of dramatic lighting.

I personally think either option could work; your linework and flats are clean and easy to read, so too much gray shading might muddy things up the colors. Something that has really helped me with cell shading is using a color other than gray on multiply. It might help ground your characters and give your drawing a little life. Hope that helps? :3

I really think that the shading in this particular panel is necessary so it looks like their feet are on the ground. But you don't necessarily need to do it every panel. Your comic is how you decide it to be youknow? If doing shadow gives you no joy then nix it.

Now for your question of how to do quick cell shading shadows. For me, I have a love hate relationship with the process of cell shading, but when I do cell shading, I like to do clipping layers. (here's a visual to describe it.)

And if you already know how to do clipping layers you can disregard this, but this is just how I do it (there's a lot of ways to do it), but I start with the linework and fill all the colors in in with a smart paint bucket so every object that I know will have a shadow is on a different layer from the objects directly next to it (excuse the face color, it'll be fixed later. This was just to get the selections together so it just acts as a base color.) so the hands are a different layer than the coat, which is a different layer than the face, the neck, and which is a different layer than the hair, etc.

And this is something that should be possible in all digital drawing software (not sure about gimp but I know even procreate can do this). You can do a clipping layer on top of the individual layers, so anything applied to a clipping layer, will only affect the layer directly below it. It'll look like this in Photoshop

So see all those layers with the arrows? Those are clipping layers. The ones without the layers are the different objects I've isolated to one layer (you can see I'm chaotic neutral and I never label my layers) this particular image had like a ton of layers, but because I made them, it went a lot quicker to draw in shadows. Looks complicated, but is simple once you get used to it (and, using clipping layers you don't run the risk of accidentally merging down your layers. They just stay seperate layers forever)

then, many layers later, you get work like this that looks like a hassle and it kind of was, because coloring linework always is a pain, but has very neat and crisp shadows because of clipping layers. And, by using ctrl+click on those original layers, I could select multiple areas at once, so I could put that pink hit on his jacket and his hair at the same time.

Cel shading is a term used in 3D art, where you adjust the shade on a pixel depending on where in the threshold the much light is hitting at that spot.

This is not cel shading. It's just color variant shading.

Also note that you can use the grey shading with a lowered opacity, but you can also set it to "overlay" or "multiply" instead of "normal" flat style for appearance, and that'll change how the gray behaves - like making it appear more green and a natural color, instead of gray.

For example in With Great Abandon

The line-work gives the panels energy and a life of their own. The only real shading are some choice areas, but the characters for the most part are unshaded.

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And then on the color-side, in Fridge and Bear

Dots puts an emphasis on colors to set the scene with a few screen-tones and textures scattered throughout. Again the characters are largely unshaded aside from a few choice 'black' cast shadows.

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Same same! This is what I was going to recommend as well (and what I do for my comic). Basically you can use the same technique you are currently using with the gray which, as you've already figured out, is much faster than using unique shading colors for each part of the panel. BUT if you use a color instead of a gray, and use layer styles like "Multiply" (not sure if this exists outside of photoshop, probably?) you can get a little more mileage out of your shading.

For my comic each time the scene shifted to a new location, I would just select a new shading color that was kind of the "majority" color in the background, tweak it a little (to make sure the shadows aren't too dark or too light) and use that color for the whole scene. For example:

and finally back to gray. For these later cave scenes though, I actually use 2 shading layers: The first one gets applied over the entire panel (just a light gray shade). I erase out where the fire lights up but otherwise everything is shaded darker than normal. And then I do another regular shading layer with the same color on top of that.

I dont think shading is neccesary, but (as @joannekwan already mentioned), you will have to have very strong lines, athmosphere and understanding of colour.

I would recomend to you to keep shading for now. Be brave, use a strong shade and put bick and expressive shadows. From there you will automaticly learn a lot of light and shadow placement - understanding, that you will need if you decide to eventually settle on flat colours!

Another Tip: try to never use "black" or "grey shadows. Use a strong colour on a multiply layer. It will give so much more athmospehere to your drawings

For example, I used a redish purple for this one:

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Problem with the gray overlay is that it doesn't really convey much shadow. It's too light, and without checking the values it almost looks like it's a lighter value than the green it's being cast on. As well as shadows don't work in pure black and white scale. Light actually has tons of colours bouncing around! The sun's rays are gold, so if you pay attention to light coloured pavement on sunny days you may actually notice blue shadows being cast on it. Blended painting styles get a ton more complicated but a simple rule of thumb for cel-shading is that shadows need to be tinted slightly towards the opposite colour of the light being cast. So for gold, that would be violet. Make sure to test your work by desaturating it, there you can see pure values and check that your shadows are creating a strong contrast against areas that are subjected to direct lighting.

Colored multiply/overlay saves comic artist lives. It's always better to have at least cast shadows if you can't invest too much in shading, because if your linework isn't extremely advanced, the viewer loses all sense of position and shapes. And the colors add to the mood, which then works into the emotions you want the page/panel to display.

I think you'll need to add shading, but use slightly darker colors. At first glance, I didn't see a different between the pictures. I think that if you give more contrast when adding color, you will get more depth/dimension in your art without needed to do anything fancy

NOTICE Due to circumstances outside of my control, I closed my business Oct 2022 until further notice! I continue to work on personal projects or where my share goes to charity only. To read more about this please see my IG posts here: Important Announcement!

Drawing a comic can take a long time, which is why many comics are short stories. That means every panel and page counts. The best tip is to decide how many pages first and build your story around it. Consider making the story shorter or split it into 2 stories if it is too long.

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