From Concept to Comic Genesis

[icepick]

I'm not a bad artist, at least in my opinion, but I can't seem to be able to take my drawn art and have it scan properly. I generally take my sketches, run a pen across the lines, and try to edit the work digitally.

I don't know the exact problem, if it's the quality of the paper I use (low), my scanner, my scanner settings, or if it's the fact that I use a bad pen, but I can't seem to have my scanned artwork look anywhere near as good as my original work.

The "black" pen comes out to be a relatively dark gray, if you're looking for the 6 digit hex code, it's around 000470, which isn't quite black, and it drives me nuts.

Any suggestions on making it better?

[Lucifer]

Now I'm no art guru, however from what I have heard, all artists have to clean up scanned art work. This includes darkening lines, re-erasing eraser marks, and possibly touching up work before resizing, and putting it up as a finished product.

From what I remember, I know Fred Gallagher (Megatokyo) uses blue art pencils, but I know there are more who use that for scanned artwork. Apparantly it shows up better, scans better, and even erases more thoroughly before scanning.

I know Mac Hall Creator Ian McConville draws his, scans it, and colors it, but removes the initial lines, as he disliked the final product, and apparantly removing them was either easier, or prettier without them, thus he did away with lines in his coloring process change starting here and the change can be really seen 4 comics foreward from there.

All I'm saying here is that if you want black lines, you need to change them yourself in the digital panel (Or spend a crap load of money at an art supply store to get a true black that a scanner will pick up, which I'm not completely sure will even work). There are tools in professional editors which will help you with this, the same way photoshop can reduce red-eye, it can also darken your lines. I don't know how to use it, but there are enough tutorials out there to show you how to do it on Photoshop, GIMP, or Paint.Net.

If you're set on doing the low tech version, even MS Paint can zoom in and you can recolor pixel by pixel until you get the effect you're going for, but it's really not too efficient, especially as GIMP and Paint.Net are free.

Hope I helped, or at the very least, didn't hinder. Hope to see good stuff soon-ish

[icepick]

I just scanned it in black and white, then changed the scale from that to RGB, and it worked just fine.

[ash]

Yeap... but blue pencils R a good choice...
I'm not so smart girl in this, but I can tell U this: Draw initial lines with blue pencil, then remark with pen or brush. U can use chinese ink (it's darker). U can left initial lines when U have to scan U'r work. Scanner will not digitize blue lines. Then, once in photoshop, in RGB, move the "levels" settings...
Of course, it's only suggestion... experiment a lot.

[newmutant6]

Two questions:
1) How do I change scanner settings temporarily?
2) (Slightly off topic) When you go to sign up for a ComicGenesis account your address is required. They won't mail me anything if I sign up will they?