I'm having this idea of a fantastic world in another dimension tainted with human trash. The characters are entirely my conception, from sketch to vectors, but this (test) background is a text-to-image prompt from Adobe Firefly. This is helping me visualize what I want. Of course, as mentioned in previous posts. The final art will be my own creation, although I will heavily take references and ideas from AI.
All characters are my concept and creation, but the background ideas/inspiration will be taken from Adobe Firefly AI images.
Backgrounds are 50 percent of a comic book story. Of course, you have to have a great story and good characters, but backgrounds are what solidifies, and glues all together.
I'm not afraid or embarrassed by Artificial Intelligence images. They can save me time and inspire me to complete my work.
In this post, I'm disclosing that my final backgrounds will be entirely created by me; general ideas of the environment, and color styles will be inspired/copied from Adobe Firefly images.
In this uploaded testing image, I'm playing with some Adobe Firefly images to set the mood, and style of the environment. I will test some more before I start creating MY OWN background art.
What's going on in this world? It's another dimension, next to ours. It's somewhere in America, near a large city. These creatures have interdimensional access to human trash. How does human trash reach their dimension and why? How does this affect their life? The human trash has been shaping their beliefs, their ideas.
It is time to start working on the background for these characters; scenarios, props, lettering, effects, and more.
I'm working on the second character, which stands in a second plane. The thickness of the outline is less accentuated as the figure appears smaller and requires a finer line. This fella is a little California Republic bear holding a tiny wax Hawaiian pineapple. In future posts, I will talk about the meaning of this trio of characters. I can tell you now, that this little bear will be a hoarder and collector obsessed with shiny objects and will reflect some Californian cultural ideas in his dialogues. I've always loved the Cali flag since I lived in Orange County, CA for a few years.
It took me a very long time to publish this post. There is a good reason. After much difficulty deciding the final look of my first character, I'm keeping things simple to avoid overworking and complications.
If this was going to be a T-shirt image or a poster, it would have made sense to work with extreme detail. I aim to repeat this drawing in several poses and -perhaps- make a very short comic, so avoiding too much work is essential.
Once the final style was decided, I grouped the vectors and moved them right to start working on the next character.
At this point, I'm adding some details to the character in the first plane. Light, midtones, and shadow, and a few vector modifications.
In this step, I'm applying a general black outline and solid colors to the character in the first plane. Details will come next.
The vectorization software can be Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw. They work perfectly well. I have both options, but in this case, I'm using CorelDraw as my preferred choice and I work much faster with it.
Right now, I'm working on developing this trio of original characters. I have always wanted to catch up with the incredible talents of the new digital and vector illustration era. Inspired by my admiration for this new generation of artists, I want to produce something of better quality, more elaborate, and perhaps even more extensive.
This first idea may become a short comic book or a simple character study. I'll publish next when I'm more satisfied with the results.
Of course, I will screen-capture the inking/vectoring, and coloring process. For now, I will exclude the drawing process, as my art ways are slower, irritatingly intermittent, and constantly changing to be comfortably recorded in one session.
My drawing software is Autodesk SketchBook Pro 7. I love it and it's incredibly versatile. Can't ask for more beauty.
To draw I use the Huion Graphics Pen Tablet Q11K. The electronic pen and the tablet are large-sized; perfect for me. Sensitivity is just right. It's like drawing on paper.
