Pencil

Tim Tylor · Post by **Tim Tylor** » Sun May 16, 2004 11:29 am

"The tragedy is that pencil drawings never look quite as good once they've been civilized and transferred in ink onto the blank strip" Berke Breathed

Anybody using pencil for finished webcomic art? I was thinking the web might be ideal for pencil art, since the quality of printing isn't an issue.

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Sun May 16, 2004 1:08 pm

Sure. Biggest, most popular example off the top of my head: Megatokyo.

Tim Tylor · Post by **Tim Tylor** » Sun May 16, 2004 5:00 pm

Thanks.

I know of one other great example: Sea of Insanity.

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:16 pm

Two more:

Everything Jake (when it's not channelling Dave Sim's giant text pieces, anyhow)

and

Road Waffles (lovely shaded work)

I've never read Sea of Insanity, but it looks pretty well-drawn so I'll have to give it a read.

ragtag · Post by **ragtag** » Mon May 17, 2004 8:46 am

Interesting that you should post this. I was thinking about this the other day, just didn't get around to posting anything about it. Inking comics has a lot to do with printing, if you try to print pencil drawings with the same technique you would use for standard low cost b&w comics, the result would be pretty bad. But when doing online comics, there is not really much point to inking the comic, other than as a stylistic choice. If anything inking the pages is less suited for the web, especially if doing crosshatching and screen tones, than simply shading them with a pencil or color. A computer screen doesn't have the great resolution of a printer, but it's good at displaying color and different shades.

I have one comic on my page that's all done in pencil, mainly because it was originally done as a storyboard rather than any kind of logic or plan behind it. Interestingly though, several people have asked me if I'm not going to ink it. Seems like pencils are more often viewed as sketches or work in progress, rather than a finished product...and that ink somehow makes it more complete or final/professional.

Anyways...I'll leave my ranting at that.

Cheers,

Ragnar

www.ragtag.net/comix

Eric F Myers · Post by **Eric F Myers** » Mon May 17, 2004 12:15 pm

There have been printed comics done in pencil too. The obvious ones that I can think of are Sandman #70-73 (in The Wake). Neil Gaiman said that he always liked the way Michael Zulli's penciled pages looked before they were inked.

William G · Post by **William G** » Mon May 17, 2004 10:22 pm

If I recall correctly, "Big Numbers" was mostly penciled... but it has been a long time since I read it, so my memory may be faulty.

gazorenzoku · Post by **gazorenzoku** » Wed May 19, 2004 5:12 pm

anyone remember "Hero" or "Heroes"? It came out back in the 80's, I think. 100% Pencils, as I remember. Boy, I wish I had bought all the issues... only had one issue...

Also, I think Warlock 5 was either penciled or done in ink washes...

I'll have to check out those examples of penciled stuff online. I don't like the way Photoshop works with pencil scans, myself. This goes for producing printed comics as well as web stuff. So far I haven't had any luck scanning greytones well.... But maybe that's just me. A while back I wanted to do a comic all done in ink wash, but I couldn't get it to scan right... and adjusting it after the scan didn't work either...

Anyone run into similar problems?

Eric F Myers · Post by **Eric F Myers** » Wed May 19, 2004 7:58 pm

gazorenzoku wrote:I don't like the way Photoshop works with pencil scans, myself. This goes for producing printed comics as well as web stuff. So far I haven't had any luck scanning greytones well.... But maybe that's just me. A while back I wanted to do a comic all done in ink wash, but I couldn't get it to scan right... and adjusting it after the scan didn't work either...

I've had the same issues. I don't think it's the software that causes the problem, it's the quality of the scanner being used. My scanner hardly picks up pencil tones at all. Taking close up shots with a digital camera works much better for me.

Rip Tanion · Post by **Rip Tanion** » Tue May 25, 2004 4:49 pm

efm wrote:I've had the same issues. I don't think it's the software that causes the problem, it's the quality of the scanner being used. My scanner hardly picks up pencil tones at all.

Funny, my scanner picks up stray pencil marks that I don't want, especially when I scan at a high resolution.

Back when I took Gene Colan's class at SVA, Colan showed us work he did for a pencils-only issue of Dracula, back in the '70s. He said it presented a myriad a reproduction problems. Of course, the technology has advanced somewhat since then.

Stephen Henderson-Grady · Tue Aug 24, 2004 3:55 am

Most webcomics that use pencil are like Megatokyo; rather than looking like a pencilled comic they look like a comic pencilled for inks and then never inked. This is a bit like seeing the bones of a comic and it's pretty interesting.

Still, I like the look of pencils drawn to be pencils, with different textures and strokes and types of pencil. A great example of this would be a little comic on Keenspace called Fallen Angels Used Books:

http://faub.keenspace.com

Excellent art in this one.

gazorenzoku · Post by **gazorenzoku** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 7:33 am

Hey, why don't we ask the people who make the comics mentioned in this thread to give us their secret recipies for turning pencil art into web graphics? I would ask them, but maybe someone else who is more inbedded in the web community or something should be the one to do it?....

Anyhow, they are all pretty interesting.

Right now I am hooked on black and white ink, preferably with color or greytone added. But I'd still like to be able to play around with pencils too....

Post by **Greg Stephens** » Tue Aug 24, 2004 9:43 am

Stephen Henderson-Grady wrote:Still, I like the look of pencils drawn to be pencils, with different textures and strokes and types of pencil. A great example of this would be a little comic on Keenspace called Fallen Angels Used Books.

I'd never seen this comic and I'm glad you pointed it out. It is really beautiful. And conveniently pertaining to this discussion, there's even some thoughts from the author on the art style to be read on this page. (There may be more comments throughout the comic, but I haven't done any real reading yet.)