[] Digital Scratch Comic Guide [] #graphic novel #art #tutorial #guide #scratch #how-to #comic

Instructions

<—————————- |TABLE OF CONTENTS: |…………….. | CONTROLS |• Mobile Controls |• PC Controls |• Enhancing Slides |……………. |ART GUIDE |• Making Art |• Rendering: Shading & Lighting |• Making a Thumbnail |—————————> • Mobile Controls • This is a template with moving arrows you will need to open your graphic novel to mobile viewers. it sucks to be stuck on mobile and have to go into the code and change it just to be able to to properly view a project. • PC Controls • You can also use A,D or arrow keys to navigate this project which makes it easier for PC users to use the project. Now onto the art guide… • Enhancing Slides • When making slides, you’ll probably want to have a decently big canvas so when you import it to scratch it won’t be as pixelated. Quick Warning: Depending on how many layers you usually use in your art, you might not be able to have an insanely large canvas, which is also fine, however having less pixelated can enhance your graphic novel and really bring readers into the story. It IS practically impossible to have completely unpixelated artworks/graphic novels on scratch as it automatically downsizes the canvas, but it is worth a shot. • Making Art • Warning: this part is completely subjective! I recommend making the sketches for all the pages in each chapter before lining them (This is not really an option for longer chapters, and with longer chapters it can sometimes be better just to freehand it without a sketch). When you finish the sketch, Begin lining the artwork. When lining art, I usually adjust the stability to make my lineart smooth and flowing, but if you are doing a flashback or a page where it’s supposed to be harder to see the character, I recommend doing sketchier, less neat lineart. When I have finished the lineart, I begin on the coloring. With complex characters, or to make sure you can blur some colors without blurring others, it is sometimes necessary to have 2-4 layers for the coloring, but with less complex characters, for example, a grey tabby cat, you will only need one layer. I do most of my coloring in one layer, because it keeps my layer stacks neater and more tidy. • Rendering: Shading & Lighting • Ah, shading. I often don’t do “individual shading” for my comics, “individual shading” meaning shading each character/item individuallly. I will usually put a light source and call it a day. but sometimes, it is very necessary to do “individual shading. For example, if you had 3 characters around a campfire, you wouldn’t want to just put the campfire and leave it at that. With scenes that have fires in them, you want to have heavy, cell-shaded shadows and gold-red-orange lighting on focal points. This can draw more attention to a focal point, and still show realistically how the fire would reflect onto said focal point. Another tip for lighting/shading is to pick either the lighting or the shading color and select, say, yellow for the lighting. Depending on how green or orange your yellow is, you will want either purple-indigo or royal blue for your shading: the three opposites of yellow. Yellow-orange would give you royal blue shading, and yellow-green would give you more indigo-purple shading. Black shading can make the characters look flatter, even though it’s shading, which can be counteracted by adding a slight hint of the opposite color of the lighting. Well, that’s all good and fun, but what if you are using white for your lighting? Pick whichever color you think would make the most sense in the scenario. Trust your judgement. If you try, say, a purple tint and you think it looks good, it looks good. If you try a purple tint and, well, it looks off? That’s fine too! However, I recommend expirimenting with a few different tints before deciding which one you want to use. • Making a Thumbnail • Some people will host little contests and ask other artists to draw a thumbnail for them to use, but with your first chapter, you might want to use your own art so it doesn’t feel clickbaity if you have a completely different artstyle than the person whos’ thumbnail you picked. People who are coming to your graphic novel for the first time are going to want to see what your art is like before they start reading. For example, they might find your artstyle a little to “messy” for them to completely understand, which is fine, but at least they’ll know right off the bat that your artstyle wouldn’t be a good fit for them. Another reason to do your own art for your first chapter’s thumbnail is that, you might want it to be a surprise for your fanbase, and your fanbase also might not know your characters as well as they would if they’d had at least one chapter to get to know your character. For example, if you held a TN Contest with a character that is dull and unexiting, and someone made an entry where that character had a big smile and was jumping in the air, it might be weird to use that thumbnail. There is also a Thumbnail sprite in this ...(desc too long, check Notes & Creds)