Leo Ki's skbk

[Leo Ki]

To be perfectly honest, there was nothing in front of the dryad initially, I was just marveling at the Kaerhon brushes, painted her in a fit of fever then stopped to wonder what she was doing, lol. First a monster, then some magical being, then started to change her stance to something more cautious, went back, lost myself. Still lost, I'll go back to it later.

Same problem here, my old WIP for a novel (turned graphic novel) about AI-induced chaos was set toward the end of this century when other things such as nanotechnology and planetary colonies had had enough time to evolve (and wreak havoc). Now it's a relic of the future and I do cartoons for today's times:




I overcame my fear, here is underwater! And a camera at the interface of both elements! Totally botched though. Meet Und, which I pulled from the same old drawer in which Chloe was drying:

[Leo Ki]

I now have irrefutable evidence that the little green men have been around for much longer than we feared and I'm on a relentless mission to dig up the earliest testimonies of it.

The first one is my attempt at a depiction from a witness' interview during one of my time traveling sessions:




The second one is by Cesare Maccari:




The original in better resolution is up there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Mac...accari.jpg
(If you cannot see the little green man in it you are a non-believer.)
(Also, the lighting does not make any bloody sense in this one.)

[dimensional-knight]

Omg, that cat drawing lesson is spot on!

It's funny you mention it was a novel you turned into a graphic novel, similar to what I'm doing. I've expanded the prologue of a novel into a comic, because it's self-contained and already had a interesting setting attached.

I'd still read a sci-fi novel about AI even if it's overtaken by reality. Because the setting won't be exactly like our world it'd read as alt-futuristic fiction (to not be confused with retro-futurism). Do you still have plans for that sci-fi?

Hmmmm, from the aliens pieces I'd say you like to play with societies and techno disruptions — or really like the color green. I love the hat lady's expression, as if she's miffed he interrupted her perfectly good day, and I'm convinced the real alien is the monkey-dog in the overly shiny chain in the painting.

[Leo Ki]

Camila, it's wise that you started the adaptation with a self-contained part, because one page of a novel can easily turn into ten pages of a comic. I don't have plans to continue my projects, they are just too big and time is limited. At one point I tried to go back to the faster novel format but I missed the funny pictures so much...

I do like green for nature (and nature creatures) but I'm not sure why I went on a (short lived) little green man frenzy. When researching the subject a bit, I found a hilarious gremlin-like depiction of them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_gre...y_1951.jpg

I suspected the monkey too, so I developed an advanced heuristics for a Krita filter that detects little green men. The result is stunning, they are everywhere! :O




Back to being serious for a moment. First quick shot at capturing something from a screenshot taken from a concert choreography at https://youtu.be/P0iOz9xf0zY?t=48




Same exercise with complicated hands from https://youtu.be/gf6v59c5yuY?t=216




And something that started as a doodle and is going somewhere undefined:

[Leo Ki]

More crazy hands, from https://youtu.be/C0OndmeRXHM?t=309
Photo distortion really doesn't work in a drawing though.




From https://youtube.com/shorts/cMMcaZVxUWA?feature=share




Another doodle that morphed into a world in the making:

[ThereIsNoJustice]

Some of those recent refs are quite challenging. Maybe it would help to use construction as an approach to capture some of the depth and foreshortening? Personally, I find construction helps with any pose, but it is adding an additional step, either mentally or in the physical drawing process.

[dimensional-knight]

Since it'll have an arc instead of being episodic keeping the comic constrained was a huge factor in choosing the story. I don't know how much time on average they'll take yet but I'm sure pages will come at a steep cost. But anyway, by "projects" you also mean you're no longer planning to work on a comic? D:

Regarding hands, I agree the refs are hard. What are you trying to get from these studies? Familiarity with hands shapes, gestures, construction...? I have a construction roadmap that could or not help, but which is the method producing the most solid hands for me right now. Not to say that my hand game is good, but it's more confident and consistent now.

(I loved the gremlin aliens by the way, they're so cute!)

[Leo Ki]

@ThereIsNoJustice and dimensional-knight, here is the why of it (please read on after the image):

From https://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/15...7118130178




When I used to make comics long ago, I had the construction method so ingrained that I often skipped the step on paper. But when I saw the horrors of AI images, I wondered what it would feel like if I unlearned everything and only focused on the lines of contrast without understanding a single thing of what I was seeing and drawing. I focused on the music instead of the image, trying to repel everything else. I failed, of course, and the result is a weird in-between that doesn't make much sense. One last one and I'm done with this robotic experiment:

From https://youtu.be/ZxHG-PQVi9w




All that being said and done, Camila, I'm still interested in your construction method. Mine for hands was often by starting the fingers from the wrist (I mean including the metacarpal in the construction) and considering the palm as a constrained part of the whole.

Your first comic pages will likely take you what seems like an exaggerated amount of time but keep going, I promise it's going to get faster from one page to the next as long as you're invested in the story. Story is key. If the story evades from you, it may be that you got sucked into drawing too many unnecessary panels or things.

I have dropped my projects indeed, whether in novel or comic form. They still live in the back of my mind though and might one day take control of my hand again ^^

[Leo Ki]

I stopped doing comics but the sketch below is a scene from one of my old comics. Horchata the indolent enchantress is performing out-of-this-world magic tricks at the Tapadeldia market. I looked at too many neoclassic paintings recently.

[Leo Ki]

Still the same characters and universe. The stronger I detach myself from past giant projects, the stronger they bounce back...

After a painful climb, Burung and Horchata cool down in freezing water before Valgarou Pass. Here they meet the secretive guardians of the valley. Horchata is always the first one who perceives danger. (This happens before the beginning of the story posted earlier in this thread.)




Blitz escaped slavery from the Inn of the Prancing Dahu and caught up with Burung and Horchata in Yetisburg further down Valgarou valley. Troubles ensue when the slave is recognized. (Happens after the story posted earlier.)

[dimensional-knight]

Hah, I also find myself often revisiting older projects. No harm in it, it's still practice. Worst case scenario you create a themed set of illustrations, which is neat!

About hands, if you're exploring their form posting about constructive methods would be counter-productive at this point. I find it's hugely helpful to just get used to shapes even if it looks awful to anyone else. To get more consistent results you can just kinda delimit the maximum area a hand would take and trace a line where knuckles would go if the gesture lends itself to it:




It takes half a second, then you can explore the outlines.

[Leo Ki]

Thank you Camila. I think I sometimes use a similar method (but I'm only half aware of what I do), especially marking the knuckles. Sometimes I draw an arc for the fingertips if the hand is full open. Sadly, more often I sketch them based on automatisms acquired from drawing thousands of them in layouts. Then when the time comes to ink them I realize I wanted something less cookie cut.

The arduous path to the latest CHOW:

[Leo Ki]

Let's pretend I want to go the printed way and don't care about readability on phone screens, here are a few layouts:




And the draft of a wide page format, because why not:




And some draft color without inking first:




Of all the things I try to draw, only comics make me happy. Gotta make a decision.

[Leo Ki]

Still pretending this side project would go to print. Draft of Page 1.




Trying brush inking.




Trying whatever coloring.




Same universe.




Another AI philosophy cartoon.

[cgmythology]

The compositions work really well for your recent panel work. I would maybe go for a cleaner look for the text bubbles as they feel a bit inconstant and a bit of chaos to the illustration. Maybe you can use the oval tool to quickly add it in instead? Great work otherwise!

[Leo Ki]

George, thank you! You are right about the balloons. There was a time when I used the vector-perfect balloons of Clip Studio, but I'm striving to make expressive ones by hand again.

Below is an example of this from a decade ago, it was a first draft of the story of the improviser and was set in medieval rather than ancient times.




Or this recent one:




Need to work out the balloons of this one. The text is huge because it's for phone screens.

[Dominicque]

I really like your compositions for comic panels Leo Ki. Does this take a long time to come up with, because it seems pretty intuitive for you. You just keep busting them out! Even your thumbs read rather well. (Were those 'AI hands' further up?) Maybe for the future you could try something longer, like a short story? If that's too much to think of right now, maybe an adaptation of a story you like? I actually think the speech bubbles with the boy calling down to the girl to really work. It adds character, not everything as to be super uniform. I mean look at Todd Klein's work in 'Sandman'.

[Leo Ki]

Thank you Dominicque! This particular scene doesn't take too long to do layouts for because it's been ingrained in me since I started this project long ago. But when I tackle a new scene it can take hours of doing a dozen different layouts until I find the one that works. And even when I start drafting at full scale, I can still change things because a particular detail I'm drawing evokes a more striking idea for the emotions, dialogs and events. Talking about the past here, because I don't really do comics anymore.

BTW I made these layouts more polished so that I'm not the only one knowing what's going on in them. It takes more time though.

I'd love to make more scenes of this pre-chapter that didn't make it into the story at the time, if that's what you mean. However, I don't have the energy to carry this story. At first it was a side project to relax from my main two comic projects. It was a light-weight parody of medieval fantasy which quickly turned into a lengthy tragicomedic saga in ancient times. I drew a good part of the first chapter in express condensed mode, then stopped drawing for ten years.

Agreed on bubble and text styling but I need to make that better so the intention is clear and doesn't look like random wandering (which it can be, lol).

Yes, I did a "study" of AI generated hands and actual hands as part of an experiment about drawing things as mere pixels without understanding what I'm seeing and doing (it's a million times worse than contour drawing). Check out the Twitter link I put in that post, it's full of funny hands.

Now trying to remember how I used to draw and ink, and it's painful.

[cgmythology]

Nice update, very solid lines as always, and some interesting use of perspective on some of them. Keep it up!

[ShinOkami]

Nice



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