The ABR Tutorial Thread~~ (Under Construction)

[ABR Guild]

Have artist's block? Lacking skills? Don't have enough dynamic oomph in your battles? Well, this thread is that solution. Hopefully, you'll find enough reference and inspiration to keep on going and help improve your manga/comic or overall drawing skills. :B

Currently, the thread is under construction. But if you still wanna put in your submissions, go nuts and PM me.  

[ABR Guild]

DrunkenStyle's Method:
Shiet. (No images yet. XD)

I say METHOD because it's not an actual tutorial which I'm not gonna be good enough to do yet. It's just showing you how I draw which could be helpful to you somehow.

Well, first of all, my method of doing ABR battles is manga style. Depending on how lazy I am on a certain day, the importance of the battle, and how fast I want to respond, my manga pages range from being loose and sketchy, to fully colored, finished works.

I start off with three methods of replying: Introduction, Initial Attack, or Response.

Introduction is where I introduce my character back in the battle if I haven't been in there in a while, or of I reintroduce my avatar with a different outfit. I rarely do Introductions because it's basically just showing off your avatar. There's not much "battling" in it.

Think about it, if you were in a gang fight, would you rather stand there saying "I'M HERE!!" or jump in, shout "WATCH OUT, YA PUNK a** SUCKAS!!" and kick a couple of asses while taking their names? This is where Initial Attack comes in. It's more fun if you jump into an existing battle or initiate a battle with someone. People are more disgruntled if they just post their Intros and no one notices. That's why it's best to do initial attacks.

Then there's Response, where you're already in a battle and you're replying. ANYWAY, on to the drawings.

[image] I start off in openCanvas, Photoshop, or ComicWorks. Right now I'm using openCanvas and I usually have huge resolutions. It's set in 1800 x 2700 pixels. In my mind I'm already thinking of what to do, what to say, and which panels should be where. I replay the actions in my mind so I don't forget. First, I actually put in all the panels with 3px lines.

[image] Then I start a new layer over or under the panels and draw loose sketches with the Pen brush in each panel just to get the basic idea of what it'll look like.

[image] Afterwards, I lower the Opacity of the sketch to make it lighter. I make a new layer over it and draw a more defining sketch. Sometimes I have trouble so I make a couple more layers of defining sketches till it comes out right. It's a habit. I delete all the other sketches and keep the final sketch I'm satisfied with.

[image] Next, I make a new layer over the sketch for my final inking. I choose a thicker line ranging from 1.8 to 3.5 pixels with no jitter. Ink like you would in real life, with one long stroke rather than a series of sketchy strokes. I make sure I show line weight, which is where lines are skinnier on some parts while thicker on others to show weight.

[image] For battles, I make bigger panels with a lot of action. I'm actually a martial artist, so it's not hard for me to choreograph a good fight scene. Like a martial art choreographer, I play out in my head an attack and response and defense in my head. I use real applications mixed in with fantasy. xD Whereas I see some people who have a really good martial art kicking pose, but it doesn't look dynamic. You don't know how it got there or how powerful it is when it hit the other person. You don't even know if it's possible to be in that pose and have a good effective hit. It's just...there. I have a habit of thinking of a choreography and getting up and walking around my house for a bit. It's hard to stay still while thinking of exciting s**t. XD

[image] So far, there are 3 layers. Panels, Sketches, and Inked. I make the Sketches layer invisible and make a fourth layer, which is for special effects. Speed lines are really helpful in showing how fast and how powerful an attack is. All I do is just draw quick straight strokes for the lines. Nothing hard about that. Depending on how fast and powerful, you could have less lines or a lot for dramatic speed.

[image] In a new layer I add in sound effects. I like to mess around with stuff at this part.

[image] The last part I add in is dialogue. In a NEW layer (6 layers now), I draw in my speech bubbles. They don't have to be perfectly round. It's much better if it looks rugged and rustic (in my opinion). Also, for shouts, I make them very jagged.

[image] For text, I actually switch over to Photoshop because I think oC sucks with text. XD I use AnimeAce for normal and whatever else I got in my Fonts folder for speech.

[image] After all that, I merge them all in one layer and resize the image. The reason I make them big when I draw is because when it's smaller, the quality is nice, smooth, and crisp.

That's pretty much how I do it. If I feel like toning or coloring, I go on Photoshop or ComicWorks for that kind of stuff. But usually not because I'm lazy. T3T

Tips:
• Make sure your poses are dynamic. If you're not a martial artist, and want a good martial art pose, look online for pictures or watch kung fu movies. They're funnn. :BB
  
• Still can't draw that good pose? Act it out yourself in front of a mirror. You can see how the body moves when you're doing it in front of the mirror. You can memorize how your pose looks and sketch it out with a stick figure or something. Then you can work off of that.
  
• A good reference to get inspired off of is reading from Manga. Study how your favorite mangaka utilizes fight scenes, panels, and dialogue.
  
• Show a lot of character when you're battling. Whether it's humorous or serious, it won't hurt to have
  
• Learn your anatomy. One reason for the ABR is to learn your anatomy.
  
• Diversify your characters. It's boring if every single person in the ABR is skinny and toned. It's fun to draw buff characters or fat characters or young child characters. Different body types make the world go round.
  
• Challenge yourself. It's boring if all you're good at is doing frontal poses and one-leg-up for a kick. Study kung fu movies and martial artists and see how they work their body physics.
  
• Take your time. There should be no rush if you're in the ABR, especially if it's lively and busy. The main focus is an art jam to strengthen your skills, not a doodle chat. Don't do 3-minute crappy drawings with no effort, which grinds my gears so much. xD

 

[ABR Guild]

Goshujin Sama's Line Art Technique

1. Open photoshop
2. select the layer with your line art
3. go to filter>stylize>diffuse
4. klik on Anisotropic in the menu that pops up.
5. press ok and now u should have a non crispy lineart :3  

[ABR Guild]

Badeye's Tutorial:

Removing lines from lined paper in photoshop:

Scan your image at a high resolution (at least 200dpi) in RGB mode. Open up Hue/Saturation (Image -> Adjustments -> Hue/Saturation or ctrl+U). There's a dropdown menu automatically set to Master; change that to Cyan and slide the Lightness level to the maximum lightness. If there is still a blue line, choose Blue from the dropdown menu and make that as light as possible, too.
Most lined paper has a red line on the margin, as well, and you can use the same technique to get rid of it. Just choose Magenta or Red from the drop down menu instead of Cyan or Blue.

This only works if you've drawn on the paper in some color other than blue. If you've drawn in blue pen... Well, you'll have to look for some other method of cleaning. The best advice is just to avoid drawing on lined paper, since murphy's law says the best drawings are done on the crappiest paper, and then you're stuck with a great drawing on a lousy peice of paper. Photoshop can help clean up some problems, but think about what you're drawing on before you create more work for yourself than is neccessary. :p  

[ABR Guild]

Cholesan
Anatomy Crash Course

Andrew Loomis:
Figure Drawing For All Its Worth (format: PDF // size:23.7 MB) - sendspace and megaupload
Drawing the Head and Hands (format: PDF // size: 36.9 MB) - megaupload

I strongly recommend downloading the Figure Drawing For All Its Worth book. It's roughly 200 pages of basic lessons and references that touch on bone structure, muscles, proportion, planes, perspective etc. It's no replacement for real life drawing, but it will help strengthen your fundamental sense of anatomy.

PLEASE SAVE ALL FILES ONTO YOUR COMPUTER!
Andrew Loomis's books are all completely out of print and are hard to come by in real life. I'm not so sure when the http links will come down but please tell us if any of the downloads expire so they can be renewed.