Comic Artist Volume 2

... to yet another cracking Comic Artist collection – the third volume, to be exact! It’s packed with stunning pieces of art to inspire you, pro artist Q&As filled with tips and tricks to help you improve your own art, features and interviews to learn from, and in-depth step-by-step workshops to work along with, accompanied by exclusive videos to follow, free custom brushes to try out, and much more. And with Thor, Black Panther and Harley Quinn leading the charge in this volume, it’s a really special release! Whether you’re familiar with the industry standard software Photoshop, or you want to take your first steps in an affordable alternative with SketchBook Pro, this volume has plenty to get you started. And with expert tips on narrative and depicting character in your…

MEET THE EXPERTS… Struggling with a comic art technique? Having trouble with a character design? Our artists are here to help! Dave Brasgalla Dave is a graphic designer and illustrator from Stockholm who works in both digital and traditional mediums. He’s currently employed at games company Riot Minds. www.pixelhuset.se Tony Foti Tony is a freelance illustrator from California who works primarily in the gaming and publishing industries, most notably on Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars lines. www.tonyfotiart.com PJ Holden PJ Holden is Belfast-based comic artist who’s best known for his work on Judge Dredd and Rogue Trooper, and is also the co-creator of DeptOfMonsterology. www.pauljholden.com John Petersen John is a production artist and animator for Engineering Systems, Inc. He’s also an illustrator whose clients include Monte Cook Games and Catalyst Game Labs. www.petersenart.com Tom Foster Tom is a professional comic book artist, best known for…

PARIS CHRISTOU Autodesk’s SketchBook Pro for Windows and Mac is known for giving artists easy access to its many tools when working on any type of artwork. The essential philosophy behind the software is to help artists feel they have an application that acts just like a real-world paper sketchbook, which you’d use while out and about. The program is quick, simple and very effective. SketchBook’s Pro’s Lagoon is a user interface (UI) that offers a series of common shortcuts for speedy access. By default, it’s located on the bottom left of the application screen. Having these common shortcuts in one compact area helps you to streamline your painting process. Better still, you can even modify the Lagoon to fit your exact needs. So, let’s see how this can be achieved and how…

“All the brushes are displayed in one easyto-access toolbar” SketchBook Pro comes with a variety of brushes and tools to fit the needs of every artist or designer of all levels of proficiency. All the brushes are displayed in one easy-to-access toolbar called the Brush palette. This palette offers all the basic tools with simple adjustable properties for you to enjoy working with. The icons within the Brush Palette are graphically visual and easy to identify, which all helps to contribute to a smooth and user-friendly creative workflow. In this part of our guide you’ll learn how to locate the Brush palette within SketchBook Pro, how to open the Brush Properties panel for each brush and how to organise your brushes to improve your painting experience. 1 Finding the brushes The Brush palette is…

The latest SketchBook Pro is an all-in one package crammed full of tools and brushes to satisfy any type of artist, giving you plenty of helpful digital assets to complete your projects. Although the software provides you with all the tools you need, SketchBook Pro also gives you the power to edit and customise an existing brush, or create your own unique brush, and the possibilities here are almost endless. In this short step-by-step guide, you’ll learn the basics of creating a new brush, where to customise the brush’s properties, how to best name your new brush and change the brush icon, and finally how to add it to the Brush Palette. I promise it’s not as complicated as all that might sound! “You can edit and customise brushes – the possibilities are almost…

Layers are an integral part of SketchBook Pro’s flexibility. If you’ve used other software such as Photoshop you’ll be familiar with the concept, but if not, imagine a layer as a sheet of glass which can be stacked on top of others. Layers are the building blocks of a piece of artwork. The key is that each layer is normally transparent except where it contains an image element. For example, if I draw or paint a clear blue sky on one piece of glass (a layer), add another piece of glass (a new layer) on top, and then paint a forest scene on the top layer, I’ll still be able to see the blue sky on the layer below, peeking through the unpainted parts of my forest layer. That’s the power…