Cartooning - Should you use Shading?

Introduction

To shade, or not to shade, that is the question! I recently evolved Area 5.1 into X-Failes so that I could show more detail and produce a more colourful product, but recently I've been feeling that it's been taking too much time. Truth be told, if it had gained me loads more views and likes I wouldn't care, but it hasn't.

I do use the following techniques to speed things up.

• Re-use characters and objects.
• Trace pictures of items I'm unfamiliar with.
• Re-use backgrounds.

But although shading can look really nice, it takes time, even when re-using artwork. Just flipping the image over usually requires extra effort, negating the time saved while you re-work the shading. And I didn't help myself by giving him tattoos.

Cartoon with Shading

Moving to a Flatter Style

Looking at the new style, it looks like I just copied from the cartoon above, removed the shading and tweaked it. But those elements have been re-used a few times and the fact they line up is just by chance.

Cartoon with flatter colouring

The thing I didnt expect was the colours to look bolder. I haven't been 100% consistant with eradicating the shading so there's still a slightly 3D feel about it.

The biggest time saver is probably the background. It's not much more effort than roughing it out with pencil and adding a bit of colour with a large marker pen. I then reduced the saturation by making it slightly opaque. The softer background does provide some degree of separation from the foreground objects, it focuses the reader a little.

Link to latest cartoon : http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/76/

Providing Location Clues

Introduction

This week's comic is based on the notion of mistake, or a couple of them to be more exact. But in order to make the joke work, I needed to make one or two things clear, ideally without having to write it into the dialogue. I'm a firm believer that people are turned off by cartoons with lots of text, so I try to minimise it as much as I can.

If you've not seen the cartoon yet then read it here first:

http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/65/

I'll show the artwork for each of the frames and explain my use of location clues.

Frame 1

The opening shot needs to set the scene and capture the audience. I needed the LGM's to be somewhere in the vicinity of earth so that a telescope would be feasible, or the joke wouldn't work. I chose Mars and made it as red as I dared.

Location Clue #1: I added the Curiosity Rover, because it's highly recognisable and commonly known to be on Mars. I could have used a sign saying "Welcome to Mars" instead, but it feels like a cop-out. It's better to infer it some way.

A Zoom with a View - Frame 1

After drawing the martian rover I wondered about why it hadn't spotted my Aliens and then decided that perhaps it had been de-activated. So I had it clamped.

Finally to give it that "Grand Day Out" feel, I added the deck chair and tartan thermos. I think there's something very English about those things, despite the fact it might sound a bit Scottish.

Frame 2

This very simple frame delivers the punch-line, but the joke's not obvious until you see the last frame. 

A Zoom with a View - Frame 2

Early plans had the zoom settings indicating scale:

• Ultra - 1m
• High - 10m
• Med - 0.1km
• Low - 1km

I discarded that idea, realising it would be too confusing. (KISS - keep it simple stupid!) I decided to devise a visual way of showing sizes in the last frame.

There's not much else to say about it really, other than I thought a background was unnecessary.

Frame 3

This one gave me a few problems because everyone knows that ants are tiny. If you draw them too small then it's not obvious what they are. Yet if you draw them large they look like monsters and the joke doesn't work. (Plus, I really didnt want to re-use the word 'ant' in the dialogue.)

A Zoom with a View - Frame3

The answer was to draw them both ways,.. small ants in the background appearing like cars on a highway, and a huge ant in the foreground for recognition purposes, so I put it on the branch of a tree.

Location Clue #2: I chose to add a matchbox to the scene because it was the right size (in comparison to ants), it's a recognisable discarded object and a common brand. It serves two purposes here; it confirms the location as Earth and sets the scale for the background insects dimensions.

But there's still a danger that the branch could look like it was on the ground with a huge ant upon it, so I used ground shading. It's subtle, but seems to work well.

Location Clue#3: It's not shown here, but I added a circular mask to the final frame to make it appear as a view through the telescope.

down the hatch!

Going back to my post of the 22nd, in which I was using my new colourful sheep design and completely ruined a joke which relied on a fairisle jumper being very obvious.

I've tried my new sheep design in black and white, using a little hatching. It's something I want to be better at. I keep revisiting this particular file and having another go at the shading. Here's the current version, it's not looking too bad, and I think it solves the aforementioned problem.

I like the sheep as line drawings, it's something I might do again. Could be useful when it's snowing!

Yvonne reboot, experimentation, day 1

The current style isn't working for me. Yvonne started as a 'stick sheep', and over the last year or so she's become neater and more detailed (even gaining hooves and a bit of shadow) which now looks at odds with the 'cloud on two sticks' idea that I started with and the bare background. So for each day in January (starting today) I'm going to scribble an idea. This is day one:

(It's amazing how much difference a bit of colour makes.)

In the very first post on this blog, Ricks spoke about shadows, but despite that, for a year my sheep have floated in the air.

At various times I've tried various ways to add a shadow and put their feet on the ground. But nothing's really worked, especially when they had no hooves.

The other day I tried this and quite like it:

It's very subtle but it's meant to be. Hopefully no-one will notice it, but it'll just indicate subconsciously that they girls are firmly planted on the grass.

Does it work? Does it highlight the fact that they only have two legs, and look a bit odd for that reason? Does it look odd that there's a shadow there but nowhere else?

Halloween - Barber'ism

Area 5.1 Comic - Barber'ism

It's a daft play on words I know, but that's the sort of thing to expect from me. Coming up with the title is something that I've always considered to be worth a bit of thought.

My level of work has dropped considerably while my life is in crisis mode, but I still have the drawing bug and work *has* to get out there. I started this a couple of weeks ago aiming for a topical event, but this time I gave myself plenty of time to finish it (rather than thinking of an idea that day).

Monsters -vs- Aliens

Yeah it sounds like a video game franchise, but it occured to me that who's to know what's alien and what's monster! I guess it comes down to point of view and level of fright/fear. So this cartoon revolves around the notion of something that appears to be harmless which then turns into a monster when our LGM's they make the wrong assumption.

Area 5.1 - Barber-ism (18th Oct 2016)

I chose a barber shop because I wanted it to look like a jack-o-lantern had been placed on a false torso as a halloween gag. It made sense that much of the detail should be covered over and I couldn't think of anywhere better.

This comic page link is here --- http://area5-1.webcomic.ws/comics/53/

Mirror Mirror

One of my challenges here was the mirror behind the barbers chair. I ended up taking a copy of the main image, reversing the order of the pumpkin and chair, altering the chair so it looked like the back, and then copying it back into the mirror frame.

I'm not sure I did myself any favours, it was a bit of extra work, but I didnt see how I could show a barber shop without attempting at least one mirror.

Two-Tone Shading

I had a few issues with differing shading styles at first, I've not long since moved from flat colour to two tone shading, and I had a fair amount of graduation shading in the mix (too much in fact). I reworked a lot of it, but there are still elements where the styles don't quite match.

It's still a learning game for me - figuring out how to "two tone" was enough of a problem, and I'm still not confident that I'm doing it right. I imagined a point on all surfaces where a line can be thought of sitting at least 45 degrees to the right of dead front. And then I went over areas where shadows might be cast from arms etc. (But the LGM's still seem a little too flat)