art samples of battle suits.

[Karoline Dianne]

http://lord-straylost.deviantart.com/art/GH-2-new- mech-list-63251431

here's what I've got for my SF1/SF2 battle suits. This is more or less what I've been talking about.

And I am totally in love with the Spartan... One hit is all it needs...
usually...

[Karoline Dianne]

here's a comic I did using my mechs.
And yes, I know... I really need to start inking...
http://lord-straylost.deviantart.com/art/Gearhead- comic-1-Spartan-63251064

And here's the character I use in gearhead. Just for reference.
http://lord-straylost.deviantart.com/art/Kuroko-wi th-her-spartan-63317851

[Joseph Hewitt]

Cool. You do need to start inking- inking is what is good in life. It makes your art look much more polished. I'm not particularly good at inking, but I'll share what I know.

If you're using bristol or some kind of thick paper then you can try inking with a crowquill nib. They're a bit messy and can slice through paper like a knife if you aren't careful, but provide beautiful results. Here are some pages I did using crowquill nibs:
http://ataraxia.comicgenesis.com/d/20060424.html
http://ataraxia.comicgenesis.com/d/20060321.html

These days when working with paper I tend to use disposable illustration pens. My favorite brands are the Copic Multiliner and the Deleter Neopico. The lines aren't as fine as you can get with crowquill nibs, which makes hatching difficult. It's just as well... I don't have the time or patience to do cross hatching anymore. Here's an example of work with these pens:
http://ataraxia.comicgenesis.com/d/20061020.html

I've also dabbled with using a brush for inking. Here in Korea you can get calligraphy brushes fairly cheap, and they're great for inking. You can vary the line width greatly with a brush. The problems are that brushes can be hard to control and are even messier than crowquill pens.
http://ataraxia.comicgenesis.com/d/20061004.html

Last year I bought a Wacom tablet, and earlier this year I started doing completely digital pages. The effect is somewhere between the illustration pens and the brush. Hatching is absolutely impossible at any resolution that  my computer can handle, unfortunately. Although the tablet was pretty expensive, in the long term I think it'll be cheaper than buying a new set of pens every few weeks.
http://ataraxia.comicgenesis.com/d/20070502.html

[Karoline Dianne]

Thanks for the advice. Personally, when I do ink, I just use a ballpoint pen. It turns out looking okay, to me anyways. The thing is, I'm afraid of inking. I spend a lot of time on my art, and I don't like risking it getting ruined. When I'm inking, I'm constantly afraid I may make a mistake I can't erase, on a piece of artwork I spent hours on just to get right. I do so much erasing, it's not even funny.
Any tips on how to avoid ruining an entire piece of art while still inking it? That would help a lot. Especially since most of my art is in dire need of being inked and finished.

[Joseph Hewitt]

There was a big discussion about that very topic at ComicGenesis recently. The general consensus seemed to be that you should learn to trust your inking and just go for it.

There are ways to ink a page without affecting the pencils, though. You could use a light table and ink on a second piece of paper. You could buy some clear mylar drafting film and ink on that. You could scan the pencil work into the computer, change its color to a very light blue, print that and ink the copy.

Personally I just ink on top of my pencils and take my chances.

The CG forum thread is here, in case you're interested. Its title, "How the f*** do you ink!?", may cause it to be blocked if you're at work or school depending on how crazy your workplace/school is about such things.
http://forums.comicgenesis.com/viewtopic.php?t=818 22

[macksting]

I take it there's no way to make a decent photocopy to work from? Just messes up the art too much?

[Machina]

If all else fails, get GIMP and learn how to do CG Inking. I use Photoshop for it, with the pen tool since I don't exactly have the steadiest of hands. It takes some getting used to, but with some experience you can get rather sexy results safely.

Given that it's already scanned, you already have that step done.

Gods, it's tempting to offer to do a quick CG inking of a panel to show it can be done...

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: macksting

I take it there's no way to make a decent photocopy to work from? Just messes up the art too much?

It doesn't sound likely to me, but use anything that works. Just like Bruce Lee.

Quoting: Machina

If all else fails, get GIMP and learn how to do CG Inking.

Inking with a mouse is hard, but doable.

[macksting]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

It doesn't sound likely to me, but use anything that works. Just like Bruce Lee.

I always take two job aps; one to screw up on considerably, the other to fill out. There's nothing deliberate about screwing one up; I'm just terribly good at it.

[Machina]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

Inking with a mouse is hard, but doable.

That's why I like Photoshop's pen tool. You can get smooth, even curves and straight lines even with an unsteady hand.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: Machina

That's why I like Photoshop's pen tool. You can get smooth, even curves and straight lines even with an unsteady hand.

Ooh, sounds fancy. I make do with the Gimp.

[SharkD]

Don't quit your day job.

[Karoline Dianne]

Don't worry, I plan on staying in school.
XD
and then pen tool is really hard for me to use... And even when I do get what I want... I can't fill in anything in the lines. I was playing around with photoshop earlier, and I drew a blob using the pen tool(seeing as that's all I can do...). when I tried to fill it in with color, it was like it wasn't even there.
Photoshop i more confusing than Flash... I can actually do stuff in flash... photoshop... not so much.

[Machina]

Ah, right click with the pen tool and hit "Stroke Path" or something to that effect.

You can use the brush's strokes to follow that path exactly. It takes some getting used to, but it works. Let me see if I can find something reletively good (and non-incriminating) for an example.

[Skulkraken]

You could always use the line tool.  My family's computer has a somewhat low-end analog mouse, which makes the standard pen tool too unreliable to use.  Thus, my sister always used the zoom and line tools to do inking, then touched up the lines using both the pen and eraser tools.  Time-consuming, but it got things done.  I'm not sure what she's using now.