[061228]
This entry (Yes, ENTRY) being written early.
Whilst writing the previous entry, I realized that I had never reflected (Yes, REFLECTED) on the progression of my coloring through the ages (Ages being relative in this case). Thus following a few scans and such, I gathered up the content required for such a reflection, and am now proceeding to write. Early.
My first voluntary colored picture (outside of kindergarten/preschool) was a BCInc freighter over Confederate League 1 (Then still Comicland) scanned and uploaded (something like this). That was done in September of 2002 with simple pencil and colored pencil. I recalling telling someone (Most probably J?) that the result was not worth the time taken to color such a picture. Boy was I wrong. Note there also isn’t any shading. Shading doesn’t appear in my drawing until mid 2003.
Colored pencil colored pictures were upgraded with the introduction of inked lineart and shading. Some examples have already been shown in d106 (They are the ones marked for Dec 02 to Jan 03).
What few colored pictures I did were done in colored pencil for another year and a half. In June of 2004 I attempted a digitally colored picture for the first time, the end result being the Starcrossed Cover of 2004. This is pretty much the most time consuming picture I’ve ever done, not to mention one of the worst looking. It is also the only picture I’ve colored in Photoshop (Gasp). Regardless, this was pretty much an experiment for the most part, so we’ll leave it at that.
Paint Shop Pro became my coloring medium at this point. Cell shading as executed in the Starcrossed Cover was also dropped relatively quickly, my last cell shaded picture being one of chikara in late 2004. Subsequently, a rather horrendous coloring method reared it’s ugly face. In pictures that followed, all color divides were blended using Paint Shop Pro’s not so pleasant “push” tool (Don’t think that’s actually the name) as depicted here. I am not too sure about the date of origin here, though I’m guessing late 2004 to early 2005.
An anomaly in this mess is the traction engine in the default gallery. The only machine I ever colored as a picture itself, the traction engine limitedly foreshadows some of the blending methods that would later be applied to my OpenCanvas pictures.
Luckily PSP blending coloring ended by the middle of 2005. I don’t have any examples. I took them all down a long time ago. But between the PSP blending period and the initial OpenCanvas period that would follow, a few more anomalies cropped up. Two colored pencil pieces (Last I’ve done since) here and here and a cell shaded picture here were done in August and September of 2005. There were also a number of experiment “Soft CG” pictures.
Then in late 2005, probably around October or November, the initial OpenCanvas period opened up with THIS picture. I had originally used OC because it was easier to blend in OC than in PSP; as you can see, all color divides are still blended pretty thoroughly, but things are about to change. The lineart here is dated for January. Apparently it was supposed to be colored with PSP blending. Luckily it wasn’t.
The REDRAW of Discipline of 06/02/08 marked the end of an era (And really, an era here, not a period), subsequent paintings, starting with Misuzu Kamio of 06/05/23 reintroduced digital inking (Not seen since the Starcrossed Cover) and hard color divides en masse.
That brings me to the painting of the current period, described in last week’s ENTRY: The illustration relevant to today’s update is the result of a refinement of the “technique” used here and here.
Interestingly this is actually an unrefined version of the painting method depicted in my crude “tutorial” in episode 112. It is scaled back in that in conforms to my ever strengthening belief that actual cg “painting” (as opposed to cell shading) should be done using as few digital “helpers” as possible (ie. paint bucket, gradients, blurring, etc). The painting method in today’s update uses just one layer for foreground color and one layer for background color, and only one type of brush all around.
I’m also omitting the digital inking just out of sheer laziness. I just try to keep the lineart cleaner. Either way, the more recent coloring method is less time consuming than the older one, a simple figure can pretty much be painted under an hour if I focus (That’s a guesstimation. I don’t focus very well). I’m realizing that much of the points that I’m not satisfied with in this painting stem from imperfections in the lineart itself rather than how I paint. In that sense I think my painting has superceded my drawing, which is somewhat saddening.
Umm… yeah, that’s it.
EDIT: In response to J’s ENTRY, I daresay his panel layout is more dynamic than mine. Something I’ve been meaning to work on, but, as usual, to no avail. However, if the paper he draws on has the boxes on it to mark the referred to boundaries, why didn’t he realize he was outside the boundary to begin with (When he was drawing the comic, that is)? Maybe I’m not understanding or he not communicating something clearly.
Furthermore, I am highly, highly skeptical that anyone would even CARE to hack the poll. Even if someone did, who in the right mind would hack… then inform the hack-ed about the hack-ing? I guess he’s referring to his comment about voting elsewhere (Clearly the answer to this whole issue is that the site is developing AI and is conspiring to…)
Nonsense Wars 
