Reader Michael Kasaboaki had a few questions regarding my John Carter process. With his permission, I've created a blog post to answer them.
Michael: I recently upgraded to Photoshop CS5 and up until now have been stitching my scanned artwork together with a very manual method that I learned on another blog. This Photomerge feature looks like it may help to automate the process though! Thanks for pointing it out. So, I manage to make do with my small scanner, but I'd really like to get a printer that's capable of printing larger formats like 11 x 17 and I was wondering if you might tell me what brand/model of printer you're using?
Eric: Hi Michael. And thanks again for your questions. There are a lot of printers out there that can print "large media". Some are better then others. I picked mines up at Staples for under $200, So you don't have to go bankrupt picking one up :) The model I'm using is an HP Quickjet with wireless capabilities (which comes out great since you don't have to connect it to your computer and you can print from your iPad, assuming you have one). Personally, for my needs, I think it's excellent.
Michael: Additionally, I'm just learning how to colour in Photoshop myself, but I see a lot of other artists using Manga Studio so I thought I might get a copy of that as well. I've done some reading about it and it looks like it has a lot of comic book specific features built into it which is probably why you say it speeds the colouring process up a bit. I have two questions about Manga Studio though. One, how steep is the learning curve and what's the best way to go about learning it?
Eric: Unlike Photoshop, which was primarily created for Photographers and later adopted by Artists,
Manga Studio is a comic's creation powerhouse. It was designed by Comic Book Artists for Comic Book Artists. In my time dealing with the App, I've discovered that there's almost nothing the developers of Ms have not thought off, especially in their higher end or "pro" version, Manga Studio EX. Primarily, though, Ms is geared towards digital Artists who want to create comics in a completely digital environment from start to finish. However, you can use it anyway you'd like. For example, you can traditionally pencil your pages, scan them in, and then ink them in Ms. Or vise versa (which as you know, is what I am currently doing). EX allows you to color the pages the way you would in Photoshop. The reason I say it's better is because you don't have to jump from Ms to Ps to color, and then prepare your art for coloring in Ps (like separating line art). You can just do it all in Ms, quickly and easily. There are other reasons, but I'll save those for a future tutorial or demo.
As for learning curve, yes, there is one. At least there was one for me. I went an entire year without using Ms because I could not get it until I finally decided I was going to tackle it head on. I soon found out it's not that hard to "get it". Actually, it's a whole lot easier them Photoshop. But let me tell you, I had no help. Unlike Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, I had no one I could go to with questions. And there were next to no tutorials on the web. That's not the case now as there are tons of tutorials appearing left and right by a large community of Ms Users. If you want a crash course in the App, you can
start here. He covers a lot of great tips on how to use Ms which I'm sure will help you get up to speed on using it for your needs.
Michael: Two, I always thought the cool textures I'm seeing in the artwork of people using Manga Studio came from Manga Studio. However, you're saying you go back to Photoshop to add you textures. I was just curious, does Manga Studio offer any textures at all and do you use any online resources to get your Photoshop textures or are you building all your textures for Photoshop yourself? One thing that I really, really enjoy in your artwork is the texture and it's something that I've yet to really learn how to do and incorporate into my own artwork. I think that will likely be my next challenge, even before tackling learning Manga Studio since it seems that everything can essentially be done in Photoshop. The process may just not be quite as streamlined.
Eric: The only thing I've been using Ps lately is for adding textures. Ms can't handle this yet, but hopefully, it will in the future in which case I'll more then likely be dumping Ps. I'm sure with a little bit of tweaking, you can use Ms to add textures via the brushes. But I don't bother. The reason I use Ps for textures has to do with the Layer Modes. Ms still does not support Layer Modes so until then, I'll stick with Ps for textures (I may do a Textures tutorial this or next week so stay tuned!). As for where I get my textures? I get some
here and on occasions, I will tale photographs which I will convert to use as textures. It all depends on what I'm looking for. I have a folder full of textures which I recycle over and over again in many of my illustrations. It may seem like I use different ones all the time, but that's the magic of combining more then 1 texture at a time to create new diverse textures which just make the image pop. But more on this in a future tutorial :)
Thanks to Michael for the questions and if you have any questions, let me hear them in the comments section.