The Superman Multiverse

[Super Monkey]

Maybe it's just me but I like the pencil version much better, it just has more fine detail that has been lost in the digital version. Have you tried hand inking it then scanning it or just coloring the pencils with Photo shop like Disney does it?

[nightwing]

I have to agree with SuperMonkey...I love those pencils!

I totally understand where you're going, though, TriSaber.  You're doing these "animation" style and that means the less lines, the better. But it's almost painful to see those subtle, delicate pencils give way to something so comparatively minimalist.  And I know in your next step you'll re-introduce depth and dimension with colors, but still...

Just for my own amusement, and SuperMonkey's, I played with your pencil image in Photoshop and got some so-so results:



Of course, this is more "comic" style and not so much "animation" style.  And it's not as pretty as what could be done with a real brush.

But man, you need to be doing real comics!  You're head and shoulders over the dolts DC's had on the super-books for years now.

BTW, just noticed you're from Nova Scotia, one of my fave places ever (my wife and I honeymooned there).  But while I enjoyed Halifax, Baddeck, Lunenburg, Antigonish, Cheticamp, Peggy's Cove and Sydney, I can't believe I missed Kryptonopolis!!  That's what I get for trusting my wife when she said there was nothing notable south of Pictou! :-)

[TriSaber]

the dolts DC's had on the super-books for years now.

BTW, just noticed you're from Nova Scotia, one of my fave places ever (my wife and I honeymooned there).  But while I enjoyed Halifax, Baddeck, Lunenburg, Antigonish, Cheticamp, Peggy's Cove and Sydney, I can't believe I missed Kryptonopolis!!  That's what I get for trusting my wife when she said there was nothing notable south of Pictou! :-)

LOL! Yep. A lot of people seem to blow right by Kryptonopolis during their travels through my home province here in Canada. Many a tourism support group has tried to lobby for the provinical government to recognize Kryptonopolis as an official heritage site and get it included in all the tourism literature, but to no avail. *Sigh*

In reality, Halifax itself is my home town. I like to call it Kryptonopolis because many of my friends seem to think I look like the Pre-Crisis Superman as drawn by Wayne Boring (especially when I crop my hair really short).  :roll:  :lol:

But you and Super Monkey bring up an interesting point that I failed to explain. As for why I chose a more "straight-lined" animated approach rather than the traditional inking techniques used in comics, the answer is simple. I really want the colouring to do all the "talking" when it comes to "fleshing out" the character and giving him/her more definition. Just take a look at the artwork in the current Superman: Birthright miniseries to see what I'm talking about. You'll see how it unfolds in the next few installments of my tutorial.

And speaking of Birthright, do you guys think I should make the Birthright Superman a distinctly different version than, say, the Post-Crisis Superman? This means we'd have four major versions of the Man of Steel as follows by my reckoning:

1. Golden Age Superman
2. Silver Age (Pre-Crisis) Superman
3. Modern Age (Post-Crisis) Superman
4. Birthright Superman

Lemme know what you think.

[TriSaber]

Once the sketch has been inked over in Coreldraw, I drop the imported sketch image and export the whole thing as an Adobe Photoshop PSD file. Customarily, I set the resolution of the image to be exported at 400dpi so the resolution can be nice and high. Once in Photoshop, I select all the black lines and areas with Photoshop's Magic Wand tool and place them on a separate layer to make it easier to colour. It's important to note that I export the emblem as a separate graphic so I can import it into the main Photoshop image as a separate layer in order to have it outline-free. This is why the emblem is black in the Coreldraw file. Just to make sure that the lines are crisp and black, I adjust the Brightness and Contrast of the lineart layer as low as it can go. I also remove any white pixels that may have gotten caught up in the selection of the black line areas, too. I do this by using the "Remove White Matte" command, which is off the Matting option in Photoshop's Layer Menu. Trust me ... this is a lot easier than it seems. Once that's done, I create a layer for the base colours, and use the Magic Wand tool to select the areas that I want to fill with whatever colour I choose. The result of all this should look like what you see in the image shown below.



Next: Shadows

[India Ink]

As Super Monkey noted on "Who's Who"--a lot of characters can be found on that site.  So here's Chester King/Hyperman--

[TriSaber]

Yup ... that sites' a veritable treasure-trove of material for my site. I can't thank him enough for finding it!

[TriSaber]

I was going to put off posting this image until the end of my little online tutorial. But in light of Julius Schwartz's passing, I decided to forego the delay and post it in his honor. I give you the Pre-Crisis Superman that we all knew and loved.



For you, Mr. Schwartz ... and for Curt Swan, too.  :cry:

[Super Monkey]

Great coloring on that pic, it looks fantastic.