Episode 23 Production Report
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Hardware and Operating System
- Storyboard
- Penciling
- Inking
- Brush presets used
- Color flat
- Background painting
- Character shading
- Post-mortem
Introduction
Summer 2017 is almost over, and I'm starting the autumn with this making-of episode 23. The production of episode 23 took me longer than usual because I wanted to open every steps to the Pepper&Carrot contributors and because also of my own perfectionism and focus on quality. The style for this episode is really clean, detailed and two month full-time from roughly mid June to mid August 2017 were necessary to complete the seven pages of "Take a Chance" (three weeks were necessary to get a final story adapted to our Git repository for the translation effort, then three intensive weeks were necessary to produce the penciling, inking and painting of the seven pages.)
I want to thanks Calimeroteknik, Nartance, Valvin, Cmaloney and many other around our IRC channel for the feedback during the storyboard development. Also, thanks to all translators for the amazing work (the episode is already translated in 18 languages as I'm writing this making-of), and of course, many thanks to all the patrons of Pepper&Carrot for funding all the time I'm spending on this project!
I built this article around the visual I collected while painting episode 23. My goal here: less text, more pictures. I hope you'll like scrolling this gallery! Feel free to comment at the end if you have a questions, and if you want to read the final episode, follow this link.
Hardware and Operating System
My operating system: (dual screen screenshot, Ubuntu Mate 17.04 + Cinnamon desktop)
My main tools for episode 23: Krita 3.1.4(appimage) and Inkscape 0.92.2(built from sources)
I'm using a Wacom Cintiq 13HD to redraw the artwork. The storyboard is still visible, but in background and low opacity
Storyboard
Storyboarding with Krita 3.1.4 : all pages embed on a single document
Version "alpha" of the storyboard: six pages only but the story had issue to understand the ending.
Final version of the storyboard: seven pages to better develop the ending with the help of Calimeroteknik, Nartance, Valvin, Cmaloney.
Cuting storyboard to single pages, artwork in blue, upscale to final resolution, and retracing panels in dark
Penciling
A page penciled, with perspective grid visible.
Inking
Inking: I repeat the process and redraw all a third time with a thin pen over the pencil.
Inking in progress: I'm inking at 67,7% zoom of the viewport, with my perspective grid and the penciling in blue.
I don't ink the background landscape. They'll be fully painted over.
Overview of three steps over the same panel : Storyboard (left) Penciling (center) Inking (right)
Brush presets used
Overview of three steps with indication of brush preset used for each step
Color flat
GMIC-Qt "Black&White > colorize [smart-coloring] " in action with custom settings. The filter auto-fills random colors under my inking.
Result of Gmic "smart-colorize" over the bottom of page one
Background painting
Background paintings started with transparent characters and big airbrush under blury/redish lines
Fully painted backgrounds with flat and non shaded characters.
Character shading
Final shading on characters ( with perspective grid visible )
Overview of three steps over the same panel : Storyboard (top) Inking (middle) Final rendering (bottom)
Overview of four steps over the same panel
Post-mortem
This episode is one that I remember most vividly, particularly for how I unexpectedly preferred my penciling over my inking. The inking pass was extremely thin, which made coloring it a significant challenge. However, the GMIC filter "smart coloring" proved to be a valuable tool in preparing the page. I also recall the complexity of the perspective grid, with its numerous roof-tops and top-down view angles, which added to the overall difficulty of Komona's scenery. This episode was definitely a challenging one.
If you want to have a look at the final version; follow this link.
