Episode 37 Production Report (part 2)

Table of Contents

• Changing midway the workflow
• Consequences
• Comparison
• Switching hardware during the production
• A difficult and long process
• Release is soon: announcement for translators

Screenshot: Krita, a sneak peek into the upcoming Pepper&Carrot episode.

Changing midway the workflow

Since my first production report dedicated to episode 37, my opinion changed about the workflow. Everything for the production was starting well and was fine when applied the conclusion of my style research exposed on my first production report, but during the final step (shading and detailing) I felt stuck. I disliked the rendering and the workflow wasn't flexible enough when I wanted to fix back elements like the the line-art and control line thickness.

example of the workflow I used as detailed in the first production report.

Consequences

Unfortunately, it was a bit late for a change: at that point I already did all line-art and the colored flat under them with Colorize Mask. Switching mid-way to another workflow meant a lot of hours done for nothing.

On left: a line-art with colorize-mask markers, on right: the resulting color flat under the line-art.

That was a hard pill to swallow, but I changed strategy: I put my clean line-art down to low opacity (40%, Grain Merge) and I started to just paint freely under this new setup, focusing on the general ambiance of the panels.

On left: the line-art, on right: the same page at 40% opacity with painterly color under, no more flat area

Then I merged all and started to paint over that colored sketch. It's a longer process, but I had room and freedom now to fix the drawings, adding details and continue to improve the panel while coloring.

The final result after a long paint-over

Comparison

When I had to redo the already shaded page 1, I could play with the thickness of my line-art, making it thinner and removing it when necessary. This picture compares the two rendering, left (before), right (after).

comparison of rendering on the panel 1: on left, a inking colored. on right, with the paint-over

Switching hardware during the production

I also changed hardware midway: I started with the XPPen Artist Pro 24, but then I preferred to comeback to my comfort zone: my non-display tablet Wacom Intuos 4 XL.

left: XpPen Artist Pro 24, right: Wacom Intuos 4 XL

A difficult and long process

All in all, this episode had a very chaotic process so far, as you can see on this three versions of the same panel, but I feel on better track and closer to the rendering I have in mind now. I hope you like the result!

The same panel, three times: top: direct painting (unfinished), middle: line-art and color flat, bottom: paint-over final

Release is soon: announcement for translators

Finally, the call for translations before release was published last week on https://framagit.org/peppercarrot/webcomics/-/issues/213#note_1853362 , many thanks to all translator who already uploaded their work on it.