Comic Book Studio

Sat Nov 6 14:38:50 CET 2010

Hi,

I like this idea, I think it's brilliant.
I also have a comic project ;) But on the long terms, side of my 
freelancing job.

=> For the moment, my summer research about a workflow was :
- Story : the evident simple text editor of course to correct easier 
myself , but not something like CeltX
- Storyboard : Gimp or an Image manipulation soft ( essentially to 
crop/paste/copy/resize/move characters, panel box, and lay down some 
text ) ; it could be Krita but for the moment I focused on stable 
softwares.
- Split panels : A weird step to save memory, and split all the 
storyboard panels into singles files.
- Clean layout : With Scribus , create the panels and the clean text ; 
in each panel import the pictures on the disk, linked.
... And of course work on each panel while updating on the Scribus layout.
=*Pros:
- Scribus can resize the picture inside the panel as well as the limit. 
So it's flexible
- Memory saving for low perf of open-source softwares ; work on each 
panel separatly
- Work on each panel separately allow to switch software easily ( all 
text / vector infos are done by Scribus , so Mypaint+Gimp+Krita+Alchemy 
can play with the raster panel pictures )
- Multipage management of Scribus.
=*Cons:
- Can't manage the 'overall' page aspect on one files ( for exemple 
colors adjustement, or contrast ...  )
- Time to split all the files
- A panel can be easily more detailed than anoher one.

=> Since I have a powerfull computer , I would be tempted to do all in a 
same program. Krita is a good candidate for doing it into ( test layers 
/ shapes / layer group / good brushes ) . Really more time saving and 
it's more evident for the harmony of the page. ( and more with a 
painting style as I have ).But color comics are often printed in a more 
hi-res than classic printing ( 450 dpi )  witch lead to a more than 4K 
pixels large on 5,5K high... Still a bit 'overkill' for many apps ... :)

So, I continue my test and will follow your progress carefully  :)

PS :  Just as reference to see how other developers managed the problem 
of panel, here is a video [1] of the panel tool of Manga Studio ( witch 
is imo the most advanced digital tool for comic creation ). I know it, 
because here I have an unused license of the EX 3.0 I bought years ago.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwMC20UvM0k&feature=related 
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwMC20UvM0k&feature=related>

-David

On 11/06/2010 01:24 PM, Cyrille Berger Skott wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> = History of a crazy idea
>
> What most of you knows is that I am an avid fan of comic books :) What 
> none of you knows (yet) is that I have been thinking of making my own 
> for a long time (and probably will never go far ;) ), and I actually 
> started such a project four years ago, but it has been stale between 
> my lack of skill, and my lack of time to work on my skills due to the 
> need to fix krita :) But now that Krita needs less fixing, and after 
> seing Animtim comic on the forum, I got motivated on resurecting my 
> comic project. While I was working on that, among my mess of files 
> that serve as the project, I got the bright idea to do coding 
> instead... actually I didn't do much more code than a box generator 
> [1], [2], but after finishing I realise that I would need a new 
> application to be even more efficient. That is where comes the idea of 
> the "Comic Book Studio".
>
> = Relation with krita
>
> I think Krita is becoming an excellent software for drawings and 
> artwork creation, no doubt about that. But it is a one-piece-of-art 
> software, while a comic book is composed of a set of them (I guess you 
> could put all your pages/boxes into one file, but you might need more 
> memory than needed). So what I am suggesting is to have a new 
> application (probably linking to krita image/ui ) which would handle 
> the comic book workflow and start krita when it needs to the drawing part.
>
> = The scope
>
> I want to cover the full process, from scenario writting, story board 
> writting, classification of concept art, background stories, etc... 
> Using KDE/KOffice technologies, most of the code will be maintained by 
> other people :)
>
> = One workflow, and do it right
>
> With CBS I want to support only one workflow, and do it right and 
> well. If the workflow does not suit your needs, pass along :) Well 
> actually, if someone wants to come and offer support for other way of 
> working, it would be fine for me, as long it is maintanable. But 
> myself, I want to focus on producing the application I would want to use.
>
> Also, over the years, I have read several books on comics and 
> interview from comics maker, and they tend to all follow a workflow 
> that is similar, so I am rather convinced we can come up with an 
> application that will fit a large number of people.
>
> = Defining the workflow
>
> While I am set on supporting one workflow, there is not yet a precise 
> definition of the workflow :) I intend to work on defining that over 
> the next few monthes, as I make progress on my comic. But I had like 
> to have input on the definition. I am going to work on it in [3] 
> (nothing to see yet), and it could actually be used as a basis for a 
> nice tutorial on comic making :)
>
> Is there anyone interested in defining a workflow ?
>
> [1] http://cyrille.diwi.org/tmp/krita/cartoon_box_1.png
>
> [2] 
> http://bitbucket.org/opengtl/rijn-collections/src/tip/drawings/ComicBox.rijn
>
> [3] http://community.kde.org/Krita/Comic_Book_Studio
>
> -- 
>
> Cyrille Berger Skott
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> kimageshop mailing list
> kimageshop at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kimageshop
>    
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kimageshop/attachments/20101106/761f2e63/attachment-0001.htm 