Funny & profane guide to digital inking

On DeviantArt, Mayekoposted an indispensable and profane guide to digital inking called "Lie, cheat, steal your way to better art." The tl;dr is: work at very high rez (then shrink), and use texture brushes set to 100%. But the commentary is hilarious and convincing -- go read it.

LIE-CHEAT-STEAL LIKE A FISH by *Mayeko on deviantART (via Making Light)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: art • Comics • happy mutants • howto • illustration

More at Boing Boing

Ants and Stars: Bruce Sterling and Jasmina Tesanovic visit the Sardinia Radio Telescope in Italy

The Snowden Principle

Lyle Hopwood

I saw this on Making Light this morning and spent ten minutes trying to work out which one was the “better” one. Eventually I learned that the one with the mouth shaped like a graffiti penis was the good one. Or possibly the bad one, I forget. The other one was just wrong, or possibly perfect.

I had another look just now and my RK-destabilized eyes are so much better in the PM that I can see the menu box says “chalk”, not as I thought this morning “chak”. However, I still can’t tell which is the “better” one. What’s the secret? Or is it a funy joak and really, neither is any good? Or, both are great?
- http://twitter.com/tnielsenhayden tnielsenhayden
  
  The one drawn with chalk looks better at huge size, but when both are shrunk down, they look almost identical. She’s making two points: textured brushes are better, and all line art improves when you shrink it down.
http://twitter.com/WpgCameraMan Rock Hardwood

I don’t get it.. does this end up looking like a vagina or something? I don’t see it.
http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

Personally I like Illustrator for that kind of digital inking.
http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/04/redrawn_flammar.html
http://naamaak.blogspot.com/ naam

Ok, let me be upfront and call al those rules very personal. I break them all. Hard round rules (though use it flattened a bit). Also, you (well, I) really need to work at a reasonable size and resolution for your gestures to come out nice, lest you lose your handwriting in micromanagement (and inking is all about handwriting). And textured brushes are (for inking) a big, biiiiig nono!

I also break the “I hate inking’ rule. Maybe that’s the biggest difference ; ). Also, don’t mouse it! If you need to mouse your lines you’re better off inking IRL and scanning that, really.

Breaking all those rules leads to stuff like http://naamaak.blogspot.nl/search/label/digital (that tag is all digitally inked). But i probably take this rant way too seriously and am missing the finer points of humor here.
- http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
  
  Lazy mouse does tend to make that sort of thing easier.
joeskunk

This is very good and is all things I wish I’d learned long ago.
TheOven

The entire copy is set in caps. I can’t take a lesson from some one that’s yelling at me, and that doesn’t understand that all caps is hard to read.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Beth-Cravens/704440406 Beth Cravens

I just scan the original lines into photoshop and paint in a layer underneath. much easier lemme tell ya. I probably DO need to use textured brushes though. If anybody is interested in getting some tips from a real pro go to Tom Richmond’s (Mad magazine cartoonist) site, he has lots of tutorials that are helpful.
BirdBot

I hate to be negative, but this is not particularly good ink work. I supposed he/she rushed for the sake of making a point, but these lines are sloppy and lifeless. I supposed the chalk brush is acceptable if the final product is meant to retain a slightly rough feel, but I personally would only use it for very soft, sketchy or painterly work. If the intention is a nice, clean outline, Illustrator (or any vector based program) is the way to go.