watercolor and artwork

[hisko]

I uploaded 3 out of 8 pages that I just made with poet Ingmar Heytze for a new Dutch magazine called Eisner dedicated to 'graphic novels'.
It's not published yet, but I guess uploading 3 pages won't harm anyone.
I made this comic completely with tvpaint. It's totaly digital.
I made a new watercolorbrush for this comic that I would like to upload, but I have no idea how. Also I want to give the tool a unique icon and I don't know how to do that.

[Sierra Rose]

I love your colors.

The way I've made a unique icon is to download one default one from the default icons folder so I get the exact size. Then I paste it down and draw/paint mine then I save into that same folder as a custom brush. When you go in to edit your custom panel and you pop up the icon menu, you will see the one you made right there.

I don't know how to upload, sorry.

[hisko]

Thanks.
We're going out to eat (Ethiopian food) right now, so I'll try it later.

[Paul Fierlinger]

I just paint something at a size comfortable to me, cut a square out of the painting with the rectangle cut square brush, right click on the so far empty CP button and select Edit, click on Tool, and there's the icon.

Very nice, bleak drawings. That's exactly how I felt throughout all of my school years. So is that when you were asking how to draw eyeballs... ? How do you like drawing/painting paperlessly now?

[Sierra Rose]

Oh, that's much easier, Paul. Thanks.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Sure, but there's one trick I have yet to learn, which is how do you cut a perfect square?

[Sierra Rose]

I seem to remember something about holding shift down? My computer does an odd thing where I click on the tool and sometimes it will pop in the brush I just made and sometimes it will put in just a little circle. Then I have to go save my brush and then find it in the pop down display. Also my computer crashed twice getting into the icons...so I think there must be a bug somewhere.

[Paul Fierlinger]

How simple; holding down shift does it. Thanks.
I've never had a crash involving CP -- coming to think of it -- I haven't had a single crash since I figured out to keep my Cache Usage on Manual in the old Bauhaus 1.5 Mirage to prevent large projects from crashing. The fuzzy dot in the icon button always happens to me when I don't have a brush in my clipboard.

[Sierra Rose]

Oh yeah, I forgot about that with all the reinstalling. Thanks.

[malcooning]

Nice work Hisko.

I made a new watercolorbrush for this comic that I would like to upload, but I have no idea how.

it's easy. while having the brush selected as your tool, go to file>export project to, and in the requester, make sure you select the 'Custom Brush' tab. check in the preview window that indeed your bush is showing. make sure you have the 'background' option deslected. Then select DEEP as the file format, and choose a location to export to. confirm. once you exported, put the .dip file in a zip/rar archive, and upload it here.

Also I want to give the tool a unique icon and I don't know how to do that.

make a new file with a square ratio (1:1). draw the desired icon. select the drawing with cutBrush. now right-click on your watercolor-brush button and select 'edit. under the icon there will be 3 buttons - select the 'tool' button. voila! your icon will change to your cutBrush.

[ZigOtto]

amazing artwork Hisko !
a demo-recording on this kind of painting would be very interesting indeed ...!
my few questions now, just to satisfy my irremediable curiousity :
- how many different brushes did you use ?
- how many Layers (f.i. for the man reflecting in the mirror from page 2) ?
- do you use paper texture (enabling a custom Paper) ?

I hope for an (online?) international version in the future, once this graphic novel achieved and edited !
(I can't read dutch)

... I made a new watercolorbrush for this comic that I would like to upload, but I have no idea how. Also I want to give the tool a unique icon and I don't know how to do that.

imo, the best way to share it with your custom settings is to embed it in a "HiskoBrush" custom Panel,
and Export this CP, then compress the HiskoBrush.bin and HiskoBrush.data folder in a zipped file,
and upload the .zip file in the content sharing section.

you should be able to export the CP in the new .tvpx format as well,
but in regard of your tvpa pro version installed, it could be buggy,
(sometimes, tvpx file does open, but doesn't appear*, and I have no idea where it's skulking and why ...)

* edit : found! to make it appear, toggle (close/open) twice the CP button from the main toolbar.

[hisko]

Here's the watercolortool that I made.
It's actually a quite simple tool, but thanks to the new alpha diff function it looks very natural (it's very much like the digital watercolor from painter, allthough it lacks the 'fringe' possibility).
The brush uses one of the standardpapers (of course you can change that yourself), so the roughness (size) of the structure can be altered in the paperpanel. The size of this brush should be fine when working in hdformat (1920 x 1080).
Also with this custom settings it is not possible to make pure black. To do that, decrease the hardness of the paper. You will loose structure, but you'll get black.
In order to use this brush as a watercolorbrush, the layer should be in 'multiply' blendingmode, so that all artwork and lines in the layers underneath it are fully visible.

I uploaded a .tvpx file and as Zig0tto said before, it doesn't appear right away, but only after you hit the open/close custompaneltool in the toolbar twice (bug?).
The other file is a zipfile with a.bin file and .data files. I don't know exactly how to import that, but other people will be able to explain that.

The attached watercolor.jpg is how the tool should look if you imported it.

Actually I'm quite sure that this watercolortool should be one of the standardtools in tvp.

[hisko]

- how many different brushes did you use ?
- how many Layers (f.i. for the man reflecting in the mirror from page 2) ?
- do you use paper texture (enabling a custom Paper) ?

I start with a rough sketch of the whole comic, I use very thick lines so I won't loose myself in details) this layer will be deleted later on.

But the whole comic is build up with four layers.
- first (upper) layer is a multiplied layer with an old paper that I downloaded from internet, it's yellowish and makes all colors look more dirty, and that is what I need to make it less digital.
- second layer consists of the linedrawings made with the 'peterpencil'
-third layer consists of the shades that I make with the new watercolorbrush
-fourth (lowest)layer consists of opaque colors with which I color the whole thing, I used chalk for it, but I discovered when I almost finished the comic that I can also use watercolor for this layer.
Mot of the times I start with the paintbucket to make a gradient all over the picture, so that it's easier to keep the colors more harmonized. I use the standard tvp palet to make the colors.
That's it. Like always the base is simple.

[ZigOtto]

Thanks for sharing, and thanks for the detailed comments,
the upper layer (multiplied old paper) does the job very well, the final image looks very "trad. natural media",
About your custom waterbrush and your settings, I would optimize the brush to get rid of the empty space around it,
and I would set the Shift setting to none (or 0%), as Shift doesn't work in Alpha/Alpha max mode.
(it surely doesn't change anything here, but I use to avoid any useless item, since it doesn't hurt, and it could enhance perfomance particularily with old computer)
also, you can make a brush variation by teaking a bit the wet profile,
(to increase the paper texture in the "shading" third layer f.i.),
you can see the wet effect on the pict. below, same stroke repeated 3 times with != profiles.

... The other file is a zipfile with a.bin file and .data files. I don't know exactly how to import that, but other people will be able to explain that.

just RMB click the CP button, at the bottom of the popup menu "Open a New Toolbar",
then browse and choose the . bin file, and "OK". that's it.

[hisko]

What does the wet button do exactly?
I can see more texture, but it also appears lighter in the 3d example.
Could you please upload the optimized brush with the A profile and the B profile (and shift on 0%) with the same icon?
I don't have much time to play around with it anymore, and I don't exactly understand the working of the wet profile.