20 Comic & Cartooning Photoshop Tutorials

A collection of links to twenty great comics and cartooning tutorials over at PSDtuts. Lots of tips for inking in both Photoshop and Illustrator, coloring, using Photoshop layers to your advantage, achieving halftone effects and other comic-book style looks to your art.

A great resource. You can never have too much information about how other artists use graphics software to create their work. I often take tips from multiple tutorials and create my own workflow from just a tip here and a technique there.

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Cartoonist/Illustrator Tom Richmond On Why You Should Never Give Away Your Artwork For Free

I know I have been in this situation many times — and email comes in and someone has a project with a small or non-existent budget. Usually it’s a personal project. Usually it’s for an existing piece of artwork.

Since most of the work on my website and blog are commisioned projects for clients, it’s easy enough to say no — the artwork they’re asking about was created for a client’s logo or mascot character and is not available to use by someone else.

But I do have some non-client work on my site, and this is where the free use issue comes in.

Tom Richmond, quoted over at The Daily Cartoonist, says

It would be so easy to just say, “Yeah, go ahead and use it”. After all, it’s already done and will take you no more time, right? So therefore it has no value?? That is the perception of many would-be users and sadly of some creators.

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Commander In Beef

Cartoon illustration of Obama & McCain fighting over a meatball on dinner plate.

A recent Obama & McCain humorous cartoon illustration I created for Time Out NY for the “Commander In Beef” article regarding what New York City chefs would prepare for the 2008 presidential candidates. The illustration was created for the dining section, and is currently being featured on the front page of the Time Out NY website’s dining section. The featured artwork is a spot illustration companion piece to the full page illustration I created for the print article:

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High-Contrast Line Art Illustration Style: Self-Inspiration

Sometimes (and probably most of the time) merely seeing how an effect is achieved will offer no clues as to what it’s like to create that effect for yourself. Copying or mimicking the effect can help, but those moments where it works within your own artwork should be explored the moment they happen.

When these chance moments appear, when you have that ‘a ha!’ moment, be sure to dig deeper. I’ll share with you a recent ‘eureka’ moment I had while working on a t-shirt illustration project for a client.

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Free Photoshop Brush: Stumpy Pencil

Cartoonist Mike Foran has a couple of cool number 2 pencil Photoshop brushesfree to download – that I stumbled across the other day. For some time now I have been on the casual lookout for a Photoshop brush that mimicked a regular-ol’ number 2 pencil. Seems Foran was on that line of thought as well.

Foran’s brush has a nice line quality, varied from thick to thin based on your Wacom tablet pressure, and has a slight angle similar to a flat-worn pencil tip.

The brush also has a nice light feel at light pressure, and darkens quickly with pressure added. The texture and look of the brush marks/pencil lines is perfect.

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“Left, Right, Setty!” cartoon character drawing

Cartoon character with bulging eyes & tongue hanging out throwing dice, holding a shot glassThis cartoon character drawing was created for a friend’s upcoming party, which will also be doubling as a U.S. wedding reception for our friend Setty, who just got married over in India.

Setty is obsessed with the drinking dice game “Left, Right, Center”. He’s also notorious for exclaiming “Shots!” when out drinking, therefore the shot glass.

The friend who requested the art suggested creating it in the Odd Rods/”Big Daddy” Roth style which I am known to emulate from time to time.

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