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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Free ‘Flatting’ Photoshop Plugin For Comic Artists

Just stumbled across these handy – and freePhotoshop plugins which should be a huge time-saver for comic artists who ink & color their pages in Photoshop. A process also known as ‘flatting’.

These have to be a huge productivity booster to any artist working with coloring line art in Photoshop, not just comic book artists and the like.

I can already envision many applications for these in my workflow, even though I am primarily a vector artist.

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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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The Beziér Artist’s Liberation Front: Adobe Illustrator Feature Requests

Adobe Illustrator logoAfter an engaging exchange on Twitter with illustrators: Garth Bruner and Von “Vonster” Glitschka, who are constantly Twittering about their frustrations with being forced to switch from Freehand to Illustrator after Adobe’s acquisition of Macromedia, things reached the point where all involved thought that we need a way to band together and get some feature requests implemented in the next version of Adobe Illustrator.

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Cartoon Art & Halftones Tutorial: From Inkjet Printer to Photocopier

Halftone cartoon comparisonA cartoon illustration & design project for a friend’s party required the resulting art to be suitable for reproduction on a photocopy machine. After some trial, error, Google search, trial, error, Google search, trial, error I discovered the magic combo that allows you to create a halftone in Photoshop for an image and print it out on your inkjet printer so the art will be perfect for photocopying.

This technique is perfect for flyers, newsletters or any other short-run printing needs you have where the cheapness of a photocopy is desired, but so are grayscale images.

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Digital Coloring Tutorials by MAD Magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond

MAD Magazine cartoonist Tom Richmond digital coloring tutorial screenshotIf you aren’t familiar with cartoonist Tom Richmond, make yourself familiar. This guy’s work is absolutely amazing. Very much in the style of Mort Drucker from MAD Magazine — only taken to the extreme. Not only is his cartooning & caricature style excellent, but his color work is also phenomenal. Tom graciously has taken the time to outline exactly how he digitally colors his artwork in Photoshop in a juicily-detailed three-post tutorial/how-to series on his cartooning blog.

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Productivity Tip: Floating, Transparent Reference Images Using Screenshots & Free Software Afloat

Afloat transparent window software for Mac OS X - screenshotEver need to temporarily reference another document while working on something – this may be an image, or instructions, or a PDF file. Many times you want it floating right on top of your current document so you can refer to it while you are working, and not have to switch back and forth between applications.

I do this a lot when working in Illustrator, especially working from reference images, but also the occasional email message or PDF file sent by a client.

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Adobe Pen Tool Cheatsheet: Free Download

Adobe Pen Tool 3×5 index card Cheatsheet preview imageHere’s a cool little idea from the geniuses at CreativeTechs.com: “cheatsheets” for Adobe software that are designed to print on a 3×5 index card, complete with space reserved to punch holes for a binder. Designed with the GTD/Hipster PDA crowd in mind. And they’re free!

This link is to the PDF cheatsheet for the Adobe pen tool, since most (or all) of it’s features work the same across the Creative Suite. A real cool visual reference guide, and just one in a series of cheatsheets for Adobe apps as well as other computer and Mac related info that you just sometimes need at your fingertips.

Looks like they are just starting out with these, so be sure to subcribe to the RSS feed and collect ’em all!

Ten Essential Low-Tech (and Cheap!) Tools for Cartoonists & Illustrators

Still using that pencil you found in the couch and an old dictionary as a drawing board? Don’t feel like the biggest computer wiz when it comes to graphics software? There are plenty of inexpensive tools out there that will boost your productivity and enjoyment level when drawing, sketching or just doodling. And you don’t have to spend a ton of money to expand your tool kit in ways that are sure to make your life much easier, giving you more time to draw.

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