I am trying to prepare for a an 8 page comic entry to a anthology. The story I will illustrate features a girl with lots of dark hair. Therefore, I decided to test my self trying to ink without the pen tool to see if I was steady enough for some details. I decided I must start with a clean enough rough including hair contours. This rough was placed on the background layer- then I inked ( using a Wacom and photoshop) the dark line without using the pen tool which can be used for inking in digital comics- my focus was to see if I can get close to getting a consistent line with my shaky hands. Any loose lines were erased.
I treated hair on a separate layer since this is my weak point.... I approached this by coloring the hair completely in black and then erasing areas that corresponded to the rough hair contours. I lowered the opacity of the hair layer so I could see the rough drawing underneath, during this process. I looked at some anime style hair and how Terry Moore created hair for his characters in Strangers in Paradise as reference.
he flatting an shading process were done on layers beneath the line layer and above the background. I flatted whole areas of the skin and clothes. I could then use the selections in the flat layer to contain shading and highlights placed on another layer..
That's it...- attached are the progressive steps in the animated gif
