The Fool’s Circle Photo Blog

Intro To Boy of Tomorrow, originally uploaded by foolscircle.

Programs Used:
Scanning: Photoshop
Vector conversion: Illustrator
Editing/color: Flash
Final touches: Comic Life

Aside from photography, I also do illustration and graphic design. This is a test cell for an upcoming weekly editorial comic that my friends and I might put onto their website. Whether or not it’ll actually go through and become a regular addition to the World Wide Web remains to be seen, but I used this as an exercise in using Flash to cut down on my cartoon assembly time.

A little background on the character: Boy of Tomorrow is a reference to that retro style of science-fiction… heralding to the “World of Tomorrow” that was prevalent during the pulp era of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon.  I decided that I wanted to mesh that era’s feel with a bit of the today’s science-fiction look, infusing some futuristic gadgets and circuitry with the jacket, goggles, and flight cap to create a unique look.  The drawing had some minor errors and imperfections, but I knew I could correct those pretty quickly once I scanned it into my computer.

Previously, nearly all my comics and illustrations have been done completely in Photoshop… the process normally involves me taking a sketch and then tracing over it in the program. While the end results normally look great, it’s a rather painstaking process that often takes me a number of hours. This time, I took a cue from Scott Ramasoor:

By inking over a drawing, the image is a lot more defined than if I’d only used a pencil. Using Adobe Illustrator’s Light Trace feature, I converted the lines into vector artwork and then imported it into Flash. From there, I smoothed the lines (a process that would’ve taken me at least two hours in Photoshop) with the click of a button and colored the image in about twenty minutes.

From there, I moved the cartoon into Comic Life and added the text. Granted, it took me a few hours to actually teach myself the use of Flash and how its various tools really work, but once I had the hang of things this took me about two hours total to make instead of five or six.