Layout Pages

Thumbnails can be very important when drawing sequential stories .Sketching your ideas on Comic Layout  Pages can help a great deal.Its  great way to play with vintage points and angles.it also helps before you lay out your final pencils.If you don't want to spend money on Layout Sheets ,here is a great Page Layout PDF created by Ralph Contreras,that you can print on regular paper ,which will be cheaper than buying them.The free high resolution file is in my link below!
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7F32S87Q

character bio 180

heres a really cool psd created by Ralph Contreras that will help in creating 180 degree view of your characters,so you can have a reference of what they look like from front,side, and back.It explains that heroes are usually 8 1/2 heads tall. He has incorporated this into the character design sheet.the left properly shows the head sizes,to help in keeping all views of the character unified.in my link you can download the free high resolution pdf file to use.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=4UH6G4MH

Sketch Cards

Sketch Cards have become a very popular item,not only does it  showcase your work,but you can offer it as a free item or just use it for a character bios!Heres a really cool free psd guide i found on the internet that you can edit on your software of choice.Feel free to down load it from my link below.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=VCRT5PR5

printing comics

For those of us fanboys , one of our dreams is to actually get hired by a comic company! Wether it by writing ,drawing,coloring or what have you.But in the mean time,we generally stick to web comics,or our sketch pad! But nowadays you don't  really need a company to pick you up. A lot of artist,writers,colorist,are actually creating great comics themselves or with the help of their friends! A variety of comic communities have actually started their own comics by banding together.Comixpress.com is a company that takes your completed art,prints it and assembles your comic!! They offer the highest quality printing,backed by years of extensive pre-press and design knowledge!

ANATOMY REFERENCE

It is a good ideah to keep good reference guides,when drawing.Many artist usually keep reference material whether it be character guides,for  costume design and color,or great city pics for a good background ,or maybe you need a horse in there somewhere ,and don't want to wing it!! In my case i have a hard time with
anatomy!! I usually keep try to keep good anatomy reference to help me out so my characters stay in proportion .here is a great 3d model that i use,and it might give you an ideah of what to keep handy!

LEFT SHOULDER MOVEMENT

ANIME EYE IN INKSCAPE

WRITTEN BY:MAXIM GRAFSKIY

In this tutorial I will teach you how to draw a classic anime-style eye. The technique was borrowed from an existing tutorial on Corel DRAW (see the link in the bottom), improved and adjusted for Inkscape.

I'm assuming that you already have a grasp of vector graphics. The tutorial itself will improve your skills using the Pen (Bezier curve) tool in Inkscape.

The result should be looking like this:

Start with drawing eyelids using Pen tool. It might take a while, so be patient :) The fuzzy part on top can be created using Tweak tool in Roughen mode. Be careful, however — it's too easy to create too many nodes in this mode, Force=25 should do. Fill the result with black color.

Draw the white of the eye and place it under the eyelid (use PgDown on the selected object), then fill it with 0,0,0,12 color (CMYK).

Now draw pupil and iris.  Easiest way to do this is to draw two ellipses, outline their strokes (Path > Stroke to Path) and tweak the resulted shapes. E.g. for iris you want thickening the left arc of the outlined ellipse which you can do by selecting and shifting nodes on the outside to the left. Or you can draw the paths from scratch.

Now use Fill and Stroke dialog to fill the pupil with 80,50,0,75 color (CMYK), and the iris — with a radial gradient going from 100,35,0,35 (CMYK) to 70,35,0,55 (CMYK again).

Then use the Pen tool to create highlights objects and fill them with 20,10,0,10 color (CMYK). The objects don't have to be geometrically perfect, but you might just like to make them so :)

Next step is to create a shape like on the illustration below.  It will take some time. Easiest way, again, is to draw the basic oval and then just populate it with nodes and drag them into position. And the best way to fill it with nodes is Add Nodes... extension (Extensions > Modify Path > Add Nodes...). Or you can select some nodes and repeatedly click appropriate button in Node tool's options toolbar or even just press Ins key on the keyboard. When you are done, fill  the shape with 55,25,0,15 color and lower opacity to 50%.

Create two copies of this object, shift them vertically relating to each other and use Path > Intersection(Ctrl+*) to get such a shape:

But the iris is not exactly flat, eh? So let's add some depth using highlights. Use the Pen tool to create several objects like on the illustration below:

Fill the larger highlights objects with gradient going from pure white to full transparency. Then apply Gaussian blur (easiest way is to do it from Fill and Stroke dialog) to the smaller objects. Use different radii for blurs.

Now you only have to create a grey shadow from the eyelid. Use 0,0,0,30 for that shadow (CMYK again):

That's all!

Oh, and if you want the eye-spy bit, feel free to add the keyhole above the whole thing :) It's as easy as:

1. Drawing a rectangle
2. Drawing a circle above it
3. Selecting both and using Path > Difference (Ctrl+-)
4. Drawing a rectangle, outlining it (Object > Object to Path) and dragging both bottom nodes away from each other horizontally
5. Selecting both shapes and using Path > Difference (Ctrl+-) again