Today's muckabout with painter

[laura_seabrook]

OK, I did another web comic page.

I thought that I'd try using Painter X to colour the page for me, but then swapped back to PaintShopPro when I got too frustrated with it. Both versions of the coloured page are shown below:

    

The second image is more complete as I finished doing highlights and shadows on it. Constantine, his wife Fausta and son Crispus are standing near the front of the Imperial pavilion at the Circus Maximus, so the shadows and highlights are supposed to reflect that. The largely blank area in the top half is filled with speech balloons in the final version.

I got so frustrated with Painter. In PSP I know all sorts of shortcuts (like pressing ALT with moving the mouse to dynamically resize a brush) but in Painter these seem to be missing. The colouring and shading in the 2nd is a lot smoother , whereas the Painter version is a lot scratchier (I was using a default brush, and using a mouse to move it). Now it might have been that I was trying to use techniques I've perfected in Painter, and they just don't work the same.

I'll crack using Painter yet, but maybe these web comics aren't the right vehicle for that.

Comments

[lisalees.livejournal.com]

I don't have access to a full version of Painter, but my experience with Painter Essentials (2, 3 and 4) has been frustrating for anything but doodles. The paint program I like best is ArtRage (2 Deluxe). It's very simple, but the tools work the way the real tools work, and it has true layers with all the necessary way to combine them.

In spite of the fact that it wasn't designed to work with color, I'm mostly fine with using Manga Studio 3. Again, the tools have an amazingly intuitive feel, and there's no unnecessary complexity. (If I want complicated, I use Adobe Illustrator.)

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

That's interesting, as I have a copy of ArtRage 2 just sitting around. Have just installed it and will have a look.