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Scary-Strix — Demordicai Diamonds Chapter 1
Published: 2009-11-01 03:13:33 +0000 UTC; Views: 2287; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 11
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Description
To those of you new to reading this comic, Demordicai Diamonds is an odd story of two misfits stranded on the backwater isle of Relma trying to make a living for themselves. As the tale unravels, the pleasure of a simple and ordinary life becomes further and further out of reach.Demordicai Diamonds is a collaboration effort between me and my friend "Professor Awesome". We both co-wrote the story that will unfold as you go through the pages. I do all the art work (done in pencil and Crayola colored pencil) and Professor Awesome does a few digital touch-ups with darkening the text, bubble borders, and panel borders.
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A bit late but its finally done! Here is the cover for the first Chapter of Demordicai Diamonds, Washed Up. I'm thinking I'll make every cover page look kind of like a book cover.
I had a bit of trouble coming up with a title font but I think this one I made up works fine. I'm really proud of this page
.So, what do you think of the first cover? Good? Bad? ?
EDIT Looks like I made a slight mistake in this. Oh well, I don't think I'm going to go back and correct it though seeing how it isn't that major. I'll just say Dalken did it
.Chapter 1 Page Index (THIS CHAPTER IS 100% COMPLETE)
Page 1 Page 2 Page 3
Page 4 Page 5 Page 6
Page 7 Page 8 Page 9
Page 10 Page 11 Page 12
Page 13 Page 14 Page 15
Page 16 Page 17
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Comments: 60
Three years is a long time to go without checking your site. So what brought you back to dA after so long? I'd have so much stuff piled up after three years that I'd probably go a little bonkers trying to sort through it all.
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Very well done, it looks very good!
Wish my comics were this good.
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Thanks.
It takes lots of lots of practice and hard work but I'm sure you've been told that millions of times like I have been told and still get told from time to time. Even though there is truth to that statement, it doesn't mean I can't offer some tips, techniques, and advice to those who ask for it. I wouldn't mind sharing what I've learned on making comics in the past 2 years if you'd like to hear it.
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I like to get some tips and advise on how to draw some things from ya, if you dont mind.
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Sure, so what exactly would you like some tips and advice on?
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Well, For starters, How the heck do you make a women look like.... a women?
I almost always have a hard time doing women.
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I know exactly how that is, I went through the same thing myself. Obviously, there are some big differences (and some more subtle ones).
Studying anatomy will really help you out a lot but it can be extremely boring (unless it's pr0nz 
One thing is the starting shapes you use when sketching. For me, I use circles for females and rectangles for males. Females tend to be more curvy while males tend to be more blocky.
Also, females are much more prone to having an hour-glass shape when it comes to their bodies. Their hips are noticeably wider than a man's (though this is not always the case due to certain genetics) due to childbirth requirements. That contributes significantly to the hourglass shape.
You might be able to find some good tutorials here on dA though I don't know any good ones off hand. I've been planning on trying to make one myself to help a friend here on dA though that is going to deal more with anthropomorphic females than human females but the same basic principals will apply for the most part. I don't know when I'll actually get to drawing it up, the most I can say with that would be the next time I do some female character concept.
It's probably going to take a lot of practice but it will be well worth it in the end. Eventually, drawing women may come natural and you won't have much of a hard time at all. Just be careful though, you may find yourself drawing and writing a comic with a strangely high amount of female characters compared to male characters and be left scratching your head wondering how the heck that happened and why it took you three years to finally notice.
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Ok, so the first thing to do is to study the body of that of a women, then try going with drawing females with more circles when doing sketch, ok, this should help, thanks!
While I'm here asking and you are giveing tips and stuff, what can I do to make the enviorment look like what an enviorment? Like inside caves for starters?
Btw, good luck on makeing the tutorials for ya buddy!
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Oh boy, environments is something I still have trouble with. I haven't been drawing environments for that long now, I only started adding backgrounds on a regular basis to my drawings just a few years ago.
Just like with anatomy, some good ol' fashioned observation can do good when you're wanting to draw an environment. The best way to get good at drawing the inside of caves is probably to find some good cave references and draw using them as a guide to just how a cave may look or go exploring a cave if you live close to any and try drawing it while you are there. Same goes for forests, fields, towns. Living out in the country, I've seen so many fields, forests, and a few caves down by the streams to have some good pictures of them in my head. Just going out and exploring and taking mental notes of what you're seeing can help a lot when it comes time to draw an environment.
Like with anatomy, practice is key. But that can be very boring, just trying to draw random environments with nothing much happening in it. Some people love drawing just environments, others not so much. The more you draw of them, no matter how much you might not be satisfied, the better you will get. I've sneaked in most of my practice so far through comic work much like hiding vegetables in better tasting food so you eat the vegetables without tasting how bad they are as much.
The best way that I use for environment practice is to force yourself (in a way) to do it. Necessity is the mother of invention so the trick is to need to draw environments. That's probably why drawing comics to practice has helped me in my case. If the characters are going to be on a beach, I have to draw beach scenes whether I like it or not. I can't weasel my way out of it and still stick to the story. I care about what it looks like since it's going to be a comic page so I put more effort into making it look good on top of the fact I may be drawing the same environment often 5 or 6 times of page in what amounts to multiplying the practice. I've gotten a lot better at beach environments since doing I've started. Heck, I could probably go back and redo all the earlier DD beach pages much better now.
Comic work is a really good tactic to use but it only works if you stick to a project that you care about. Depending on what type of environment you want to get better at first, having a comic that is set in that environment from the start (even if it's a short one) can really help out a lot as long as you attempt to draw in backgrounds for most panels instead of solid colors or just leaving it blank.
That's how I've gotten better at environments. Comic work even made me start drawing them more often as well I used to suck really bad at environments before that and hardly ever drew them beyond the flat color background.
A good friend of mine, , has some good perspective tutorials that can really help out when it comes to certain environments, especially buildings and their interiors. You can find them here: [link]
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Ok, thanks man! This should help alot.
Well, Thats about all the questions I got for right now, but next time I got a question on drawing, I'll remember to come ask ya.
Thanks again!
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No prob. 
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Thanks, I'll remember to look for ya if i got any questions.
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I like it. I am curious to know what you drew with. It's nothing like any comic I have seen before, in the way it's drawn, with its colors and edges.
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I draw Demordicai Diamonds with a #2 pencil, micron ink pens, and colored pencils. In the earlier pages, I didn't have any ink pens at the time and the colored pencils were Crayola brand (laugh away
A friend of mine who goes my the moniker of "Professor Awesome" (a dA friend of mine gave him that and it stuck) does a little bit of digital touch-up work after I'm done drawing it. He goes and digitally darkens the text, the panel borders, cleans up the white space in between panels, and attempts to correct anything I couldn't fix traditionally.
Ultimately, Demordicai Diamonds is about 95% traditional 5% digitally done. It's pretty much all done by hand and takes me 10 hours or more on average to finish drawing page.
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Hey,
Your work is pretty good. Better than I could do.
No laughing here. You do what you can with what you have.
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Oh wow, I'll do a real crit after I read this but for now, I gotta say I'm impressed. Fullcolored pages all in pencil crayons. How long does that take you?
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Generally, it takes on average about 12 hours to do one page. Black and white penciling by far takes the longest chunk of that time compared to the inking (introduced half-way into chapter 2), coloring, and the small amount of digital clean-up.
When I do sit down to do comic work I almost all of it in one sitting if I can (with the exception of a few breaks for food and coffee). I have a bad habit of not finishing anything I start if I leave it sit for more than the rest of the day so I just try to do a page all in one day. It's pretty exhausting, especially penciling everything up, but it's a novel-length tale that if I don't draw it out then it's not going to get drawn at all.
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I really like this, it's awesome! It really works with the chapter
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Thanks
For my first cover, this turned out great compared to what I was expecting. I spent a lot of time looking up different fonts but in the end I just made something up. I don't think the cover for Chapter 2 is going to be that much of a problem. The only problem that I might have with that is just thinking up something good for the cover artwork (on which I still have no ideas for the Chapter 2 cover yet).
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This looks really good, and it was a nice chapter
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Thanks
Now on to Chapter 2
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Thanks you
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I would draw the cover first before the chapter, but that's just me.
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That's what I originally wanted to do but I don't even have a name for Chapter 2 let alone an inkling of what the cover art should focus on from Chapter 2. It really does feel a bit awkward doing the cover at some semi-random point throughout a chapter but its kinda necessary I suppose.
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Thank you
Hopefully I'll get to finishing up Page 17 sometime soon and finishing this chapter.
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Thank you
I'm almost done with all the comic pages for this chapter. Only 1 more left to go.
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Thanks
I'm going to alter the border theme for Chapter 2 but no idea on what to yet. Maybe more of a naval/harbor theme.
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Thanks. Just need to finish Page 17. I've already had to restart on it once today.
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Your doing great man, wish I had that much initiative.
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Its extremely tiring but it isn't going to get done if I don't do it and its not like I have a whole lot better to do instead.
I'm definitely taking a break after this last page is done.
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At least you actually draw stuff and have a scanner to put your stuff online. My sis has the scanner, and she's selfish.
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Did you say "please"? Sometimes that works. Other times high-risk borrowing works to.
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Yes, she's just a lazy beetch somtimes.
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I wholeheartedly approve of this cover. 
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And I just noticed there is a meemer crab by their feet too!
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Yup, I had to add in a meemer. That crab on the bottom right corner is also a meemer (though one of the different breeds I'm working on
I'm pretty sure now that I'll make every cover look like a book cover. Don't know if I'll do Chapter 2's cover at right at the start of it though. I don't even have a name for chapter 2 yet
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Woo! Meemer crabs!
Generating names is always tough. I'd start chapter 2 (when you've had your break of course
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I think that's what I'll do. It feels a bit weird not to do the cover first but its necessary to have a good cover. I don't even know exactly where Chapter 2 is going to go. I know the main direction of where its going to begin and how its pretty much going to end, its just everything in the middle is going to get fleshed out a lot more from the original story. The name will come with the chapter (hopefully).
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