Howdy.

I'm a traditional artist and I'm perfectly aware my art is just average. Sometimes it's really good! But it's average. I try to upload sparingly but about half of my stuff still gets deleted by one mod for not meeting minimum standards. I really don't get it in a few key cases, but that's neither here nor there.

Basically, I finally finished a long-standing NSFW project of mine and I really want to upload it here but it's definitely not my best work visually and in this case I actually would understand not approving some of it. But you can't delete half a comic and leave the rest, right? That wouldn't really make sense. So I assume if some of it wasn't approved, the whole thing would not be approved, and I'd rather just ask on the forum about it ahead of time instead of going ahead and trying, to save everyone potential further time and effort? :P

The comic is here wow I did not realize Inkbunny pools had such huge URLs? and in full on Inkbunny.

I'd be really happy and it would be really encouraging to have some eyes on my work like this, since I want to do more (and better) comics in the future. Thanks for taking a peek.

You would need to ask deletion handler for reason for deletion, but in this case I'm fairly certain reason is technical and not artistic.

Get a scanner.

Oh, I guess I wasn't clear enough. I haven't tried to upload it yet, specifically out of expectation. This post was a pre-emptive measure. (That said, much better art of mine is habitually deleted and that's sort of what I'm referring to.)

That said. I've been using a scanner the entire time. The issue with the first 14 pages was that I was drawing too close to the rings in my book and those elevate the pages slightly on the scanning tray (something I learned to stop doing a long time ago) which can't really be avoided, so the left side of a lot of panels ends up raised and thus has that issue. It's not a problem anymore but it was the case when I had first started doing this. I make sure to give myself about an inch from the side now when I frame something, but I hadn't been doing that in 2016 >_>

TaviTurnip said:
Oh, I guess I wasn't clear enough. I haven't tried to upload it yet, specifically out of expectation. This post was a pre-emptive measure. (That said, much better art of mine is habitually deleted and that's sort of what I'm referring to.)

That said. I've been using a scanner the entire time. The issue with the first 14 pages was that I was drawing too close to the rings in my book and those elevate the pages slightly on the scanning tray (something I learned to stop doing a long time ago) which can't really be avoided, so the left side of a lot of panels ends up raised and thus has that issue. It's not a problem anymore but it was the case when I had first started doing this. I make sure to give myself about an inch from the side now when I frame something, but I hadn't been doing that in 2016 >_>

Guess you'll need to learn how to touch up your images, then.

LoneWolf343 said:
Guess you'll need to learn how to touch up your images, then.

Any time I've tried to normalize the areas affected it generally brightens the lines too much and completely fades them out, even if I've darkened them on the paper. Again, this is no longer a problem since I don't draw that close to the rings anymore, just that it was a thing at the time.

All in all this doesn't necessarily answer my question of "would this be deleted" although the implication is strongly leaning toward "yes" at this point. Is this something that could be solved by completely redoing the scan work on pages 1-14? Because I could try this. (Yes, I really want to have this posted/accepted to e621, so.)

TaviTurnip said:
All in all this doesn't necessarily answer my question of "would this be deleted" although the implication is strongly leaning toward "yes" at this point. Is this something that could be solved by completely redoing the scan work on pages 1-14? Because I could try this. (Yes, I really want to have this posted/accepted to e621, so.)

Yes, it would most likely not be accepted in it's current form.

From the pages I've seen, a rescan would not be necessary. You can use Image → Adjustments → Threshold on photoshop (or a similar threshold function in your image editing program of choice) in order to digitize your lines. From there you can touch up the lines manually, apply some tone, redo the dialogue with a text tool and give the comic a more consistent layout.

Those steps should greatly improve the technical aspects of your work. Although if even after spending some time polishing everything up some of it doesn't get approved over here, you shouldn't worry too much. Keep practicing your skills and making stuff that you love and it should be pretty easy for you to get really far :)

mabit said:
Keep practicing your skills and making stuff that you love and it should be pretty easy for you to get really far :)

I have every intention of never making the old mistakes again, but I'd rather spend my energy making something new and greater rather than spending a few nights fixing something that more or less nobody new is actually going to see, y'know? That's why I've been insistent about an answer from someone in approvals.

I'd gladly fix everything if I thought it'd make a difference to the current situation, but I have no confidence in that by this point :P So that time and energy would most likely be better served working on a new project.

If you don't mind, you can send me the pages and I can Photoshop work them for you! I'd be willing to help :)

TaviTurnip said:
I have every intention of never making the old mistakes again, but I'd rather spend my energy making something new and greater rather than spending a few nights fixing something that more or less nobody new is actually going to see, y'know? That's why I've been insistent about an answer from someone in approvals.

You have, actually. :)

Mairo said:
You would need to ask deletion handler for reason for deletion, but in this case I'm fairly certain reason is technical and not artistic.

Get a scanner.

Your art's pretty good -- a few more months of practice and I'd imagine you could get the majority of your posts approved... but we're really stubborn on not accepting photographs in most cases, or pictures where you can see, like, the grain of the paper.

Scanning is good! Now take some time to, as you've been told, learn to touch up your images.

I dunno what art program you like, or if you have a favorite, but google something like "How to clean up sketch in <program name>" or "clean up traditional art in <program>" fiddle around with it. You want there to be clear contrast between lines and background and you don't want "fuzzies' and 'smudges' around.

If you WANTED to, you could try rescanning, and cleaning up your comic, and it might be accepted then (I'd suggest starting with one or two pages and showing it here for an opinion, so that you're not bummed out if the answer's no!) or you can move forward. It's up to you! :)

I enjoyed your comic though: it was cute and I"m glad to have seen it. :D

SnowWolf said:
I enjoyed your comic though: it was cute and I"m glad to have seen it. :D

Thanks for all of this, haha. Sorry for the late reply; it's been a long October so far.

I'll find the time sometime soon and give this a try, I think, and see if I can't make single sketches look a bit better than they do right now, post-scan. I'll prolly be back in this thread in about a week with results of that and if there's not much difference I'll likely go ahead and see what I can do with the comic.

I've often got eraser lines that are barely visible and I had a friend tell me last year that program touch-up settings should "just get rid of those" and I tried it once and all that happened was that 50% of my actual lines got removed along with it, even when they were darkened on the paper. He actually didn't believe me and insisted I was lying, so I'm feeling a little skeptical of how results will turn out this time but I will try it. Cross your fingers for me >.>;; I would like to get this right.

TaviTurnip said:
Thanks for all of this, haha. Sorry for the late reply; it's been a long October so far.

I'll find the time sometime soon and give this a try, I think, and see if I can't make single sketches look a bit better than they do right now, post-scan. I'll prolly be back in this thread in about a week with results of that and if there's not much difference I'll likely go ahead and see what I can do with the comic.

I've often got eraser lines that are barely visible and I had a friend tell me last year that program touch-up settings should "just get rid of those" and I tried it once and all that happened was that 50% of my actual lines got removed along with it, even when they were darkened on the paper. He actually didn't believe me and insisted I was lying, so I'm feeling a little skeptical of how results will turn out this time but I will try it. Cross your fingers for me >.>;; I would like to get this right.

I look forward to seeing what yu come up with :)

That said, don't trust a program to do it in one click. They'll do things like delete half your lines ;) Computers are a tool that can HELP you with this, but they need a human touch :) Look up a tutorial! It'll take a bit longer but give better results.

*crosses fingers* <3

So I haven't had the time to do this yet (got a tournament at the end of the month; I'll be suuuuper less busy in November and will do this for sure @_@ I'm taking your words very seriously) but I was browsing and raised a really high eyebrow at something.

post #1678600

I was reading this and saw pending approval on the last pages... but confirmed approval on the earlier ones, specifically the one linked here. I'm not specifically trying to call out this person's work (it's cute, really!) but you can literally see dialogue that was written and then later erased in the first speech bubble, before digital text was added. And there are grains all over every page from the scanning process. I'm simply wondering where the important difference lays here. Their scans are much brighter, but as a result you can see far more of everything on the paper too. Some pages are downright messy. You can see the edge of the page and the surface of the scanner along the tops and sides of multiple pages.

But it was still approved. And it probably should be!

Again I'm not trying to call their art out. I'm just very interested in the distinctions. Should I be lining everything with a pen instead and scanning it brighter than I do, even with the risks of doing so :? I'm too curious.

Lining your sietches with a pen makes the lines darker and clearer. To make lines cleaner, erase the pencil sketches after you had lined them.

You can make it even cleaner by removing the scan marks and the remaining pencil sketches on Photoshop or any other photo editing app.

In terms of art fundamentals, the main difference between your comic and this comic is, their comic has line weighting. That is, some lines are heavier than others, and weight is assigned according to consistent rules. Line weighting conveys which parts of the picture are more important. For example, character outlines, eyes, and eyebrows are given heavy weight, and hair lines are given lighter weight. Having at least some line weighting helps a lot IMO, but it needs to be consistent.

• Consider page 6 of your comic.
• Panel one: some weighting on character outlines, but it doesn't seem organised. There are four irises visible, every single iris is a different shade of gray. A dark line goes down the left side of the right character's hair, but otherwise the line weight doesn't vary.
• Panel two: the weighting pops the left character out, the other lines on this character are fairly clearly 'lighter' -- less important -- , and on both characters, the iris of the eye that is further back is darker.
• Panel three is not quite as consistent with weight, but it does seem to use the same iris darkness rule.

The "Touch up" tool which your friend was talking about was probably (behind the scenes, at least) something like Bilateral Smoothing -- which is very good at cleaning away unwanted paper texture and small gribblies, but works better with higher resolution scans, particularly if there are fine details. There are also filter parameters to adjust, and sometimes the results are better if you adjust the black/white Levels before smoothing..Like most filters, you can't just throw it at the image and hope for the best, you have to understand how it works in order to apply it effectively.

The Threshold tool Mabit suggested is also worth learning -- however, I never got it to cooperate very well if there were noticable paper gradients; the gradient-effected area always needed some manual attention with Clone or Brush tool to make them lighter.

Personally I find the grain in their image annoying (-> somewhat marginal approval, from my POV), but that should be taken with the caveat that because their linework is clearer, the grain doesn't distract too much from the linework. If I was a janitor, I'd probably end up approving it.

WRT line weighting, pen is one option, darker grades of pencil are another (I guess you are using HB or American "number 2" pencil, I'm thinking you could add 3B or 6B). Being able to apply it consistently is more important than what exactly you use (and if you just switched to pen but didn't do anything different with line weight, the difference in quality of the result wouldn't be much IMO)

Remember that at the end of the day the approvers are just humans, so there's bound to be some wiggle room when it comes to their standards

Disregard the technical aspects of other people's works and always strive to make your own the best it can be. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right

TaviTurnip said:
I'm not specifically trying to call out this person's work (it's cute, really!) ... But it was still approved. And it probably should be! ... Again I'm not trying to call their art out. I'm just very interested in the distinctions.

I jsut wanted to say that I really appreciate your attitude. a lot of people come in here breathing fire and brimstone, and rage and scream... but your attitude is a lot more productive and kind and I really do appreciate that.