Jessy's Place

shinondraws

Today I learned a neat trick while working in Photoshop. I thought it would work nicely for creating comic panels so I thought I’d share it here. This is probably old news to some but maybe there are people like me who just now hear about this.

The first thing I did was open a new canvas the size of the page. Then I proceeded to create several panels using the Marque and Polygonal Lasso tools. You can create these separately or at the same time, it doesn’t matter. It might be more convenient to create all panels on the same layer but it’s not necessary either.

I filled in the panels with grey just to make them visible here. The colour doesn’t matter.

Then I double click the layer(s) to get to the layer properties. There, on the Stroke tab I set the desired colour, width and any other property of the panel line.

The great thing about this is that you can modify (cut, expand, even out, whatever) the panels but the line still follows the outlines of the panel. I think this is much more convenient than using a manual stroke because if you want to edit the panels you need to erase and recreate the lines. Here you don’t have to do this.

I did this in Photoshop CS6 and I’m not sure if/how this works in other versions.

I hope this is useful!

how-do-you-do-the-do

I didn’t really appreciate Aang until this picture.

When I was young, Aang got on my nerves. “Make the tough calls, take responsibility, grow up! I’ve had to!”

I gave him no mercy for his age because, at the time, I was younger than him. He annoyed me when he slacked on his training, when he didn’t listen to Jeong Jeong, when he refused to kill the Firelord. Him and every other character who would give up the greater good to keep the moral high ground. Your principles don’t matter, results do!

It wasn’t until I got older that I saw Aang differently. He was a child, trying to do what was right, who never wanted to do any harm. And he was exactly what the world needed. Aang was a peaceful soul in war time, gentle when others were cruel, merciful when others were unforgiving, and he reminded everyone how to laugh in a world that had long forgotten how to have fun.

Even after years of hardship, losing absolutely everything and waking up to fight a war, Aang still loved life. He loved marble tricks, penguin sledding, and most of all, he loved people. Aang annoyed me because he was naive, but now inspires me because even after he saw the world at it’s worst, he didn’t forget how to be a kid at heart. In this picture, middle aged and with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Aang not only lets some weird guy by the docks take his picture, but does so with absolute glee.

Aang shouldn’t be more like me, I should be more like Aang.

element-of-change

amen to this

holy fuck

See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Easy comic panels in Photoshop