SCT: St. Patty's Pinch-a-thon

FULL-VIEW OR YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO READ SHIT, 'KAY THANKS BYE. <3

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HAHAHAHAHA.

*thud*

I'm so tired of green it isn't even funny--.

Oh lookit that. I'm wearing a green shirt.

*thud*

Agh. Okay! Let's get into it! 8D

One, I drew this LAST year. Urhoi. I actually had it fully drawn and inked before St. Patty's last year! ...But last year I had a super-shitty desktop that would freeze Photoshop pretty much spontaneously, and a corded mouse. HURR. I can't even imagine attempting that at this point, considering the HELL this thing gave me on my less-than-a-year-old laptop with my prettypretty tablet. ;;;;

Two! I actually did intend to do something with the backgrounds. It was probably going to be something dumb and spur-of-the-moment involving diagonal dodge-and-burn stripes, but whatever. At this point, though? Be glad you fucking got color.

Three, yes, people are floating. Ugh. Again, did this last year. That's actually a valid reason. Last year I was still leaving people unfinished, even within the confines of comic panels. Honestly, I totally forgot about that before I scanned and cleaned up, and by the time I even realized it (or at least realized it was going to be a problem/obvious), there was no way I was rescanning and trying again, thanks.

Four, the lines are not perfectly straight/at right angles to the edges of the screen. I made them with a ruler and a Sharpie to the best of my ability; they're PRETTY FUCKING GOOD considering I didn't have a desk and t-square to work with.

And five, why does Bakura's hair cut off in a straight line in the bottom left panel? Simple. When I originally drew this, it had my handwriting rather than printed text, and no word bubbles. It was text floating over the picture, and I left parts of certain pictures undrawn (ehh, uninked anyhow) to leave space for the words. Most places it didn't matter; in that particular panel, with Bakura right up in the foreground like he is, it... did that. Heh. Whoops. I did attempt to properly cover with word balloons (or, word boxes, as I have them...), but it was SEVERELY inconsistent with the rest of the comic, so... I'd rather have it like it is.

THAT SAID. I'm proud of everything else.
For last year's work, I'm actually really happy with all the drawing. My pen last year was crappariffic, but, that's what the eraser tool in Photoshop is for! 8D

The coloring, may I say, pissed me off. Bakura particularly. I was stupid and put the color on a white layer instead of a transparent layer, so when I went back to add background--shiiiit. So I deleted all the white on that layer, added my background layer, and--! Oh, fuck you, Bakura. Because his colors are so light, both his skin and his hair, I wound up painting a lot of this TWICE to fill in holes I'd missed and to fill back in up to the edges of the ink--not because I hadn't, but because when I selected the white, it selected the edges of those colors because they're so fucking light and similar to the white I was selecting. Beautiful.

However! The colors are all on one layer. Yeah baby. Background, color, line, and shading. Not counting text, word boxes and touch-ups, this whole thing was done in FOUR LAYERS. Aye yam dee chyanpeeyun.

After the HELL I had coloring this fucker, fixing it so the damn backgrounds could go in, and adding text, I was EXTREMELY LOATH to go back and shade. To my amazement and joy, I found it to be surprisingly easy. Besides the all-shading-in-one-layer tip my roommate taught me, I found a brush in my Photoshop with fuzzy edges (as opposed to the hard-edged one I usually use), and that made things a LOT less annoying. Because, fuzzy edges don't need to be NEARLY as perfect as hard edges, yeah.

So, yeah, the funny part? I worked on the coloring from late last Friday night (the day before St. Patty's), into the holiday itself, and for most of the holiday and the day after. More work on Tuesday (I spent Monday either passed out or absent in brain). Between Tuesday and Wednesday night, I finished the coloring and did about half the text. Tonight (Thursday) and this early-Friday-morning I'm operating in right now? Most of the text, all the shading, text boxes, final touch-ups and putting the three damn pages all together. Yeah. The shading was fucking cake.

I think one of the hard parts of coloring was finding proper colors. Most of the colors were eyedroppered from screencaps, and DAMNIT, nobody takes screencaps of Bakura wherein you can see his damn shoes. DX Guh. Also, he and Marik both like to hide in the shadows. BIG FUCKING SHOCK, I KNOW, but it makes for eyedropping difficulty. @_@

Okay! As for the art, rather than the process.

You can DEFINITELY TELL I made this last year. Why's that? Three easy indicators.

One, I called the fucker "Yami Marik" instead of "Yami no Malik." Which I could have changed, but yanno, I'm a purist when it comes to my art. All the text in there is directly what I penned onto my paper.

Two, considering that (other than Bakura and Yami no Malik) this comic is stuffed with my favourite bishies? The conspicuous absence of Axel from Kingdom Hearts.

Three, the MOST obvious? The EXTREMELY conspicuous absence of Sasuke.
Which begs the question: Okay. I am NOT a Bakura fangirl. Why the hell is he the star of this comic (and for that matter, why do I draw him so fucking much)?

Easy. He's fun to draw, he IS pretty, his personality fucking slays me, and he's really the single most appropriate anime character I can possibly think of for the role he has in this comic. Heh. (And as an additional reason for why I draw him so often, 75% if not more of my good friends ARE Bakura fangirls. ;;;; )

Along those same lines, those of you that know me might be saying, why in holy fucking hell did I torture myself with the appearance of Yami no Malik?

Also easy. I hate him.
Some final notes:

Kurama's (the redhead's) eyes are green. For those of you who don't know/can't tell. Yes, I know the same joke works for Duke, but you know, he WOULD wear that shirt. XD

Yes, Malik WOULD wear that much green JUST BECAUSE of Bakura.

I torture Yami because I love him. Really.

Bakura's hair is both fun and easy to shade! Yami no Malik's made me want to stab things. Pinch him again, Bakura.

I am NEVER doing a comic that includes full-detail Link in more than one frame, ever. Too many fucking details to color and shade, thanks.

I used one reference each for Duke, Malik, and Kurama, two for Link, and none for either Bakura or Yami (including Bakura's Ring, hee). References for Yami no Malik fucking abound. I printed THREE PAGES of picture references at twelve or more images per page. I fucking hate his hair. Goddamn pineapple.

BEYOND ALL MY COMPLAINING, this was really very very fun to draw and color. <3

SCT in the title is for Sketch Comic Theatre, my fancomic series. It is actually different than STFU, which follows a definitive storyline and stars Daz in every entry. SCT was begun by illustrating a role-play that SailorArctic and I had in MSN, starring DEARGOD amount of characters. It features a series of "sketches," by the comedic definition (i.e., Saturday Night Live is a series of sketches) as well as artistic definition, hence the title. That original "sketch" is not finished, and given the quality of the artwork (First Yugi Drawn, anyone?), I'll probably be restarting it. So, here, have the first public SCT installment! (In similar news, I'm about halfway through installment two of STFU. Ask Loniface if you don't believe me.)

If you actually read this far, you totally get a cookie. 8D

Happy Belated Fucking St. Patty's Day! I hope you all got horribly trashed, ate green cookies and candy and DIDN'T GET PINCHED because you had enough brains to wear green. <3





Drawn in pencil over the course of about a week;
Inked over the course of three days;
Finished in PhotoshopCS with a total working time of... uh... let's say thirty hours? @_@ Guh.

All brushes used originally came with PSCS; fonts include Bauhaus 93, Chiller, Croobie, Death Ninja, Last Ninja, and Ninja Penguin, the last three of which came from Abstract Fonts dot com. Fucking awesome site. 8D Oh, and some of my own handwriting was left there too, heh.


Yami no Bakura, Yami no Yuugi, Yami no Malik, Malik Ishtar, and Otogi Ryuuji [Yu-Gi-Oh!] (c) Takahashi Kazuki et al
Kurama/Minamino Shuuichi [Yuu Yuu Hakusho] (c) Yoshihiro Togashi et al
Link [The Legend of Zelda] (c) Miyamoto Shigeru et al
Random kids, Kitsune!DAS, SCT, STFU, comic, and artwork (c) K.A. Towers/SilverEmerald-DAS 2006-2007