WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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14 comments
Grown-up Saffron; (design/workflow test).
Edit: I'm adding here also my quick notes about the process: 5 steps, 3 layers, predictable and reproducible. I'll explore more with it, I like this simplicity.
[](data/images/blog/2020/2020-05-10_saffron-test-workflow.jpg)
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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1 comment
Here is an illustration for [Peertube](https://joinpeertube.org) done during today's [Confin’atelier](https://contribateliers.org/2020/04/15/confinatelier-participez-au-premier-contribatelier-en-ligne-le-25-avril/). Since I designed Sepia —the mascot of the project— I also wanted to try a rendering with more advanced shading and raster. The discussion about communication about Free/Libre Software was rich and I collected a lot of material for thought.
If you want to follow another good online events; I suggest you [the Virtual Penguicon 2020](https://penguicon2020.sched.com/) all day tomorrow.
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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8 comments
[youtube]tdQpRGdkxpU [/youtube]
And here is a new video where I'm sharing eight keyboard shortcuts from my favorites; some of them are set by default, some other require the user to assign them manually. I'm showing how to setup them and speak why they became important for my workflow. This video exists to show to other user the flexibility of the custom keyboard shortcut and give them idea to visit this part of the software.
1. The Selection Outline
2. The Transformation Combo
3. The Ultimate Shortcut
4. Shadows and Light
5. The Perfect Eraser
6. Toggle layer visibility
7. Opacity keys
8. The glass of water or Reload Original Preset
The audio and sentences might feel 'cut' sometime; this is because I tried to condensate this eight chapter under 10 minute and avoid a big potatoe video as in the last one. I'm still learning a lot, thank you for your patience. The Kdenlive version I'm using is very pleasant to work on and that give me back confidence to polish the cut on the video and illustrate what I'm saying with mini sequence. Maybe soon a new drawing/painting related tutorial?
## License
This video and its content is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 to: David Revoy
Music by Frank Nora: New Age B interest (CC-0/PD)
Published on 22 April 2020
Kubuntu Linux 19.10, Kdenlive 19.12.3, Krita 4.2.9
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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9 comments
Here is one of the result of the graphical explorations I'm doing right now on the future episode 33 of Pepper&Carrot. To understand what I'm training, I'll try to elaborate more under.
**Drawing:**
I favor now accuracy of volumes over beauty of the lines. The preparatory sketch for this style disappears totally anyway under the next steps. I switched to a low opacity thin brush preset very similar to a 4H pencil to slice volumes with more accuracy. My large IntuosXL and the QuadHD monitor mix perfectly for that. I enjoy sketching with it. I'm still trying to see how I can simplify this step further by drawing only the main volumes and big shapes (and not an early rendition of the artwork). it can save probably dozens of minute per panels.
**Values:**
On the previous episode, I used a grayscale to color workflow (but I kept a visible line-art). While working on the last pages of episode 32 I started to evacuate the line-art (and rebuilt it later on the top). For this episode, I'll probably try to melt it as far as I can. It has a lot of advantage: motion blurs, easier fog rendering, better way to suggest things rather than depicting all of them. That's why I try to understand better what's appealing for my taste of values and how to cut shapes. I try to train that while maximize the simplicity of single brush strokes at this step to keep expression on how my brushes describes the volumes and keep the human gesture presence as much as possible. I'm also working a lot on getting richer subtle variation of tones in the low values. This is by far the most time-consuming step in the process; but also the one where I have the most of energy to lift a big amount of work. I plan to get the beta-ready for translator after this step will be done on all panels.
**Colors:**
The workflow of recoloring gray artworks values is still too random for my taste... So, coloring is the step where I explored the most recently. I ran a lot of test and explored many receipes, blending-modes and HSY/HSV/HSL color models. I still see other artists around having a lot of paint-over work after the recoloring of their grayscale values. That was also the case for myself (and still is). Paint-over is always a sign that's the workflow wasn't really a success. With enough time I can paint over a photo of a piece of Pizza and make it looks like an portrait of a gracious elf. But on a webcomic workflow getting a lot of paint-over is a no go. Add only a single hour of paint-over in your workflow across 35 panels and it's an additional full week of not-fun-cleaning-work per episode... That's why the challenge for me is to get the transition from grayscale to color as 1:1 as possible. But I have my ideas on how to get closer to this type of efficiency even if; so far on my tests it is still too random for my taste. It will work perfectly for a type of artwork and fail totally for another lighting situation. I still have so much to learn to harmonize my values and coloring step... I'll probably need more trial and errors to sync that.
That's all! Thank you for reading!
[](data/images/blog/2020/2020-04-20_screenshot_114336_net.jpg)
_Drawing with thin digital pencil (left) and grayscale value step (right)_
[](data/images/blog/2020/2020-04-20_mysterious-workflow.jpg)
_[update] Quick notes about the process (click to enlarge)_
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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8 comments
Over the last month I had the honor to be invited to two podcasts:
**Librelounge:**
The first one (in English) was recorded by the Libre Lounge hosts: Christopher Lemmer Webber and Serge Wroclawski. I really like their podcast and I'm a listener of the show that I follow on Mastodon. I recommend all Free/Libre and Open-Source software enthusiast to listen to the previous episodes. You'll find my interview here:
**[→ Listen to the interview here](https://librelounge.org/episodes/36-david-revoy-on-pepper--carrot-and-free-culture.html)**
**Le Libre Au Quotidien:**
The second one (in French) was recorded by the young host of Le Libre Au Quotidien for his first podcast show. I met him at Capitole du Libre and I was very impressed by his passion for the Free/Libre world. I was really honored to be his number one invited for his new Podcast and I wish his show a long life:
**[→ Écouter l'interview ici](https://lelibreauquotidien.fr/2020/04/12/podcast-libre-1-monnaielibre-framasoft-davidrevoy-firefox/)**
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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9 comments
[youtube]MQiC_RujLHo[/youtube]
Color adjustement is one of my favorite step and it happens at the end of doing an artwork. In this video, I show my best recipes to fix my way Contrast, Color Balance and/or add some mood and art-direction to the artwork. It resulted in a long video, sorry about that; but I prefer to publish a 42min edited tutorial now than a 2h livestream where all this information are lost into longer pauses. I'll try to improve on the next videos!
**Credits:**
Recorded and edited in April 2020
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International:
Attribution: David Revoy
(Music: CC-0/Public Domain; "New Age B" by Frank Nora)
On screen: Krita 4.2.9appimage on Kubuntu 19.10
Video edited in Kdenlive 19.12.3appimage, recorded with O.B.S.
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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8 comments
[video]data/medias/2020-04-06_transcript-demo.mp4[/video]
_Video: demo of the Transcript feature paired with the plugin [Read Aloud]()_
The translator of the Gàidhlig version of Pepper&Carrot, [GunChleoc](https://framagit.org/gunchleoc) contributed to add a big feature for [the website of Pepper&Carrot](https://www.peppercarrot.com): the Transcript button. It's located on the header of each episodes (100% done for English, French, Deutsch and Gàidhlig) and once you press it, you'll get the text of any speech-bubble and sound effect (under each pages).
This allows, for example:
- The usage of a text-to-speech feature on webbrowser, an accessibility improvement if you can't read a language.
- The ability to copy/paste the line of a character or a full dialog to quickly quote a part of Pepper&Carrot.
- A way to grab all the text data of an episode and collaborate on a translation via a collaborative text pad.
- An access to a Dictionary button to get a quick click on a word and check its definition.
That's something I never saw on a webcomic before. I'm really happy about this.
[](data/images/blog/2020/2020-04-06_screenshot_181925_net.jpg)
_The dictionary button allows to check a word: here clicking the word 'Dungeon'_
On the technical side, it was a very big task, involving complex scripts to extract texts from our sources files and transform them into something easy to generate, to edit and to read on the website and GunChleoc spent a lot of time and effort on it. To put this feature on the website, it was also necessary to import new 'NAVIGATION keys' in the translation of the website. You can find the [lang source file here](https://framagit.org/peppercarrot/website/-/tree/master/themes%2Fpeppercarrot-theme_v2%2Flang) in case you can help to maintain the translation. If you want to add the Transcript support to a full translation of Pepper&Carrot; you can follow [the Transcript documentation](https://www.peppercarrot.com/en/static14/documentation&page=062_Transcripts). It has all the information to use the script and automatize a big part of the process.
If you are more curious about the Transcript feature, the scripts behind it or for exploring it on more technical level; I suggest to start by the [issue #132 "Feature idea: extract text"](https://framagit.org/peppercarrot/webcomics/-/issues/132) where all started four month ago.
For playing with the feature: https://www.peppercarrot.com
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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18 comments
[info] Update: this article was posted on 1st April as a April Fool joke for 2020: please don't take it seriously and thanks to all the one who sent feedback when I released it! [/info]
I'm still under shock: over the last months, I fought with something I never saw in 20 years of digital art. All started after I installed this new ICC profile sent from a new printer. I copied it along my other ICC profiles as I do usually and at first, all was fine. But after a couple of days something weird happened: all the noses of my characters in artworks started to be glossy and red! (screenshot above) I immediately started to investigate everywhere: the Kra files, LittleCMS updates, my windows compositor until I found something using the ICC profile manager of Krita. The color profiles had something new: the preview indicated the red part of their colorspace area started to expand! Worst, **this issue started to propagate** to all the ICC profiles I had on my disk!
[](data/images/blog/2020/2020-04-01_graph-icc.jpg)
_Icc profiles with expanded colorspace in red_
I had no idea what to do. After sleepless nights to search the web, I found [this thread on a forum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day) with a method I never tried before: the quarantine of files. I immediately put it to action before the propagation reaches more files while praying for my art to be back to normal noses.
[](data/images/blog/2020/2020-04-01_red-nose-solution.jpg)
_Create a new directory under /home and move them there_
Then I waited (the period might be different according to your local settings) but it did work! After a couple of days this removed the issue and all my profiles went back to normal. I first symlinked them one by one with special permissions, I also controlled their color temperature one by one and everything went back to normal. I then thought it was important to write this article to warn other artist and here I am now.
**IMPORTANT: If you see other artists with artworks having glossy red noses; please inform them they might be infected! If everyone does that with their ICC profiles, we might avoid the propagation of red noses in art!**
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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54 comments
Hi! I just posted a new Pepper&Carrot episode on peppercarrot website:
https://www.peppercarrot.com/article465/episode-32-the-battlefield
Have a good read !
(I'll add more infos in the comments later)
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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no comments
I'm on my favorite step of the process: color adjustments (picture above: before on bottom, after on top). It really brings an extra cinematic feeling to my comic panels (on future episode 32, coming very soon).
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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1 comment
Screenshot: a selection of random panels from the production of future episode 32 "The Battlefield" (coming soon). I'll probably publish a post-mortem making of after the release because the various steps of this production just pile together nicely so far. There is still room for improvements, but I'm really happy the result *and* the process so far.
WRITTEN_BY David REVOY -
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7 comments
Albert Uderzo left us today... "Astérix" was certainly the first comic I read and his generous curved drawing style had a big impact on my way to draw. Rest in peace.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Uderzo
(Fan-art of Asterix, a property of Hachette.)
