Halftone or nah?

[llobucervallince]

Ok so I've been playing with some halftone filters and other things and wanted opinions on the matter.

• A

• B

Show results

The first one is with just the light, the second is (kinda) how it'd look in the color version of my comic and the third one is how I usually shade the B&W version for tapas.[poll]

[KevinReijnders]

I like the idea of it, but I feel it's too harsh.

In the Black and White version it isn't as bad, but in the colow version it looks less like halftone shadow and more like an inkspill to me.

Maybe it's interesting to use a colored halftone (in the color version), or go with a multiply layer system?

[llobucervallince]

Alsoo, in case anyone's wondering what I did on the line art I basically did the next thing;
1. Duplicate the line art 3 times, and then change the colors of each duplicate to cyan, yellow and magenta

(do not move them, this is just the example)
2. set these to multiply, which makes it so when they stack on top of each other creates the comic inked efect

(again do not move, this is just how it'd look like.)
3. lastly, move the blue layer a tiny little bit to the right, the magenta to left and down, and yellow to left and up. The result, without the main line art on it:

and this is the end result with all four layers

It is subtle, but I think it gives a bit of personality.

[llobucervallince]

yeah, I didn't change the shade texture I use for the comic, it's basically this:
I guess I'll try to change it to the halftone to try

[BoomerZ]

I never could get tones to work for me on a computer. Because you can zoom in and out, it always looked strange.

[KevinReijnders]

Do you make that chromatic aberration effect by hand each time? If you work in photoshop, I believe you can easily automate that process by recording it as a costum action!

Then all you need to do is press a single button.

As for the halftones, yeah I think working with that technique might get you better results. Though I'd caution to not add too many such layers on top, as it can look very busy and muddy

[2DLenzy]

Welp, I missclicked. I couldn't see a difference at first (on phone), but I like the lineart of the first. Other than that, nothing seems different between the two. Lines really pop in A's second drawing to me.

Edit: I zoomed in. I like the chromatic aberration effect, but there may be a better way of doing it, like Kev suggested.

[llobucervallince]

oh yeah, I use the action function A LOT.
Also I tried using it for the shading:

To be honest, I think I'll save this for illustrations and side projects.
edit:
btw I used the size of the pages I use for the comic in this one to actually see how it'd look, plus I made the multiple line arts style.

yeah, I'll use it outside the comic I'm afraid.

[KevinReijnders]

Setting up a new action is honestly so satisfying! I love finding little workflow sollutions.

New example looks really good! But I get that you might want to save it for single illustrations if it's too labor intensive.

[llobucervallince]

that and that I don't want my style to change so much. this was just experimenting.

[KevinReijnders]

Fair enough.

Personally I'm okay with changing style between books/chapters.

In fact I'm doing a pretty radical change in style myself for the 3rd chapter. The way I was doing things started to feel kinda stale haha.

[Azifri]

(I didn't read any of the other comments)

I really want to answer your question but I don't see any difference between the images

[llobucervallince]

it's ok you can see it easier this way (I hope)

[Azifri]

Oh yes, now I see the chromatic aberration and I like the effect a lot! Going through the other reaponses, I noticed someone else also didn't see it at first so maybe it could be best to save the effort for bigger/special illustrations or if you're going to print the comic. It does seem to get lost a bit when viewing on a small screen
About the halftone, it looks more like a pencilled black fill and I find it distracts from the colors and the linework. It feels to me the lines are too thin for such a harsh shading. Maybe reducing the opacity and/or coloring it could work, or making it softer in some areas instead of going for a hard shading on the entire image.
Just random thoughts ^^