Line art rage oh my gods

[somvi]

Illustrator seemed so weird to me at first but I found it's way better for lettering. MS5 is really easy to use (baloons are a breeze) but the font options are a bit limited if you want to do SFX.

[maeaton08]

I love inking! It's my favorite thing ever. The only thing I get frustrated is when I'm feeling rushed or tired I make more mistakes then I just get mad because I ink traditionally and that means more work later. But I love the ink and tend to gravitate toward black and white comics.

[phen]

Yes! I've actually used it to work on some font already and it's really, really nice. I wish I could figure out how to set up a workspace for balloons and basic panel layout, too. Watching tons of tutorials for that, it's a pretty intensive process.

Try to keep your roughs loose and put more effort into the inking stage so you're not duplicating effort. Another method is to just darken your pencils and do a bit of clean up so you can avoid inking completely.

This is really intuitive -- a lot of people put so much of their concept and design skills into the first rough sketch that they burn out before getting to the inking stage. I think that's where a lot of the "my sketches are better than my inks" feelings must come from.

[somvi]

Yeah the stock ones are pretty flat and work ok for painting but if you want more organic looking lines try playing with textures and scattering/jitter to introduce some small bits of randomness. Anything beyond that, and you're looking at filtering tricks to help make it look more traditional. (I had a good link on this, I'll post if I can find it!)

[somvi]

I found this illustrator vid by Scott McCloud really helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhsqRjBehmw there's a part 2 as well. You can really save time with your own lettering and paneling templates!

I think tight pencils work well for assembly line production - pencil, ink, color, letter, etc. but if you're the only artist, there's only so much time and you already know what the end should look like anyways. Makes sense but I know that detailing can easily get out of hand. Sometimes I only intend to sketch a rough layout, nope - end up with a complete drawing D:

[AnnaLandin]

I have 120% rage when it comes to inking hands, roof tiles and statues.

All the rest of it? I kind of enjoy that. It's one of those things that are almost automatic for me at this point - or perhaps the better word is "mechanical". I do still have to think about what I'm doing and make decisions all the time (I often ink on very loose sketches), but I've got enough routine at this point that I don't have to be super-focused while inking.

Digitally, that is. When inking traditionally, I do have to be super-focused. I don't have an undo button! But it's still pretty enjoyable, especially since I switched to inking with a brush.

[mariusthered]

To be honest I hate inking, since I broke my hand a few years back my lines are nowhere as straight as I use to so now I have to rely on rulers more than I did.
the bit I enjoy is laying out the page and putting the text bubbles in place.

[Chopythes]

... You have no idea how much I loathe inking.

SO THAT'S WHY I DECIDED I HATE MYSELF AND STARTED TO MAKE AN ALL TRADITIONAL COMIC IN ALL BLACK AND WHITE WHICH NOW IS OVER 300 PAGES LONG.

:<

I've begun to like it more, but jeez I love sketching far much more than inking and that's the truth D:

Here's a small example of what I mean:

(I need my sketches to be very detailed, if I don't, I'll just mess it up; plus sketching takes far less time than inking. I can spend up to 20+ hours on a page inking and 20 minutes on sketching a page).
And since, well... I kind of thought I'd kill myself even more, I started a new comic to only make with a STEEL NIB PEN. Yes.
So everything to the right was made with a maru steel nib, because why switching nibs, am I right??

[shironemai]

Maybe around a 4 cause I have such sketchy linearts ^^;
I just have little patience trying to make them smooth so it's always one of the quickest steps when seriously drawing lol

[KSlinger]

Line art is hands down my favourite part. I can actually churn out all the line art I need in a few hours, it's colouring that makes me rage. 8(

[sadlittlespook]

Line art makes me sob more than it does rage tbh. Like, I can get some really nice looking lineart if I'm careful but since my hands shake so much its really difficult for me ;A; I'm so used to my sketchy lines but there's no way that is even clean enough for my comic.

I guess its just one of those things that you gotta love and hate you know???

[AnnaLandin]

The shaky hands-issue gets easier with practise - a lot of it is a lack of confidence, so working on getting more confident will help work away some of the shaking. And for those shakes you can't get rid of, there are stabliser tools, at least in Manga Studio, that helps smooth out some of the strokes you make.

[sadlittlespook]

Oui, that is true but sadly I'm one of the shakers that I can't get rid of it. Which sucks but after a huge amount of time working with it you kinda get used to it.

I actually use SAI mostly but I do have CS6 too but I only use that for editing in the dialogue. SAI does have a stabilizer too actually! I put mine at S-7 which is the highest it can go and oooh man is it nice! ;u;

[Pandastrophic]

I avoid all the rage by not having lineart, I clean up my pencil sketch and color it instead. =v=

[HNLEE]

ARGHHH SO MCUH RAGE. Line art is my least favorite. I would much rather blend everything like usually do but that takes too long. Plus Im a bit of a perfectionist with my strokes so I get really irritated doing line art. Also it's easier to do flats with cleaner line art but ugh isn't there some short cut? I already know I can draw it but getting the lines just right take too long

[scythe]

No art rage on any front. But if I must, line art: 1 out of 10.

[Silerna]

I have more a colouring rage...that takes FOREVER with me...I like doing the lineart, because when it's 'done' I can still change it xD.

[REN]

my secret is to eliminate the need for inking altogether!
there are two ways to do that depending on how painful on my wrist it is that day, i work 100% digitally
1- clean up the sketch and go with that, it ends up pretty crude but it keeps the character of the artwork intact as opposed to if i just redraw it.
2- sketch the sketch on a bottom layer, then make the opacity at 40% and on a new top layer with 100% opacity I sketch it again with the same brush but with less strokes as much as possible, and when I'm done i hide the bottom layer and clean up the top sketch.
sometimes i just color the sketch because yolo

[indialeearts]

My line-art rage is definately on a 10 haha. For some reason, my sketches will be great and full of motion, but once the line-art comes along then everything just looks lifeless. I'm actually about to switch my lining to a traditional medium, since it looks a lot better than photoshop
I have so much respect for those who can just zone out during this process!

[KreativeConfusion]

shake hands really is just a issue with practice for any line art medium. Like it's something that's said again and again, but as long as you focus on making quick strokes with no fear you're fine. Especially if it's digital. there's always the undo button if you don't like it.

@Aetherwing and I would try a freeware program called fire alpaca or medibang paint if you have a mac Medibang is actually pretty useful and similar to MS5 in a lot of ways, so it's a good way to see if it can work with your methods. It comes with a neat tool for making panels too thats pretty simple. you can also download the app version on your phone to do touch ups on the go.