Slight shift in art style, but is it working?

[perfectboy]

Hey guys, I recently went from producing my horror comic Tales of Anxiety from color to a black and white format. The way I currently produce relies on hatching quite heavily, which I thought worked well with the themes I'm working with. While this was evident while I was producing in color, the switch to black and white sort of forces me to turn the hatching up to 11, so I can clearly define things where I relied on color before, if that makes any sense.

So my questions for you, dear void, is whether or not this is working well. I feel my pages are beautiful and easy to read, but because of the nature of my hatching they lose... something when I scan it in or what ever (shrinking the file size down certainly doesn't help either).Should I stay the course with my black and white pages, or should I bite the bullet and go back to color

Bonus secret question: screen tones mehbeh?

[Alamino]

Wow, well you got me intrigued... I had to subscribe. I like your style and story telling.

With the type of comic you are doing Black and White does work. You could always switch between different mediums. Do one type for one story and switch it up. (I do like how you colour though)
I Like how you cross hatch. I think even if you are doing it heavily it works for your story type. It gives it a very different atmosphere and adds to the eerieness. So keep at it and keep working on it.

Side note: Yea, totally try tone sometime. It gives a very different feeling but if done right could work with your style. Just make sure the image is visible through the tone. Often I see people use tone but it 'hides' the picture with dots that are too big or tones that are too distracting.

[joannekwan]

I really like the strict black and white!
The hatching brings out the whites immensely giving the images more contrast and it works well with the theme and tone of your comic.

For scanning blacks and whites of that detail I would scan no lower than 600 dpi, do the necessary adjustments, save it with a bitmap image profile, then publish at the usual 72.

[Michelle]

Ah yeah, I like the black and white pages way better than the colour pages! I do like the limited palette on Face to Face pg. 5, but some of the other pages' colouring feels a bit muddy and covers up the nice inking.

Tone could help add more boldness to the black and white artwork. You could also try varying your line weights. Right now it looks like all the lines are the same thickness, which makes it a little hard to distinguish depth. For instance, in your latest page, putting a slightly thicker outline on the window frame would help with clarity.

[jbladder]

I love that last panel from "Who Is That?"! Reminds me of a woodcut. I think your hatching works great in black and white. I don't think scanning or shrinking is having a significant effect on your hatching - for the most part I can still see every mark clearly.

I think the other panels on that episode seem a little muddled because of how much hatching there is, especially with it butting up against and extending over linework (the house in the second panel).

I think the thing that makes your hatching so successful in that last panel is 1.) You direct your hatching consistently - this separates her figure (the hatching in her hair goes up and down) from the background (the hatching in the space around her hair is horizontal); and 2.) you use white and black space to highlight areas like her face or the darkness around it.

So I would try doing those two things more, and if that isn't enough, I would explore using value in the form of grays - use grays like you've been using colors, and you can do some really neat things!

I would not combine screen tones with hatching, if that's what you're asking. Those are two different forms of value and putting them on top of each other is just going to muddle things up.

[perfectboy]

ooooo super useful, thanks a heap

[perfectboy]

yeah, i do use slight variations in line weight, but you can't see it at all with all that information. ill keep playing with it till i get it right