The Webcomics Cheatbook

As a few of you may have noticed, I have started to work on a new comic blog, Comicrophone. One of the major problems that I faced with the comics were in bringing them from the analog (sucky) domain to the digital (smoking hot) domain . Since I couldn't afford a tablet or an e-pen of any sorts, let alone a scanner, the only option available to me was to click pictures of my doodles. This process consistently resulted in images that were a shade of gray, like so:

We should use Ujala to make this comic strip white

Now for most readers(barring myself), this image would be unacceptable. They would keep coming back to your blog in pretty much the same way Chetan Bhagat would try blocking someone again on twitter. In simpler words, never again. Unfortunately, we now have a gray and dull looking comic that, coupled with zero experience in using Photoshop or any of the other advanced photo editing software, is hurtling towards Comic Strip fando(o)m.

Which is when our hero, Paint.NET, makes a colorful entry to save the day. Quite simply, this tool is one of the most user friendly image processing applications out there. That Paint.NET is freeware, makes the whole deal sweeter. Download it now, as you would need it to carry on with the remaining few steps.

Now that you have downloaded the software and installed it, the important step is to start it up (Duh). This is usually accomplished by double clicking on an icon that says Hot Nekkid Girls* Paint.NET. Next, open the snap for editing by Paint.NET. Once this is done, we must select the Magic Wand (Shortcut key: S) from Tools. On messing around with this tool I realized that instead of following the broken lines that we doodle, its way more easier selecting the empty space that we DON'T want. My trick is to select all the white space using the magic wand tool, and then invert the selection to give us our doodle, our daily spread. The settings that I use for the magic wand tool are:

Selection Mode: Add (union). Essentially we are collecting all those regions that we don't want in our final comic. In this comic, for instance, there was a tiny spot of ink that came about while sketching: The poor sucker did not stand a chance to the Magic Wand. Hah.
Flood Mode: Contiguous. I have no idea why I use this, but it works.
Tolerence: 26-30%. This setting is subjective. If we increase the tolerance, there is the risk that parts of our drawing may get selected, especially the shaded regions. If the tolerance is reduced, even minor differences in the gray regions will have to be selected manually.

 

Dude, I think we got selected

After I had selected the region that I didn't want, I used the 'Invert Selection' (Shortcut key: Ctrl+I) option found in the Edit menu to get me the doodle, the whole doodle and nothing but the doodle.

Whitespace: the final frontier

 

Once we have our selection, getting a clean white doodle is as easy as selecting the 'Paste into New Image' option. This way, one does not even have to be aware of the complicated 'Layers' mumbo jumbo. However if you are comfortable working with layers, Paint.NET has the ability to separate an image into multiple layers.

 

Fair and Lovely FTW!

As you can see, the end result is pleasing on the eye and would also make life easier if you want to color your comics. I hope this walkthrough has been of some help to you and your webcomic. Do write in and let me know of the tricks that you use in your webcomic.

*-Oh come on, we all know that you have it on your desktop! *Wink*
P.S. As always, blogger throws my images' aspect ratio out of whack. Please click on the image for a larger version.

A Brief History of OCSL and ROFL

A lot of folks on twitter have confronted me with the question "When are you going to quit twitter, for good?". Of course, my rather poor jokes and even worse observations have played no small part in contributing to this situation. I have been able to shrug of this question with the reply "I shall quit twitter, once I get my invite to Quitter". Har. Har.
Recently though, I am being flooded by the question "What the Hell/F*ck is OCSL?". In a world of 140 characters, people tend to notice an additional 4 characters being pushed into their twitter time lines.
To introduce you to OCSL, I would like to take you back to the time when I used to tweet all day and drink coffee analyze functional modules of code at work. I was having a light hearted conversation with Anjana, about how people are never actually ROFL (That is Rolling on The Floor Laughing, for those from the stone age) or LMAO even though they claim to be. Seriously though, just think of it. You are engrossed in your work when a hilarious tweet pops up on your time line. You double over laughing out loud, managing to slip from your chair and finally landing with a dull thud on the carpeted ground. The boss, shocked at the sound of loud hysterical laughter, comes running over to your cubicle to see you on the floor, separated from your posterior, which somehow managed to detach itself from the rest of your torso. Highly unlikely, Isn't it? Especially when you have a boss whose idea of fun is working over the weekend, trying to propose improvements to that patched up piece of junk code that you are struggling to maintain.
Who are we kidding? Its a well known fact that we react to those jokes with a smile on our face, a hand over our face the only thing preventing us from looking moronic to our colleagues.
This is the phenomenon that Anjana and myself christened as On Chair Stifling Laughter. In the greatest traditions of the internet, it got a four lettered abbreviation: OCSL.
Quite naturally, the next step was to make this christening official. I tried submitting OCSL to that great registrar of arcane abbreviations on the internet, Urban Dictionary. They turned down my entry stating that my geek credentials weren't good enough.
I had a dream, one where OCSL rubbed shoulders with ROFL, LMAO and LOL, and it seemed that Urban Dictionary was hell bent on ensuring that it never materialized into reality. Driven to the bottle out of despair thanks to the weekend, I was ready to sell my soul in exchange of my dream being a reality. Which was when Kristopher rings me up and informs me that his OCSL entry to Urban dictionary was accepted.
Being an honest interpretation of facts, our friends on twitter began to popularize the word in their tweets. Of course, initially Anjana and myself had to indulge in a lot of shameless plugs to set the ball rolling. Pretty soon, it was also covered in the mainstream media.
And that, my friends, is the story of how OCSL came into being, punched its way into Urban Dictionary and gave ROFL, LMAO and other such abbreviations a run for its money. As for Anjana and myself, we got the sadistic satisfaction comparable to the kings of yore, who must have gotten their kicks by adding a couple of pages to our thick history text books every time they waged a war or constructed a mausoleum.

Class of '84: The Review

I was tucking into a delicious mallu lunch at my uncle's place, when a friend called me up asking if I wanted to catch the play, Class of '84. She described it as the story of a class reunion, reminding me of a suspiciously similar musical that I had thoroughly enjoyed circa 1999. Considering the fact that I had nothing better to do, I decided to watch the play. On my way to the NCPA auditorium, I had this thought at the back of my mind that I would have to compare Class of '84 with the aforementioned play.
Thankfully, all that both the performances had in common, was the reunion plot device.
I will not allow myself to get ahead, and I will review the play as best as I can. The stage setting was sparse and simple. Before the play started, we had a fun game of 'Guess what the set represents'. However once the play started, all the (minimal) props on stage were utilized to transport us to a beach house: at certain instances I felt guilty of staring into the private life of seven adults reminiscing their past. The story is simple and straight forward: the funeral of a common friend brings back seven buddies to a beach house, for one night of bonding and nostalgia. The self deprecating humor used to introduce the play gave me a positive impression of the production house, Rage Theater Group. Not many Theater groups, nay people, would be willing to crack a joke at themselves.
The simplest stories usually provide the perfect setting for the most multidimensional screenplays and Rahul Da Cunha (Writer, Director) uses this to full effect. The characters that were etched out were believable: Atleast one of the characters reminded me of people I know. I really liked how the characters frequently broke the fourth wall oh-so-casually to discuss their state of mind. The seven characters (with another getting added later on) collectively covers the whole gamut of human emotions and might as well have been a poster boy for national integration (In your face, MNS, Hah!). Mallu, Punju, Goan, Small towner from outside Delhi and of course, the Mumbaikar: The whole lot is covered. Although the play is based in the aftermath of a funeral, the play is interspered with witty dialogues and hilarious situations, case in point: The scene before the intermission. The sarcasm and dark humor of the play resonated with my personal sense of humor; considering the ROFL audience, I am guessing a lot of other folks felt the same way.
Rahul Da Cunha's job as a director would have been considerably reduced by having such a brilliant star cast. Honestly, I haven't seen most of the star cast perform before, but one can just say that the actors are doing a good job when they incorporate even the most subtle mannerisms of their characters into their body language. I should mention that the actors deserved an extra round of applause for their impeccable sense of comic timing.
My personal favorites in the play were the actors essaying the role of the dope smoking beach bum, the loud Punju (Rajit Kapur) and the lady who was into new age meditation techniques. Although I have mentioned my personal favorites with regards to performances, we were unable to reach a general consensus even in our small group. This just reflects how everyone in the cast put in great performances, each one endearing themselves to a different set of people.
The play doesn't have an eventful climax, rather a few thought provoking questions were mentioned. As the lights came back on, and I got back to the comforting presence of pals from college, I could not but help think on what the future would hold for us. As we were clicking pictures and cracking jokes outside the imposing structure of the NCPA, I felt that theater had given us a cruel peek into the state of our friendship, 20 years ahead of time.

P.S. Since we didn't see any program guide being handed out, I had to rely on this link to help me complete this review.