The new era marches on!

Man, oh man. Once you're on the path of discovery, you just can't stop. Even though I'm groggy from lack of sleep, I just HAD to keep testing out this new-fangled technique.

So I put to test two things: Inked vs Sketched. Apparently inked (the girl with the tattoo) produces cleaner lines than sketched, which sort of helps in the colouring process a bit. However, because the inked lines aren't quite as thick, it gets very hard to colour 'within the lines' so to speak. Nevertheless, sketched (the guy) does have a sorta 'rough' look and generally doesn't really suffer too much in terms of quality.

So what else have I been playing with? Following some tips here and there I played with multiple layers, whereby I can afford to be sloppy in colouring certain places if I wanted to, because the next layer will just cover it. I found some advice on creating a 'whitening' layer whereby the entire layer is just filled white and the opaqueness is fiddled with to produce a slightly more human-like tone instead of the ghastly pink I'd have to deal with by default. Really cleans up the rough lines too. Oooh... and backgrounds too! Those little circly things that darken outwards. LOVE those, but will maybe experiment with other styles in the future.

One more new thing... SHADOWS. A new layer which I use to liberally smear black paint all over. Another change in opqueness and VOILA! It's freaking fantastic, although I still find my efforts severely lacking the quality I'd imagined. The girl was my first effort in shading, which turned out rather crap. The guy enjoyed a little more even shadows, therefore looks a bit more presentable.

Overall, pleased that I've learned a new skill. However bummed that I have to use a mouse to colour seeing as I'm TERRIBLE at using a mouse! Bummed that there's no shortcut I could find as of yet, too. Still... balance the two and I'm still pretty happy.

Edit: Word balloons! Wow!