Creating a Graphic Novel

The author of the tutorial is Alan Ryan.

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to turn ordinary photos into eye-catching illustrations for a graphic novel or a comic book. First of all, you need to develop a creative concept and make a rough sketch. The visualization helps bring your imagination to reality. This method can be adapted for other purposes as well.

For our demonstration, we will use a photo of the figure of a military pilot and the image of the interior of the aircraft. A toy figure can easily be adapted to almost any environment by changing its position, which will allow you to create a series of drawings.

The tutorial was created using AKVIS Chameleon and AKVIS Sketch plug-ins and the AliveColors graphic editor.

Proceed as follows to convert a photo into a comic thumbnail:

• Step 1. Take a photo of the chosen figure and prepare an image that will be used as a background.
• Step 2. Open the photo in the image editor.
  

  Select the command Effects –> AKVIS –> Chameleon – Grab Fragment in the main menu of the editor. A message appears that indicates that the fragment has been saved.

• Step 3. Open the background image in the image editor.
  

  Select the command Effects -> AKVIS -> Chameleon - Make Collage. AKVIS Chameleon plugin will launch. The Before tab displays the background image and the picture of the pilot above it.

  

  Note that although the photo of the pilot is much larger than the background photo, both images are scaled to fit the program window.

• Step 4. By default, the Montage mode is enabled. Select the Transform tool in the toolbar and adjust the position and scale of the pilot figure. You can reduce the opacity of the fragment to make it easier to improve the composition.
  
• Step 5. Now remove the blue background from the photo with the pilot. Use the Drop Area Tool to outline the pilot's figure. Then activate the Keep Area Tool and draw an outline inside the figure.

  You can edit drawn marks using the Eraser Tool .

  
• Step 6. Click on to start creating a photo collage. The result is shown in the After tab.

  When clicking the button , the plugin closes and the collage appears in AliveColors.

  
• Step 7. Launch the AKVIS Sketch plugin (Effects -> AKVIS -> Sketch). Process the image using the Classic Style (AKVIS Crayon preset). The result will be displayed in the preview window:
  

  Note: You can convert the collage into a comics using the Comics style in AKVIS ArtWork.

  If you wish, you can change the effect settings.

• Step 8. Press the button to apply the result and close the plugin window.
  

We've created a solid foundation for a graphic novel. You can add speech bubbles and resize the images in any graphics editor.

Chameleon v. 12.1 - Free 10-day Trial