What makes good gag manipulations?

[Aquarionoid]

We have all seen them and I assume most people here enjoy them to some degree. What makes a gag manipulation good? For examples of good ones we have falsapersona99, songokussjannin8000, and this topic shows off Hypercat-Z's skills. What makes a bad one? Here is one of my manips for an example:



What makes some manipulations look like bad 5 o'clock shadow and others look good enough to lets say activate Trans Am? For comparisons lets look at manips on a girl both FP and SKJ both did a DiD on, Sailor Venus.

http://falsapersona99.deviantart.com/ar ... -255671520" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

http://songokussjsannin8000.deviantart. ... -409321158" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Now while both use the standard gray tape gag, it is easy to see a contrast between the two: FP uses a heavy amount of light reflection a shine to give the gag while SKJ uses wrinkle marks to form imprints around the lips. Each of gag manip has both elements, but one element dominates another. Both gags look like they have tear marks on the sides. With that said, look back at Hypercat-Z's quick manips. They look natural like FP and SKJ's works, but have neither heavy light reflection or lines or even tear marks, just straight up and smooth. With that in mind I decided to compare his style with theirs and noticed there were a few similarities aside from actual lip sealing: all of the manipulation space is within the lines of the face, there is a curve on the horizontal lines that is sent down to cover both the chin and below the nose similar to a U, the end points go to at least the outer sides of the eyes, the nose line is never touched on, and most importantly the gag's structure does not look like it was spray painted or has block-like remnants in MS Paint. Conclusion: For basic manip rules it is advised that you set a frame not composed of blocky lines, make sure the gag's colors are all inside that frame, have the ends of the gag slightly higher up than where the lips are covered to give a U-esque shape, and you do not have the frame or colors go beyond the jaw space.


But enough of me having weird ass theories, what in your opinion makes good ones and other thoughts of this do you have?

[Ieon]

Never been big on manips since so many of them are just editing gags on scenes that make no sense. Yours falls in that category, but I don't mean to offend you by saying that or anything. I just think it's weird. The other thing I'm not a huge fan of is using parts of other people's art for the manips. For example, your examples aside from Hypercat just cut out gags or tape bindings from LoZ's or MB's work, stick them over the mouth or around the body and call it done in most cases.

Trying to match the lighting of the original work and making it make sense in the context of the image or the most important thing. For me anyways.
My favorite manip is the following done by Hachi from an Oreimo mask promotion:
Before:

After:

He cut the original background, extended the mask, drew ropes that match the lighting on the character, adjusted/drew new arm positions and the places they were originally covering, and even threw in a tear to slightly change her expression.
Obviously that's a ton to ask for most people, but that's what I'd classify as a "good" manip. Again, none of this was meant to offend.

[Hypercat-Z]

Thanks!

[Aquarionoid]

You are welcome, Hypercat-Z.

none of this was meant to offend.

I was not remotely offended as your post constructively disagreed and you contributed another viewpoint.

[Hypercat-Z]

Latara and Kneesaa from the Ewoks cartoon.

The original screenshot was given me by a friend.

[Yami]

Nice. I've wanting to ask Hypercat-Z how do you post screencaps on these pages. Because Furaffinity won't let me post my manips of Peg Pete on their website and I want to do gag manips of these pics. http://www.ospreygraphix.com/Screen%20S ... Peg012.jpg with an over-the-nose gag http://www.ospreygraphix.com/Screen%20S ... Peg104.jpg with a ballgag http://www.ospreygraphix.com/Screen%20S ... ther03.jpg and a tape gag.

[Hypercat-Z]

Try this site: http://imgur.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Aquarionoid]

I made a topic for manipulation displays and such:

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2348" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[RickMontana]

The important part for me is that the manipulation looks authentic. This means that it should look like it was a part of the original scene, made by the original artist, following the same artstyle. Because of this my manipulations are often unique since I want it to be similar to how the artist would draw them.

What follows are some of my attempts, starting from simple to more and more difficult.

Here goes.

Let's begin with one I did on Col Kink's artwork of Melody from Little Mermaid. Col Kink use mostly lines without much shadow so I basically made the gag white, with the same bold lines. The gag is not just drawn flat on top of the face, it try to follow the laws of physics, folding around the lips.



This one is based on extros take on Famous Five. Black and white artwork is often easier to work with since there's just two colors. Extro's arstyle here is a bit more advanced. I have tried to make the gags similarly advanced while keeping the same thickness of lines and the same blackness as the original. I moved Georges jaw a bit to make it look like she bites down on the cleavegag and I added some stuffing to Annes gag.



Now we go up a notch into an old classic from Gen 13 (vol 2, #16, page 22). You can find the original here.
After some consideration I removed the speech bubbles which was very difficult to do but I am satisfied with the result.



This final one is far from perfect, but it's the cover from Girl Who Cried Wolf by Hillary Waugh Dell. Those who are not familiar with this one - there was another artist who did the exact same painting for a Mandrake cover. So I took the gag from that cover and added it to this cover. But I also tried to make it look like it was part of the original painting. You can find the original cover here and if you want to see the one from mandrake you find it here.

[Yami]

Nice work Rick.

[Aquarionoid]

Thank you for that very informative post, Rick Montana.

[Hypercat-Z]

[Yami]

Nice manip Hypercat. I did a couple myself.

Peg Pete: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4344

Thea Stilton: viewtopic.php?f=8&t=4352

I know they aren't exactly great but I did the best I could.

[Hypercat-Z]

Try making your works better with this: http://pixlr.com/editor/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Aquarionoid]

I made a topic for manipulation displays and such:

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2348

Although if this will become the new manip display topic I guess I'll try a few later.