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I actually find Illustrator relatively simple for line width variation once you get used to the Width Tool. The hard part of it is finding ways to make your linework look less mechanical, especially if you're going for a thick line style. Giving each line slight bumps with the Width Tool (so that you get small peaks and valleys) or adding in extraneous lines is pretty effective for giving it a more hand-drawn quality. Expand Appearance also lets you work more loosely with your lines without worrying too much about overlapping lines, since it'll chop up overlapping line segments for easy clean up later. Part of it for me is that I find getting straight, accurate linework an enormous challenge when just using a plain ol' graphics tablet. My Huion tablet works just fine for sketching, but it takes so much drat effort to get straight lines and curves that I can do with extreme precision on paper. If I had a Cintiq, it might be a different story, but the autocorrection of Illustrator lines and the ability to do slight alterations simplifies the process for me immensely in the meanwhile.
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Feb 15, 2016 06:15
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Thanks for the help everyone. neonnoodle posted:The comic Decrypting Rita is done entirely in Illustrator, I believe. The creator doesn't post here but I kinda wish she did and she's super friendly if you email her. This comic is amazing, btw.
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Feb 15, 2016 15:00
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Aaaaaaaahhhhhh I'm super excited about stuff I'm not allowed to talk about yet! I was up until 5am in the morning prepping proofs for the anthology, but by 10am the work has already paid off. I find myself stuck doing the lettering for like, six comics at the moment, which is just brutally time-consuming. On the plus side, I'm getting better and faster at it. I found http://blambot.com/grammar.shtml to be really useful, as well as the classic lettering mistakes #1 http://imgur.com/DU08TVu and #2 http://imgur.com/qN9GLXp . Here's the comic I'm working on at current - Kunik and the Slave-Wizard of the Tower, which is Dungeons & Dundas. Written by me and drawn by Ally Colthoff. 
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Feb 16, 2016 17:36
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smallmouth posted:Thanks for the help everyone. Not sure if this helps, but the author of Decrypting Rita is a fairly frequent poster on Webcomic Underdogs, so you can go bug her over there too!
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Feb 16, 2016 20:58
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GreatJob posted:Not sure if this helps, but the author of Decrypting Rita is a fairly frequent poster on Webcomic Underdogs, so you can go bug her over there too! Danke. After some experimentation this weekend I'm definitely seeing the benefits of inking in PS for me.
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Feb 16, 2016 21:06
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So this has been floating around my Facebook feed today. http://www.theartofmanuelcarmona.com/blog/artists-stop-selling-unlicensed-prints Most of the comic people in my circle are itching for cons to crack down on the selling of fan art prints. I'm really not seeing that sort of thing happening any time soon though. I am however, very curious as to what the effects for such a crackdown would be. If people weren't spending their money on prints of their favourite characters, would they be more willing to check out original comics? Or would artist alley be rendered a ghost town? I know there has been talk of starting up a small comic convention in my city that is really all about the comics, but we'll have to see if anything pans out.
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Feb 17, 2016 00:32
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you'll pry my unlicensed art prints from my cold dead hands
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Feb 17, 2016 00:56
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They've been pretty strict about it in the Comic Village area of MCM London for the last two shows and it's certainly not slowed the footfall at all. Heck, I don't think most of the punters even noticed.
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Feb 17, 2016 01:20
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If the only thing bringing people to conventions is unlicensed pikachu fanart, then that's a pretty grim proposition. There's something really depressing about the whole unlicensed hawking and purchasing of fan art anyway, so it's probably a good thing.
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Feb 17, 2016 02:48
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Would be curious to see how many Undertale prints there will be on sale.
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Feb 17, 2016 02:56
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don't act like you're above fanworks they are a pretty time honored tradition of cons
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Feb 17, 2016 02:56
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Fangz posted:Would be curious to see how many Undertale prints there will be on sale. a lot, unless Toby Fox goes the Andrew Hussie route
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Feb 17, 2016 02:57
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He specifically asked for people to not make money off Undertale, please and thankyou, but who knows how many people will listen.
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Feb 17, 2016 03:01
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Troposphere posted:a lot, unless Toby Fox goes the Andrew Hussie route Toby Fox banned fan-made merchandise. The only exceptions are one-off things like sketch commissions. EDIT TO ADD: I would be ecstatic to participate in more SPX-like conventions. The no-fanart thing is very complex and while I don't want fandom to go away since it serves a lot of important functions to individuals, some of whom I know, I would love to see more people feeling confident about their own personal ideas and being represented by those. GreatJob fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Feb 17, 2016 |
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Feb 17, 2016 03:02
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I can't say I really like when creators do that but hussie has certainly been successful reeling that in. made more sense with homestuck because if he didn't you'd have people selling knockoff horoscope shirts and god tier cosplay and horns. it was kind of brilliant monetary wise for him to say no I am the only one who can sell these but I don't really know what Toby Fox is expecting from it
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Feb 17, 2016 03:17
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Troposphere posted:I can't say I really like when creators do that but hussie has certainly been successful reeling that in. made more sense with homestuck because if he didn't you'd have people selling knockoff horoscope shirts and god tier cosplay and horns. it was kind of brilliant monetary wise for him to say no I am the only one who can sell these but I don't really know what Toby Fox is expecting from it There's a huge difference between drawing some fanart for friends and spinning up an entire business venture to profit off of something you had no part in creating. If that doesn't bug you, I don't know...
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Feb 17, 2016 03:21
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He's probably hoping that people might respect a pretty drat reasonable request from a guy who spent years of his life eating ramen and living in a basement while making the thing that you enjoyed so much. I mean, obviously they haven't, if you search for Undertale on redbubble there's a poo poo-ton of awful shirts, but I can't blame him for trying.
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Feb 17, 2016 03:23
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Space-Bird posted:There's a huge difference between drawing some fanart for friends and spinning up an entire business venture to profit off of something you had no part in creating. If that doesn't bug you, I don't know... I honestly don't see a problem with it and don't care if people make money off of popular titles and wouldn't care if someone profited in a small way from enjoying something I created.  people in Japan create entire careers based off mass produced fanworks and I tend to lean more towards that attitude
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Feb 17, 2016 03:28
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Troposphere posted:I honestly don't see a problem with it and don't care if people make money off of popular titles and wouldn't care if someone profited in a small way from enjoying something I created. There's a huge, huge, huge difference between something like the 79Billion Net worth Disney Corporation, and someone like Toby Fox or Andrew Hussie. If you're okay doing that to what are still very small creators who happen to have found some success...I don't know what to tell you. I wouldn't really hold up the doujin community as a shining bastion of morality though, even it is based in glorious nippon (There's also a very different approach to copyright, and and generally big manga/anime properties are already owned by very large corporations). To me, I'd just try to respect what the creator requested about their work....
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Feb 17, 2016 03:37
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It's the creator's right to do it I just don't agree with it personally and wouldn't do it myself edit: I also wouldn't produce and sell fanart of stuff that the creators have specified not to myself, either
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Feb 17, 2016 03:40
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I follow this thread because a comic is on my shortlist of major "to do" projects, so I haven't ever tabled at a con, but I am a commercial artist so I get the need to make money, and as a con-goer walking through artists alley the raw amount of fan art shoved in my face reeeaaallly turns me off. I have some fan art on sale on INPRNT even, so it's not even the fan art itself, just the pure deluge of artists' entire booths covered floor to ceiling in it feels super pandery and makes me wonder why I came to the con in the first place.
mutata fucked around with this message at 04:09 on Feb 17, 2016 |
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Feb 17, 2016 04:06
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Troposphere posted:I honestly don't see a problem with it and don't care if people make money off of popular titles and wouldn't care if someone profited in a small way from enjoying something I created. Setting all the morality of riding someone else's marketing to make your buck aside, as a creator of the source material if you let that sort of thing slide it creates legal precedence of "you allowed X to sell your work but now you're trying to get it off of Hot Topic t-shirts" that harms your ability to claim infringement on future cases. That's why you see creators publicly say no, you do not have my consent to do that. It's a tremendous headache for independent creators who don't have the luxury of a legal team to pursue all of that, no matter how much of a tradition it seems like.
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Feb 17, 2016 04:22
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I have friends who are full-time artists who primarily rely on fanart sales at cons to make ends meet because the original work doesn't sell nearly as well. In my mind, the issue is complicated because it seems to be a symptom of the difficulties involved in being a full-time independent content creator. I think many artists would sell less fanart if they didn't think it was necessary to make their participation in the art world financially viable.
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Feb 17, 2016 04:36
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In Japan you can still buy comics in grocery stores and such. If the same were still true of America (aside from like, Archie) this conversation would be way different.
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Feb 17, 2016 04:43
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Kojiro posted:They've been pretty strict about it in the Comic Village area of MCM London for the last two shows and it's certainly not slowed the footfall at all. Heck, I don't think most of the punters even noticed. That's really interesting, actually. Fan art is the fuel of all the artist alleys here. How is it different from other conventions? I have one comic creator friend who stopped tabling at conventions because he felt pressured to make all this fan art when all he wants to do is sell his comic about a psychedelic postman.
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Feb 17, 2016 05:27
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im pretty sure selling fan art does not harm the parent company unless your fan art is like ideologically offensive or something or the company is small (homestuck, undertale). youre creating a product that did not exist prior, is a unique product only you can provide, and will almost certainly not be sold "legitimately" through an official store or something. no ones losin money here. e: additionally im struggling to imagine how artist alleys at fandom based cons would survive if they only offered original art
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Feb 17, 2016 05:44
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MCM is a heavily anime-based crowd of mostly teens, but the all-original works Comic Village does gangbusters for many people- I regularly sell 100+ books there a turn and I've never done fanart prints since that's not what I'm interested in. Of course, this isn't the case for everyone, there's a lot of factors involved like how many years you've attended, what new stuff you're bringing, quality of the print, etc. We're talking mostly comics and zines here, btw, not so much with prints, though DestinyBlue is constantly swamped with people buying her original prints. If you put good stuff in front of people and they have a whole weekend to look around the con, chances are they'll come have a look. Perhaps the UK scene is somehow very different, but the notion of only being able to turn a profit if you draw My Little Pony isn't entirely true. Edit: Might as well mention that if you pay out for a dealer's table, you can do all the fanart you want. Don't quite get that, but that's the deal! Couldn't tell you how dealers tables compare to Comic Village tables exactly, though. Kojiro fucked around with this message at 06:09 on Feb 17, 2016 |
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Feb 17, 2016 06:05
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That's amazing, really. Sounds like a very different scene than we have here.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:18
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Scribblehatch posted:In Japan you can still buy comics in grocery stores and such. No only can you, but they sell, sometimes out. That being the operative problem in the states.
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Feb 17, 2016 07:57
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I'm a bit confused which half of my post you're referring to there.
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Feb 17, 2016 09:05
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Scribblehatch posted:I'm a bit confused which half of my post you're referring to there. The first part.
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Feb 17, 2016 13:29
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Pick posted:I have friends who are full-time artists who primarily rely on fanart sales at cons to make ends meet because the original work doesn't sell nearly as well. In my mind, the issue is complicated because it seems to be a symptom of the difficulties involved in being a full-time independent content creator. I think many artists would sell less fanart if they didn't think it was necessary to make their participation in the art world financially viable. Feeling the same here. It really depends on what kind of show you're selling at. Like it or not a lot of classic comic cons have morphed into pop culture cons, and it's not just fanartists selling what amounts to bootleg merch. I think people would feel very differently if people were selling traced work or legit plagiarizing others, but if you make your own work with your own effort and your own style, it's a much tougher call. Nobody seems to care about the people selling the laser engraved shotglasses and cups with trademark infringing junk on them, because I guess they're not seen as competitors to other artists, but they absolutely are! But it doesn't feel like competition since these people aren't seen as artists, even though they may design all that stuff themselves. When I was doing tables for my (now defunct) comic, things were less expensive and less troublesome. We just did commissions or sold a few printed versions of our favorite strips. Since we didn't have the wherewithal to make a printed book at the time, we made enough to basically attend the local shows, but it was in no way a real living. We were able to actually make money when we added a few fan prints to the mix. People still picked up our comic but we were also able to afford to actually eat and maybe not come out of the show in the red. The same amount of people still got commissions and bought comic junk, but we had even more net customers. I think, if every artist had their choice, they would be able to subsist solely on their own merit. But even the most famous renaissance artists did bible fan art to make ends meet. I love indie shows, but even at my local small press show (MICE) there were a few people who, in addition to their original work, had some fan art stuff. But there wasn't a person there who was solely selling fan prints (since they would have been filtered out). I think people get that the goal of shows of MICE and SPX are to promote your work, that's why they're cheap to attend and they attract a crowd that is genuinely interested in (for the lack of a better term) indie comics. But when you're at a big pop culture event, you're getting a crowd that's a much harder sell to buy a comic from a random person. I've transitioned into doing photo booths, which has worked out very well and been very profitable. But I moved on because I can only hawk so many buttons/keyrings/baubles/books. I just got tired of not making much actual money selling art.
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Feb 18, 2016 02:24
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Edit: Nevermind, I'm just repeating myself because I'm dumb.
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Feb 18, 2016 03:13
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kefkafloyd posted:But even the most famous renaissance artists did bible fan art to make ends meet. MICE is kind of fanart heavy and I find the audience skews kind of young. That's fine by me because I do very kid-friendly work, but I can imagine it being less comfortable for edgier cartoonists. Then again, it's also a very queer-friendly con also, so  .By contrast the Rhode Island indie comic con I went to last year was amazing, it was all artsy RISD folk with much more mature work.
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Feb 18, 2016 03:46
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fun hater posted:e: additionally im struggling to imagine how artist alleys at fandom based cons would survive if they only offered original art Artists can do pretty well with generalized fandoms like steampunk, animals, food, vampires, etc. It really helps to set up the booth as a bastion of Just One Thing, Really Well Done, And Variations on That Thing. Also have a pitch that you don't have to pitch... merchandise that explains itself visually is so much better than mindlessly sticking your character's face on a keychain. Some examples I've seen where the artists apparently survive off their own IP: -Plushes and accessories based entirely around cheesy puns -- ie a 'Cinnamon bun' plush that is half rabbit and half cinnamon roll -T-shirts with really weird, expertly-drawn prehistoric creatures printed on them -Vintage retro cartoon animals on a variety of household objects as well as in kid's books and prints -Hand-thrown ceramic dishes that reference folk tales -Realistic jellyfish earrings -Older indie comics, the ones who didn't give up after five years for some reason There's lots of things that people recognize, love, and buy at a glance that aren't already copyrighted. My personal stance is if it's fanart that gets an artist motivated into tabling a convention or working on their career, bless 'em. As long as it's not my personal IP (which it would never be), it's absolutely none of my business to be policing that. But, original art simply isn't the insta-dead profits zone people make it out to be. GreatJob fucked around with this message at 01:19 on Feb 19, 2016 |
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Feb 19, 2016 01:17
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Speaking personally I am irresistibly drawn to spending money on thingies involving cute animals, and don't give a poo poo about the latest clutch of anime fanart that are usually not the shows I'm interested in, or where I think I prefer my own work.
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Feb 19, 2016 02:00
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Yeah, same here, plus it just makes vendors so surprised and happy when I buy or trade for something they designed themselves. I love my hybrid shark/donut keychain.
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Feb 19, 2016 20:53
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I made a logo and some new headers to go with it.
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Feb 19, 2016 23:17
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ay i decided to do a graphic novel and finish it before showing it to anybody, will post here when done
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Feb 22, 2016 04:58
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I'm gonna go to a couple of cons this summer - walk around at ECCC and table at SwarmCon in Atlanta. I've never printed a mini comic for cons before - how big do y'all usually make yours? Also, I might pass them out or might sell them, what's a decent price?
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Feb 24, 2016 04:50
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