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Make a fursona, obviously.
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Jul 12, 2015 20:21
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Make a fursona, obviously.
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Jul 12, 2015 20:24
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draw yourself with big titties
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Jul 12, 2015 20:40
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I'm constantly on fire, so...
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Jul 13, 2015 00:23
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Sociopastry posted:For people who do autobiographical comics, how do you decide how to portray yourself? I'm thinking that I'd like to do a journal sort of webcomic, but I don't feel quite right sticking as ridgidly to my appearance. What do you guys do? How do you decide? Taking the question seriously, most comics artists who depict themselves tend to draw themselves... not really much like themselves at all. For example, as a jokey persona like 'Tycho and Gabe', or even as a cartoon animal like Arakawa does:  It's probably way easier to make jokes about yourself if you don't draw yourself as looking like you.
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Jul 13, 2015 14:02
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Doctor_Fruitbat posted:Make a fursona, obviously. 
Doctor_Fruitbat fucked around with this message at 14:22 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 14:18
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Fangz posted:Taking the question seriously, most comics artists who depict themselves tend to draw themselves... not really much like themselves at all. For example, as a jokey persona like 'Tycho and Gabe', or even as a cartoon animal like Arakawa does: On top of that it's hard to create an image of yourself that isn't way too flattering or way too unflattering.
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Jul 13, 2015 16:26
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Draw a stick figure or some abstract character. Basically be  all the time.Say, how do you guys keep it up? Do any of you have full-time jobs? My job usually gets me home by like anywhere between 6:30-8:30 pm each night, so I'm always too exhausted by the end of the day to sit down and draw. Usually I just feel like lying in bed watching Youtube videos, anime, or playing Hearthstone until falling asleep around 10:30 or 11 PM for the next day.
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Jul 13, 2015 16:45
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The problem with all those things is that they aren't actually relaxing from your brain's point of view, because they all require it to actively process things, even if you don't feel like you are. That's the reason why I rarely take my headphones with me when I'm out and about anymore - I feel so much more clear-headed as a result. You need to take 20-30 mins of actual relaxation, and that means sitting or lying down or taking a walk without any media and just letting your brain drift. Even if you have a million thoughts running through your head, letting your brain pick through that stuff is an important part of winding down, and that gears you up for being able to concentrate again.
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Jul 13, 2015 17:15
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DrSunshine posted:Say, how do you guys keep it up? Do any of you have full-time jobs? My job usually gets me home by like anywhere between 6:30-8:30 pm each night, so I'm always too exhausted by the end of the day to sit down and draw. Usually I just feel like lying in bed watching Youtube videos, anime, or playing Hearthstone until falling asleep around 10:30 or 11 PM for the next day. I am underemployed, so my art makes commission money on the side, and the constant drive to improve keeps me sane. I don't hardly play video games anymore. Productivity just feels more satisfying.
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Jul 13, 2015 18:50
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I have a full-time job and do a comic also! It's definitely a tough balance to keep up - I occasionally find myself stuck in rough patches where I'm staying up until 5 am twice per week - but you find ways to deal with it. Something I've learned to appreciate recently is the value of having a buffer, not as insurance against scheduling hiccups, but as a way to adapt your schedule to your actual energy levels. I.e., maybe you make it your goal to finish one comic between Monday & Friday, then do 1-2 more on the weekend when you're well-rested. Also, caffeine. (And getting up early to squeeze in an extra hour or two of drawing!)
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Jul 13, 2015 19:53
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I'll come at it from a party pooper perspective and say that for me I just had to realize that my comic is a hobby and outlet for me, but trying to make it a scheduled, regulated part of my life just failed every time, because even if I got a good momentum going, sooner or later something always comes along and knocks me off my game for a long time, longer than a buffer would sustain, if I even was ever able to have a buffer. I am seriously in awe of people who manage to really and effectively be able to make time for their comic on a weekly or at least regular basis and who are able to put up even one comic a week regularly, let alone update multiple times or daily. A lot of that is will power, which I generally lack, but I think some of it just comes down to natural tendencies and there's people who just are not able (for internal or external reasons) to work on their comics at regularly scheduled times. I know a lot of people who set aside time every day to just draw, whether it's comic work or other freeform kind of stuff, and that does seem to help people get over the hurdle once you make it a part of your daily habit. For me though the act of even trying to get into that habit caused me more anguish than it was worth, so I just go with the flow these days. If I can work, I work. If I can't, I don't force it. Used to be a lot more productive about it, but I needed less sleep when I was younger and my simpler style meant I could produce a lot more quantity-wise in an hour than I can now. I'll share a small optimistic thing while I'm here, not necessarily related to this particular topic but kind of. For the past few months I've been going through a lot of out-of-nowhere, unprecedented anxiety that basically paralyzed my creative part of my brain more or less. I was doing sketches of my cast on occasion but scriptwriting for my next chapter came to a total stall. By some miracle, last night the anxiety mostly seemed to lift and today I was able to write, wholecloth, two more scenes.  It's too early to say I'm "back in the groove" yet but just being able to have the mental capacity back to sit and fiddle with a line of thought long enough to come up with something meaningful was very comforting.
sweeperbravo fucked around with this message at 20:38 on Jul 13, 2015 |
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Jul 13, 2015 20:31
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I get my motivation by realizing that some nights it's more important to me to work on my comic rather than refresh the same website over and over. After dinner between 7 and 9 that's two hours I could put to drawing, rather than falling down another Watch Mojo top # video list hole. Not to say there aren't days where I do just that instead of drawing.
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Jul 13, 2015 21:44
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I want to be updating my comic weekly by the end of the summer, but it's pretty intimidating considering I'm back to being a full time student in September and as of right now, I am not prepared to Strike Video Games from My Life. One thing that helps is knowing what is taking up a lot of time in your process, and figure out how to eliminate or minimize it. Line work is by far the slowest part of my process, so I'm giving traditional lineart a shot so I can loosen up a bit and stop relying on ctrl-z so much. And as much as I love content-rich, 10+ panel pages, averaging twice the panel count of most webcomics makes for a lot of work. So, I'm also working on writing shorter, but hopefully still satisfying pages. Just straight-up will power is also huge. Some of us... Need to cultivate ours a little more.
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Jul 14, 2015 08:20
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DrSunshine posted:Say, how do you guys keep it up? Do any of you have full-time jobs? My job usually gets me home by like anywhere between 6:30-8:30 pm each night, so I'm always too exhausted by the end of the day to sit down and draw. Usually I just feel like lying in bed watching Youtube videos, anime, or playing Hearthstone until falling asleep around 10:30 or 11 PM for the next day. Incredibly careful scheduling. I work 40 hours a week in my day job, so most of my comic time is on the weekends. That's generally 2x 10 hour days to get a page and a half done, then during the rest of the week I finish the second page and stuff in more work whenever I can. Sometimes I'm just too tired to work through the evenings, but mostly it works. If I know i have something social on a weekend, I need to work harder during the week. It's a trade off. Ultimately I have convention-based deadlines, and if I don't have the next issue ready by the next convention I don't sell as much. So. Needs must.
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Jul 14, 2015 09:29
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I'm working on a project with my girlfriend because it's the only way I can be motivated to actually finish something - I have to be responsible to somebody else.
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Jul 14, 2015 11:46
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I hope that when I actually am able to get back to making pages after my script is done that I'm not going to go insane on it and wind up burning out after like 4 days of manic drawing. I might break one of my unwritten rules and start working on drawing the first few (written) scenes of the chapter while the script is still unfinished  It feels kind of risky but I would really like to start updating again by August and who knows whether everything else will be done by then.  This used to be a lot easier.
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Jul 14, 2015 14:29
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Keep up? I don't. I don't have a regular update schedule posted for a reason. If I happen to get some pages done, wonderful, if not, it's okay, because if I beat myself up over it too much I'll abandon the project out of dread. I think if I had the entire comic done -- snout to stern -- then I'd promise an update schedule because I could put those pages up and know that my own anxiety about making the comic wouldn't be an issue.
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Jul 14, 2015 14:59
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i pay a little man to electrocute me every time i dont get a page done on time actually getting paid for the comic helps motivate but also the impatience to get to part of the story i'm excited to tell motivates me to haul rear end.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:12
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sweeperbravo posted:I hope that when I actually am able to get back to making pages after my script is done that I'm not going to go insane on it and wind up burning out after like 4 days of manic drawing.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:14
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I get everything done by spreading the work out over 2-3 days per page. I usually thumb and ink one evening, color the next. I update Tuesdays and Fridays so normally my working schedule on the comic is Sunday/Monday and Wednesday/Thursday, giving me Friday, Saturday, and Tuesday for additional work time if I need it or hopefully just to chill out. I pretty much write whenever I can, mostly on Sunday mornings and when I would otherwise be spacing out at work. I also thumbnail at work, which has lead to me bringing home a lot of loose notepad pages over the past several years to scan. I have also occasionally taken half days just to work on my comic, because I'm a crazy person.
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Jul 14, 2015 15:47
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FactsAreUseless posted:Drawing will change your script. You'll decide a page is boring, or you don't like how it looks or you hate the pacing. Do some pencil sketches of your pages, then you can make what script changes you like. FWIW I mean I have certain scenes already written and some aren't. I was planning to start drawing the scenes toward the beginning that are already finished/already written (I think it's like chronologically the first three scenes are good to go) while still working on writing the later scenes, not necessarily changing/editing the ones that are already done. I have some whole arcs that are essentially good to go, one that is practically entirely unwritten, and one where I seem to be working in reverse chronological order which doesn't really help me much. The thing that is disappointing is I had played these arcs out long ago and knew what was supposed to happen but didn't write it down because well I'm super cool and I'll like totally remember what was supposed to happen right?!?!? GreatJob posted:Keep up? I don't. I don't have a regular update schedule posted for a reason. If I happen to get some pages done, wonderful, if not, it's okay, because if I beat myself up over it too much I'll abandon the project out of dread. 
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Jul 14, 2015 16:36
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Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that sometimes I just can't make my schedule work and if that happens I make a post saying there won't be a page that day/any pages that week/whatever. Sometimes you just gotta do that. People understand! So I've got a bit of a weird question from those of you who have done longer stories... Will people just let you know if they're not sure what's going on? I think I might just be conditioned by hanging out online with people who manage to keep webcomic continuities in their heads, because a lot of people have told me that it's easier for them to read my comic in long stretches rather than keeping up with the updates from day to day. Which is fine, but I worry that I'm maybe just not doing a good job telling a story, because I don't see discussions of other plot-dense webcomics having this problem. However, the other webcomics I mention are really popular. Maybe it just requires a super-devoted fanbase of a particular kind of reader, and that kind of reader doesn't actually make up a large part of the population, so with a more popular comic there are more of those superfans but with one like mine there are only maybe one or two.
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Jul 14, 2015 17:08
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Most any long form story is going to suffer from a page or so a week update, it's just the big name webcomics have fans and wikis that make it easy to refresh your memory on what's happening. I'm pretty bad at following drawn stories, I rely on comments sections a lot. The benefit to webcomics is other fans will speak up if they don't get something, or ask someone else, plus they can easily go re-read something. Don't discount confusion out of hand, but try finding a few people whose opinions you trust to give you feedback on what they think. It might not be confusion, some stories just read better in a big sitting. Or turn it into a joke. 
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Jul 14, 2015 18:06
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For me, my biggest time sink is by far is paneling and layouts. Nothing is worse than the feeling of sitting down, with time to work..only to go 'what the heck am I doing with this page.' When I'm organized, and spend time thumb-nailing, writing and rewriting pages, I can usually knock out a page in 6-7 hours. If I've suddenly decided to scrap anything, the process grinds to a halt. The upside is you can basically do your thumb-nailing/planning just about anywhere...which is something I should do more, myself. One thing I've been thinking about recently is the difference between 'beginner's advice' and advice for people who are beyond the beginner stage of making comics. I think if you're just starting out, it makes a lot of sense to just brute forcing your comic, and using pure will power to get through it. You're still learning everything, and there is a ton to learn, so it's going to be a slog. Once things are somewhat settled, you can start looking at more efficient ways to organize your workflow, what 'short cuts' are acceptable, etc. I often find that the most labor intensive panels for me personally, aren't the ones that are the flashiest to the reader. If I want to draw something really flashy, it's usually fun for me, so I have less trouble doing it. I run into problems when I get really obsessed with drawing some kind of awkward shot or perspective that doesn't fit the flow of a panel layout. Sometimes talking heads and no backgrounds are superior to an extremely busy full rendered panel, other times not, and I think that's when the beginner's advice starts to fall apart.
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Jul 14, 2015 18:58
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Sociopastry posted:For people who do autobiographical comics, how do you decide how to portray yourself? I'm thinking that I'd like to do a journal sort of webcomic, but I don't feel quite right sticking as ridgidly to my appearance. What do you guys do? How do you decide? I've been doing Life and How to Live It daily since last April and I landed on doing a semi-realistic version of myself because I just couldn't find a cartoony version that felt natural. I played around with a lot of things and just settled on "draw the drat thing quickly in a style that feels natural." That said, James Kochalka's American Elf using little animals and poo poo makes drawing friends and such WAY the gently caress easier than staring at a Facebook picture at 2 AM and still completely failing to get the likeness down.
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Jul 15, 2015 02:36
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I'm doing an autobiographical comic to help work through some stuff and I settled on making everyone look like little owlish matroesjka dolls.
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Jul 15, 2015 10:11
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Cuchulain posted:I'm doing an autobiographical comic to help work through some stuff and I settled on making everyone look like little owlish matroesjka dolls. 
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Jul 15, 2015 15:01
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I think my favorite artist insert has gotta be Nihei Tsutomu. It certainly makes sense that he's a beetle in a hoody, what with the range of terrifying things he draws.
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Jul 15, 2015 21:03
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Colon Semicolon posted:I think my favorite artist insert has gotta be Nihei Tsutomu. It certainly makes sense that he's a beetle in a hoody, what with the range of terrifying things he draws. The biggest mystery is why they didn't translate it to Knights of Sidonia
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Jul 16, 2015 17:08
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How's everybody doing? I'm busy prepping the third Toronto Comic anthology, and I have a budget to run past you folks! Take a look at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YnhORQvpgRhyRAwNoNY6aGPzsloXIQwg8B3qFYxZqps/edit#gid=0 , and let me know what you think - is there anything in there that strikes you as unnecessary or wonky? Our previous Kickstarter got 7.2k, so asking for 11k may be a bit ambitious. The per page rates are complete garbage, but they're all I can afford. I'd like to set a series of stretch goals that result in better compensations for the creators as well. EDIT: Juggled some numbers. Squidster fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Jul 21, 2015 |
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Jul 21, 2015 04:50
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The formula in D11 doesnt seem right. You only applied the 90% to one of the revenues. It also doesnt match the description
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Jul 22, 2015 01:09
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poo poo, you are totally right. That changes some of the balance. EDIT: I've added a second sheet for Kickstarter data, calculating weight, production cost and shipping for each pledge reward tier. Squidster fucked around with this message at 04:41 on Jul 22, 2015 |
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Jul 22, 2015 01:16
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Any of you guys ever dealt with precensorship before?
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Jul 22, 2015 16:45
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Squidster, am I right in thinking you printed through Marquis? How quick is their turnaround for proofs, in your experience?
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Jul 22, 2015 17:29
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Yep, Marquis. The cost of proofs was offensive - like $160 cdn each - so I printed my proofs with Createspace instead. It didn't confirm paper quality or final feel, but it let me catch those typos that are somehow invisible on screens. The final turnaround on the big order was about three weeks including shipping, though.Scribblehatch posted:Any of you guys ever dealt with precensorship before?
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Jul 22, 2015 17:45
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Squidster posted:Can you clarify? At 5:09.
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Jul 22, 2015 17:47
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Squidster posted:Yep, Marquis. The cost of proofs was offensive - like $160 cdn each - so I printed my proofs with Createspace instead. It didn't confirm paper quality or final feel, but it let me catch those typos that are somehow invisible on screens. The final turnaround on the big order was about three weeks including shipping, though. Good to know, I was considering doing the same thing (but mostly for time reasons). I wouldn't take that shortcut if the interiors were color, but I figure I've seen enough books via Marquis to know how well their B/W reproduces. Mostly just want to check for typos, accurate lineup of spreads, etc. Thank you.
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Jul 22, 2015 17:51
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Pick posted:Good to know, I was considering doing the same thing (but mostly for time reasons). I wouldn't take that shortcut if the interiors were color, but I figure I've seen enough books via Marquis to know how well their B/W reproduces. Mostly just want to check for typos, accurate lineup of spreads, etc. Thank you. So like... self-censorship? Good judgement? Knowing the marketplace? If you're posting comics to the internet, there is literally nothing you cannot post or say, although there are many many things you probably shouldn't. It does help to know your demographic before starting a piece, so that you can tailor your work to them.
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Jul 22, 2015 17:58
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Squidster posted:It worked out pretty well for us! We got our createspace proofs in about 4 business days, unless customs was being particularly lovely that day. We went through 3 rounds to make sure everything was perfect, and still there's a drat typo on the back cover. Ha ha, I know, right? I did two proofs for one of my books and there's still a typo in the acknowledgements  . This time around, I hired an independent proofreader to go over it.Anyway, very good to know, since it's my first monochrome interior, and therefore first time with Marquis. I'm optimistic based on the books I've seen printed though them.
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Jul 22, 2015 18:08
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