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Making comics is hard work, but drat if it doesn't feel fulfilling.
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May 24, 2015 04:47
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Here's a process GIF of a recent page. I really like how this one came out. 
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May 25, 2015 06:17
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neonnoodle posted:That lighting is so lovely. Thanks, I'm glad people are enjoying it.
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May 26, 2015 01:49
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I had this question on Tumblr, figured this would be a good thread to repost it.  So I was going to answer this short and sweet, but it became something complex and I feel like other people might as well read it. There’s an old story that I don’t think I have anything left of … I wrote it in high school, it was called Sands of God. It was meant to be a sort of tough farce, an unforgiving slam on the kind of lame, cheap paperback fantasy that I used to get from book fairs and discount shops. The idea was that it would be a fantasy novel set within a bad fantasy novel, the latest in a long-running series by a fictional author. And at some point during the story, this fictional author would die, and his creations would be left adrift, forced to continue the story without his guidance. It was a really intriguing concept that I made an awful lot of supplemental material for - plotted chapters, designed characters, even charted out paths for a sequel. I never wrote a word of it. The setting was vast and interesting, I just never made a narrative. Didn’t even start. Writing up your own fictional universe feels like a massive undertaking because, more often than not, it is. Even short half-issue scripts can be a huge job because you need to pick over details again and again to make sure what someone says isn’t out of character, or that you didn’t forget that visual detail from Chapter 2, or you didn’t forget what shade of orange Roth was. And because it’s so much work, one logical strategy is to hash out absolutely everything in the setting - the “worldbuilding,” as some call it. Does this world have the same physics as our real world does? What’s the map of this planet look like? What languages do the people speak? What ethnicities do they have? What are the names of towns, cities, kings, criminals, gods, food, animals? This is a very, very enjoyable part of writing fiction. Weird and wild settings are insanely fun to write up, and are the color and flavor of every story… but they’re not the story, now are they? Worldbuilding is fun to detail, but that’s all it is - detail. In writing El Indon, I wanted to make drat sure I didn’t fall into that same pothole. So I outlined the narrative arc first - crudely, superficially - and fleshed out from there. Pages and pages of copy. Then I did a ton of trimming. Whole characters vanished, came back, were renamed, combined. And now, the ending is decided, and written. I even like it a little. So now my document looks like this:   The “meaty” outline of El Indon is about 70-75 pages of single-spaced copy. On a good day. The comic so far has covered about 12 of those pages. A lot more is gonna be cut out from here, but make no mistake, this story I’m writing and drawing is … well, it’s gonna take a while. And I’d rather finish it before I keel over and die, so I’m trying to optimize it as best I can. My biggest point to new comic writers is this: keep it moving forward. You need to keep brevity and efficiency in mind. Remember, every page you type is a page you have to draw, and color, and shade, and format correctly. Every single one. It really helps to know where your trail ends, too - all narratives end, and one doesn’t embark on a journey without an idea of where they’re going. Now I’m not saying to rush through your story - God knows, you and the reader want to enjoy the time you’re spending here. But know where you’re headed, and make sure you get there.
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May 27, 2015 04:15
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That's a different kind of narrative climax if ya know what I'm sayin
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May 27, 2015 10:20
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thousandcranes posted:Edit: I don't mean to be so bleak. But literally the only reason to draw comics is because you love to. It's enough of a reason, but let's not pretend there's a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow. The main reason I draw my comic (other than I think it will be a fun story) is for constant, regular art practice. Self improvement is kind of an obsession of mine, and new pages are a great way to prune the weaknesses out of my artistic skills. Also I want to get rich doing it, but we'll see how that goes.
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May 28, 2015 07:13
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Interesting roadblock I had this week. To divide chapters, I make these nice little "breather" pages as one big splash illustration. Page 93 looked awful. In trying to avoid a "centered" or rigid composition, which is kind of a crutch of mine, I lost a lot of strength. These lines of action are parallel in opposite directions, there's a large amount of uninteresting space in the bottom and upper right, and the focal point just sort of disappears against the sky. The second attempt, with a more triangular composition broken up by the flowing line of action, works SO much better. Goes to show that centered and symmetrical compositions aren't always bad. 
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Jun 12, 2015 02:43
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neonnoodle posted:I haven't been keeping up too much on some of this stuff -- are there online communities or other places where it would be appropriate to promote my new comic? For my last one I did Project Wonderful ads and got a fair amount of traffic that way from other comics. However that was 3-4 years ago, and I think there might be more adblocking now than there was back then on average. IME, Twitter is much better to spread the word about a new page than Tumblr, things just seem to catch more easily and you get more response. I been thinking about posting complete chapters to Tapastic, but I'll wait until I have a few more of them.
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Jul 5, 2015 20:30
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neonnoodle posted:Hmm, OK. I have a Twitter for my artwork and such and I've been tweeting the comics as they are posted. What is the protocol for the #webcomicchat hashtag? Do I tag comic posts with that on a particular day? I don't want to spam people but I don't want to miss out on an appropriate opportunity. So far, casual #WebcomicChat happens Fridays and srs-bsns #WebcomicChat happens Saturdays. People will be posting with that hashtag, responding to the question prompts from the @WebcomicChat bot. Five questions over the course of about one hour, with a cooldown at the end. But if that's too loose for your tastes (like me) you can use the Nurph app in your browser to have it organized into a neat little chatlog. Don't worry about spamming, the more the merrier - some of these questions are really dry anyway. And note, it is #WebcomicChat with two Cs, which I often screw up... John Liver fucked around with this message at 01:05 on Jul 6, 2015 |
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Jul 6, 2015 01:02
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Yeah, hand lettering isn't an option for me. My handwriting is miserable. Besides, I like the font I've picked - save for the capital G's, it's just what I wanted.
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Jul 8, 2015 04:36
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AdamSandlerRobocop posted:This is the last comic project that I've done. The artist I was working with got too busy, so it couldn't continue. I really would like to finish it at some point, but I've never really gotten any feedback on it. I ... don't know what feedback to give you? She's a horndog, he's depressed, they argue. That's a conversation, but it's hardly a concept. Where would the story go from here? Its tone (as such) is resting somewhere between sex comedy and depression drama ... sex dramedy? Having it drawn in binary with flat shading lends it a weird, lo-fi quality. It's reminiscent of our CYOA forum games actually, is that intentional? The characters are expressive, but pretty generic anime style, and the panel layout isn't interesting. Top to bottom, lots of centered and symmetrical composition, you could stand to change those up. The lighting isn't terribly inventive either - it's dark, so it's shaded a pale navy gray? The artist can do better than that, for sure. That's really all I can glean from just 5 comics, is there any more to show or tell?
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Jul 11, 2015 01:58
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I'm constantly on fire, so...
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Jul 13, 2015 00:23
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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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Geekboy posted:Maybe instead of worrying about making things you could make things. Yeah, if people actually get that mad about the art that you make, maybe those people aren't worth your time.
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Jul 25, 2015 16:43
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So to bring the topic to comics, I made my 100th page this weekend. It won't be posted for a while because I have to build more buffer, but hey, milestones! e: Thanks! vvv John Liver fucked around with this message at 05:51 on Jul 26, 2015 |
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Jul 26, 2015 05:45
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It's funny, I nearly always work in full color, but for the sake of efficiency, I'm doing my anthology piece in Sin City monochrome. I forgot how hard this was, and I also forgot how effective it could be. It's also fast, at only about 1/3rd the time it usually takes me to finish a normal full-color page.  I like how it's going so far, anyway.
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Sep 17, 2015 08:07
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good to see you again, mr. diaz
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Nov 10, 2015 16:49
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Avshalom posted:as someone who likes overly sexul art i Unironically the most dedicated poster itt
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Dec 27, 2015 15:47
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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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Reiley posted:Come say hi! Play a videogame Fair warning, I am quite bad at saying hi.
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Feb 24, 2016 08:00
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Nessa posted:I'm really tempted to spearhead some proper anthology publishing for the group that would go by genre. Give people a soft deadline to submit short comics in a given genre, and once enough are complied, seek to print it. The FCBD comic is only ever worked on a few months before FCBD, so it would be nice to start a project that has a longer deadline. I'm just not sure how many people would go for it. Also, cost is a pretty huge factor too. I would just like a better showcase for the creators in the group than a few 3-4 page stories that are quickly put together in an annual free comic. You might want to ping the people behind the forthcoming Enough Space Anthology, they're very busy but they could probably lend some pointers.
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Apr 22, 2016 22:09
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