How's Your Webcomic? /hyw/ #279

Share your comic with others!
Link your website and portfolio!
Comment and critique others work!
Previous thread:

Other urls found in this thread:

myscriptfont.com/
artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/
quickposes.com/pages/timed
senshistock.deviantart.com/gallery/
shutterstock.com/
pinterest.com/characterdesigh/
tumblr.com/theme/39018
pastebin.com/kNR2W5mV
docs.google.com/document/d/1uwfOSHXfrgvcf--PkPz9jXL6p5RqIsrYvXYwgQpgT3k/edit#
youtube.com/watch?v=PQ0lck7oo4A
courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse456/07su/administrative/invisible_ink_part_1.pdf
courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse456/07su/administrative/invisible_ink_part_2.pdf
courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse456/07su/administrative/invisible_ink_part_3.pdf
chrisoatley.com/category/podcasts/
web.archive.org/web/20140625035030/http://paperwingspodcast.com/
blambot.com/
cienciasecognicao.org/rotas/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Robert-McKee-Story.pdf
miss-melee.tumblr.com/post/143483233951/
stonesofanarchy.org/63.html
bubblegumandbozzkat.tumblr.com/post/145147495040/chapter1-page-1
imgur.com/a/IkoEZ#5
schweizercomics.tumblr.com/post/11966164633/the-schweizer-guide-to-spotting-tangents
youtube.com/watch?v=EXa7tmy-hpo
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Scrub Authors GOODIE Bag

Here’s a short list of sites that any new webcomic artist or writer will find handy:

>*-Struggling to find that perfect FONT? Create your own using this link;
myscriptfont.com/

>*-Don’t forget to brush up on that ANATOMY:
artists.pixelovely.com/practice-tools/figure-drawing/
quickposes.com/pages/timed

>*-What’s a list without some reference STOCK IMAGES?
People: senshistock.deviantart.com/gallery/
Scenery: shutterstock.com/

>*-Here's a big fat compilation of CHARACTER DESIGN REFERENCE:
pinterest.com/characterdesigh/

>*-Finally, here are some links to get a rough WEBSITE started up:
Easy to use tumblr webcomic theme: tumblr.com/theme/39018
Do’s and Don’ts for starting a site: pastebin.com/kNR2W5mV

>*-Here’s the contact sheet if anyone wants to put information down, like their site and webcomic:
docs.google.com/document/d/1uwfOSHXfrgvcf--PkPz9jXL6p5RqIsrYvXYwgQpgT3k/edit#

>*-We also got a SKYPE CHAT room going on,
To join the chat, seek out 'starlinemike' or 'scribblehatch' and they'll add you in.

>*-We also got a DISCORD CHAT going on, ask for an invite in the thread.

>Wise words from John Cleese:
youtube.com/watch?v=PQ0lck7oo4A

>Invisible Ink:
courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse456/07su/administrative/invisible_ink_part_1.pdf
courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse456/07su/administrative/invisible_ink_part_2.pdf
courses.cs.washington.edu/courses/cse456/07su/administrative/invisible_ink_part_3.pdf

>Paper Wings
chrisoatley.com/category/podcasts/
web.archive.org/web/20140625035030/http://paperwingspodcast.com/

>Fonts for your webcomic on Blambot:
blambot.com/

>Writing Resources:
cienciasecognicao.org/rotas/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Robert-McKee-Story.pdf

>Guide to promoting your comic:
miss-melee.tumblr.com/post/143483233951/

does this look worth a read?

Absolutely. Keep me posted.

tfw you wake up to 0 views on your comic

Not quite.
There's no punchline if it's a laugh-per-strip comic, and the regular four-panel structure isn't really doing you any favors if you want to be story-based. Like, there's no establishing shot so I have no idea how many villains are seated around the table or where the table is located. There's a huge thunderstorm in the background of the first panel, but everywhere else seems like a generic office.
The panels are too small to have much happen in them with the fat lines and big font you're using. You need to dedicate nearly half of each panel to dialogue when it's only like 10 words, and I doubt you can fit more than one character in a panel with a decent level of detail. Try drawing bigger and then scaling down.

feels kind of bland

I updated today
stonesofanarchy.org/63.html

duly noted. i'll go back and improve on this draft.

ok

whoops, meant to reply to this

just started drawing some pages, not really sure what i'm doing but i've got a rough story in mind.

how do you guys setup your panels / where do you get templates?

Might as well see how this goes, I've been working on my own web comic on DeviantArt for a while and now I just uploaded it onto tumblr.

Chapter 1 page 1 link here
bubblegumandbozzkat.tumblr.com/post/145147495040/chapter1-page-1

I've worked my way all the way to chapter 8.
I do this as a hobby but I'm thinking of taking more time with it, and trying to improve it.

it's okay, you're strip kinda reminds me of the skeleton jelly strips just a bit

Art needs a lot of work.

I start out with a 2x4 grid and then I see if that works.
If it doesn't and I need more or less than 8 panels, then I see if any of the rows should have 3 or just one panel.
Then I make some panels longer and some panels shorter depending on the pacing.
After that, I just go by feel.

any tips or things you suggest I work on?
I'm open to improve where I can

anatomy. you've got to draw from life, man. just study and practice a ton with the intent to improve. make characters with their own faces, not blank slates with emotes.

thank you. many people agree I do same face, I'll be sure to look into fixing that, thank you so much for pointing that out. I'll be sure to work on improving it where I can

Your backgrounds are alright but your characters feel completely out of place in this world. it lacks any sort of cohesion. the toughest criticism I have (and this will probably be the most difficult to correct) is that overall the whole thing is aesthetically pretty unpleasant.

that is tough, so what would your suggestion be? to change how the back grounds look? or characters?

definitely the characters.
take a look at this example from mobius (mobius is HIGH level, so this is shit I don't expect anyone to reach for a long time, but we learn at the feet of the masters)

the character really feels like she is part of the world, it doesn't feel like the background was drawn around her or that she was pasted on top of it. Cohesion is pretty difficult to explain but its probably, imo THE most important part of composition. but ya know this gets pretty heavy into subjective taste
just start thinking about how every element in the panel works together

>tfw other people get feedback on their WIPs but you know you never would

post some stuff user

Any success stories come out of here?

If not, just anything good you'd put your stamp of approval on?

I should start doing page thumbs RIGHT NOW. Instead I'm going to load up some Youtube background noise, get a drink, check /ic/..

What the fuck is wrong with me?

I only read the latest five pages, but here's what I got.

Your characters' skulls are way too small in comparison to their faces, especially when you're drawing them in profile.

You only ever seem to use one width of line and it never tapers at the end.
imgur.com/a/IkoEZ#5

Your art is absolutely rife with tangents. It's often hard to tell objects apart.
schweizercomics.tumblr.com/post/11966164633/the-schweizer-guide-to-spotting-tangents

A lot of your lines that should be straight aren't. They're wobbly or curved.
Drawing long, straight lines is really really hard, I know, but it's a skill you have to master.

A lot of your lines that should be parallel, like the fuller of the straight sword in the first panel, aren't. They have completely different vanishing points.

Your anatomy is hugely inconsistent. For example, pink hair's breasts range in size from "a little smaller than her head" to "twice as big as her head" within a few pages. On the latest page, her hands are completely different sizes in the same panel.

Your character perspective is weird. Example: Pink Hair's proportions in the central panel suggest that her legs are closer to us, but the parts of her that are visible, with her breasts in front of her lower torso, suggest that her head is the closest part, despite being the smallest.

You've got a pretty good grasp of posing and lines of action, though.

There's Demon's Mirror and that new thing Harrodeleted is working on.

Work is hard, leisure is easy.
Stop being afraid of failure.

thanks for pointing those problems out, I'll be sure to work on fixing them, thanks for providing links

I don't think I'm even afraid of failure - I just keep falling back into "What's the point? It's not going to make you any money and you still need to find a real job."

Man, I'm getting started now for real.

ayy dude this is a really good mix, been drawing to it all morning
youtube.com/watch?v=EXa7tmy-hpo

>tfw you want to post your comic but you've seen people get shit on for better stuff than yours

but did people shit on this?

Bumpo.

Welp, I'm as ready as I'll ever be.

yes
constantly

WIP of the next page

current progress

how's the dialog?

The ruins were built by dinosaurs!?!?!?!?
Lookin' good.

You should move the first speech bubble in panel 2 a bit to the left so that's there's absolutely no doubt that it comes first. I had to slow down a bit to make sense of it.

>"I'm warming up to her"
Shouldn't that be "she's warming up to me"?

not that i'm super proud or anything but might as well repost this since it was at the end of the last one

alright, moved

>Warming up to me
I was a bit confused too, but if she said it like, "The boss is warming up to me", wouldn't it be interperate as "The boss is shy, and is more comfortable around me"?
I'm not sure

He's just a dumb feelposter, ignore him. They seem to be multiplying.

it looks funny! keep making it
haha what? does he mean that's not a costume, or that it's made of coonpelts?
he should say THE games that you made for etc. and he starts his sentence with tonight and ends with today, i think he means 'earlier today'
then he says 'just' and 'only' in the same sentence later
also it sounds like he could say 'second place is determined by views, but first, third, and all other places are calculated by stars'
closest* pals. to* her

I found thumbs for a short comic I wrote/thumbed last year so I'm working on that. I hope that counts for this thread, since it's not a long-form webcomic.

Are you doing thumbnails during the planning for your comic or are you just jumping into layouts?

If you're this afraid of criticism, you're not going to get much out of this thread, or posting on anonymous boards for critique in the first place. Believe me, I know it's scary, but sometimes that harsh critique (or even the lack of critique) when it happens can get you off your ass to keep working. It really helped me once.

*closest. Otherwise, listen to .
No, "she's warming up to me" can mean "she's coming around to not want to throw me into a pit of fire"

I don't think there's any shyness connotation with "warming up to", just that the boss is growing to like her more.
Here's what I thought you were trying to say, drawn out a bit:
>yesterday she threatened me with the scorpion box; she saves her best death threats for her closest pals, so she must like me if she's threatening me with scorpions.
Did you mean that the underling is becoming more fond of the boss? I don't really see how that follows in the conversation.

It's a comic and it's on the web - seems like it counts.
Can't say much from four panels, but it looks okay.

Thanks, man. I'm pretty much shooting for okay. I haven't made any personal work since last year so I'm kind of just making something for the sake of making it.

Hmm, I thought there was a shyness connotation to it. I guess that's not the case, I'll change it.
I meant for it to sound like the boss is liking her underline more.

Also, sorry about the spelling errors, strange how I missed that

>I meant for it to sound like the boss is liking her underline more.
Okay, then it should definitely be "she's warming up to me".

that bell-eared little devil seems like he (?)'d be voiced by kevin thompson

Oh no, I read that as Kenan Thompson at first

I've been having a go at an original strip, based around superheroes (good to know no one hurt themselves coming up with that premise I know).

I'd be interested on people's thoughts on how it's progressing, it's as much a learning curve for me than anything else.

shroomsdayproductions.com/peerless

it's original alright. i dig the focus on action, and i even think it works despite your incomplete education vis a vis anatomy. i'm just having trouble caring when i have no connection to these people yet. it feels like a sequel to something older

That's helpful feedback, thanks.

The comic is about people who get turned into cartoon characters. Some cliché shady agency finds out and puts them in a house together until they can turn them back to normal. Not the most original idea, but its fun to play around with.

The suits of the guys who haul them to the house are made of similar material to whatever their genetic makeup became after the mutation, as to protect them and act as a sort of external antibody to whatever caused it.

Fighting fire with fire, so to speak.

that's a pretty weird premise. it's definitely original, i dunno where else youre seeing this..

I'm talking about the "cartoon characters living in a house together" part. Didn't drawn together do it?

what are thumbnails?
i set up the panels, then i do a rough sketch in each panel then i detail, then i dialogue

So comic thumbnails are essentially the rough sketches that help you plan how your comic is going to go. Little tiny drawings of your pages where you figure out how your panels are going to look, and how things are going to look on the page.

If you're doing a longer-term comic, doing thumbnails to plan your pages will really help you save a lot of time later on.

Here's some real straight-forward info on comic process: www.lackadaisycats.com/makingacomic.php

Thumbnails are miniature sketches done to figure out the overall composition before you do a full-sized sketch.

shit thats a good idea, thanks gang, imma go do this

When most of you do thumbnaiils, do you keep them this simple? Half the time mine end up being as detailed as my roughs.

I was trying to get back with my comic, so I started to draw the characters again, and they no longer look the same. Posting Irene, Johnny is too uncanny

>wake me up inside

I'm like Kaen, that's for sure.

They've gotta be simple for me or I end up getting really anal and spending too much time on them. Plus they're easier to erase when I want to move shit around.

I don't do thumbnails as much as I should, but yeah, that seems about right.
I usually draw character's expressions rather than just a cross, though.
(my thumbnails are done on paper, so I can't show 'em, sorry)

New one on the right?
It's a definite improvement.

I usually end up spending 15-ish minutes on a page's layout, which doesn't feel like it's that long but I have no idea. I don't actually add much detail until I'm happy with the paneling, so moving stuff around isn't a huge deal, at least.

Expressions and backgrounds are something I try to establish in them, but sometimes I have to wonder if it wouldn't be easier do part of that work on the page proper. It's rare that artists ever actually post their thumbnail sketches anywhere, so it's tough to really get a sense of what the process is like for other people.

That's really interesting! 15 minutes for a page and at that level of detail isn't a long time at all. What size are you working at, usually?

This is what my thumbs usually look like, sometimes I won't even draw the whole character in the panel. They're sketchy as all fuck. Then again, my pencils/roughs () are pretty tight after the thumbnailing stage.

That's a thumbnail? It looks like it's full sized.
15 minutes doesn't seem like overly long - I've spent hours on some thumbnails.

I think the criteria I use for whether expressions and backgrounds get in is how important they are to the panel. Unless it's really important I just figure that out as I'm rendering.

Uhh, thanks. I'm really on the edge on how I should feel about this.
On one hand, agreed, it's looks shall we say better, but is she still recognizable? If I were to draw her in other poses that don't imitate previous drawings, would the character really be the same?

She was always mean to be a bit rounded, but the new one looks skinnier. I dunno, maybe I should embrace this and not feel so attached to the OG designs. These threads are witness of the major changing on some of my old designs for other character as well, so maybe it's me who needs to let go

I recognized her. Aside from having a chin now, everything seems like a refinement, rather than a change. She's still round, just less cartoonishly so.

8"x5.5" for the thumbnails, then the full pages are A3. 15min may actually be on the low end, now that I think about it, any page with a big establishing shot or something like that eats up more time to sort out the background elements. I doubt they ever take more than half an hour, though.

It's only big thanks to the size I scanned it at, I think. Unless the sketch pad I use for these actually is compared to the size most people work at, I have no idea. In terms of time spent it helps that I'm not the writer, so I'm just translated a script into panels.

I usually focus on background in them just for the sake of keeping the characters' places in them consistent, and I try to put a little effort into the expressions so the writer can comment on them before I move to pencils. They're pretty terrible half the time thanks to the limited time spent, but I'm not great with expressions to begin with.

hey, so I know this doesn't answer your question, but I poked my head in the thread and looked at your strip. You should try switching the places of the fourth and fifth panel.

I say this because that third panel is so spoopy and out of nowhere, it's almost like a punchline, and that reaction in the fifth panel seems more suited to come immediately afterwards.

>It's been 2-3 months since I posted my first page
>Still have yet to make any good progress on the next one
I need to get my shit together Jesus Christ

Well at 8x5.5 inches your thumbnails are about 4 times the size of my thumbnails (I can easily fit nine on an A4), so that explains that. I don't know what the average size is, but your thumbnails being significantly bigger than most people's might well explain why yours end up being more detailed.

DO IT

i see what you mean. I like that a lot more actually

yeah, its kind of shitty. I posted like 8 pages in a previews thread and I barely got a ''nice job!'' comment.

I guess people only give a shit if the art is professional level or ''muh fetish!''

Post your work, I'll take a look at it.

Also, do you explicitly ask for critique when you post?

Your balloon placement is bad, In panel 5 I'm reading "You're dead[...]" before "Hey, um... where the heck[...]".

Cut out all the dialogue in panel 4 except "oh heck". All that text really weakens the moment, and is redundant: everything you write is obvious from the panels before and after. Show, don't tell.

I mostly agree with you, but I think having more than one "aw nuts" thought might work as well.

Like, "oh dang" "oh heck" "oh man"

You could also do away with text entirely and just have his reaction.

Oh, for sure! I personally like the expression with a bit of dialogue "oh heck" or something. Mostly my beef with that panel is the unneeded exposition.

but you still draw every day, right?

i keep redrawing my first pages every day because when i finish them i feel like they are good for a few days, then i see them again and realize that i could have drawn them way better, so i trow them and start all over again or sometimes i look at my script and realize how i can make things flow way better so that also makes me change what i draw on the pages

some people here can do a lot of cool stuff with simple characters and colors without shading, but when i try to do stuff that way i never feel fully satisfied , so i guess the best for me is keep to re drawing things until i hit i point where i feel really satisfied for a long time

>i keep redrawing my first pages every day

I feel like that's a one-way ticket to dissatisfaction, user. You've gotta move on eventually. Even the greats had to let go of old shit and move on.

Besides, no matter how good it may look to you now, you'll still cringe at it in 2-3 years.

sick, hows this?

You're better off moving on, user.
You'll improve faster and you'll actually get a comic out of it.

I'd make the skull guy's second balloon a separate thing and put it in the lower right of the panel. Other than that, this page looks done.

Looking for an invite to the discord.

Don't be afraid to get them balloons real up close and cozy, my man

I second this user.

Also there's a small issue with panel 1 and 2. Because of the almost identical placement of the hill / mountain and the direction the protag is looking the hill should be bigger in the second panel, not smaller.

You should either make the hill smaller in panel 1 or much bigger in panel 2 to better convey sense of distance.
With this type of minimalistic background it'll make a noticeable difference.

I really like your concept.
Make the skeleton do something spoopy on the next page to double down on the joke from the last panle.

Like this for example:

Panel 1: torrent of screeching souls burst out the skeletons eyeholes
Panel 2: Protag screams, shocked expression
Panel 3: some stupid joke

I did a crappy sketch.

oh i see, yeah that part. but it looks to me like the comic isnt really about the fact that they live together

oh, hes not looking in the same direction. hes supposed to be kinda sweeping the landscape. i don't really know how to convey that

yeah he missed out on a lot of adventures having joined last, so when there's a callback he's often kinda clueless, and that can provide a good audience surrogate because shit i dont think people remember that shit that well
in this case though the callback is to a totally unrelated comic that was only a few weeks ago, and it's more that he hasn't been to alex's house and met kishon's pet suzaku.. at least i don't think so. he may have been to the house.

lovely!
consistency is a constant battle. consistency with the past, consistency with other characters.. or even the question of whether she could go intentionally off-model whilst getting emotional. just remember nothing you've made is perfect, and nothing you make is going to be perfect

>mexican souls are great at sneaking across the border back to the living world
figures

>i don't really know how to convey that
not who you're replying to, but I wouldn't really worry too much for this page. That difficulty seems to come with having a character that's just a skeleton. You could try studying skulls in profile harder if you really want to nail down that issue.

Otherwise, you can just convey that in the next page as the skeleton just keeps moving

If I had the free time I would edit every single face in Carrion Girls to have googly eyes.

...

I'm WAAAAAAAAAY too busy working on my comic plus my real job to have the time to go through every page of Carrion Girls and do that.

It wouldn't take more than five-ten minutes per page. If you did just one page a day, you'd be done in less than three months~