How's Your Webcomic? /hyw/ #280

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=yfl6Lu3xQW0
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/
youtu.be/n8sOc2T_Ckc
youtube.com/watch?v=5tOXEPNvNB8
youtube.com/watch?v=XUhTKMBXWNg
vigormortis.co.uk
tapastic.com/series/FrICTION
twitter.com/NSFWRedditImage

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=yfl6Lu3xQW0

>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/

It feels good to be at 20 and have good body, healthy social life, high paying job, etc. and still be a better artist than many people in this hugbox.

Reminder to all amateur comic makers: No matter how much you may cringe at your first drafts, you will never be Ken "Devil Dung" Penders

got page 3 done. working on page 4.

rocks for days.... so many god damn rocks

Changed eyes again after previous comments. Hope its fixed now.

I want to pet the eeldog.

...

man, this is looking sweet!

>"Hey /hyw/ what do you think of my main character?"
>It's a brown girl

just a tiiiny bit further apart eyes in panel 2, man. i'm just sayin.
glad you went back to the Pico eyes in the last panel, those are fun.

Ok, my third at attempt, and like they say, I think this one is the charm.

Which did you guys like? The first, second, or third?

Show me three brown girl MCs in all of /hyw/.

The first is the best but this is better than the second. And I'm not messing with you, I'm angry that these people talked you out of the classic sun faces.

i am also not messing with you and i'm glad the smileys are back. they're just cute. and smiley sun loincloth is a nice compromise with the big ol' sun symbol.
are those Ds all over her wings?

Yeah, but he was right on the point of the garters, red shoes and multicolored socks, they looked a little too childish/slutty and I want her to seem pure, but still an adult at the same time.

Yes, for the Darke name, her hair clip is also a D, and there's one on her chest plate.

The Darke family, no matter how great they are, are admittedly a little full of them selves.

>their love interest is a white male

By "covering the rear and sides", I was thinking of something open in the front, rather than exposing one leg.
The smiley faces still look ridiculous, which is completely at odds with what you said you wanted her to look like.

I thought they were supposed to be sideways smileys. Try making it look more like calligraphy.

Change the eyes a bit.

shit even i couldnt keep that consistent on someone
but i do think the Ds on the wings look kinda dumb, like badly drawn holes

You come of as a very mediocre person lol

post work :^)

Now, it's time for Jack's dad, one of the other heroes that were on the first West Tree team.

He's kinda moody, alcoholic, full of himself, and Mexican.

Alright, I'll get rid of the D's on her wings and just do something else.

You should probably get rid of or simplify the pattern on the poncho if you're having this much trouble keeping it straight.

Ok, I can do that.

designing people's parents is fun. this is not exactly what i expected of the mann patriarch, but it works.
yeah the thing is the Ds would only face the right way if her wings were in that ONE position, so... probably best to leave those out yeah.
i would suggest a simple sine wave. it'll be good practicing keeping that consistent

>mexican

i demand you to change your racist stereotypes into a more accurate representation of my people like pic related


just kidding, actually we don't give a fuck about stereotypes, but that kind of poncho looks more Inca than mexican and the hat feels a bit out of place, it doesn't look like he is wearing it, it just looks like it is floating on top of his head

Sorry for the late reply.

I going to add "blah, blah, blah" and foreshadow for Lucky lotus secret technique.

there's just something about robot arms and ponchos and often eyepatches that go together. i can't think of where i first saw it but i've seen it in a few anime, and i have to assume dewd saw one of those too. unless it's another neat coincidence.

Well, I wanted him to look like a cowboy, but I'll remember to lower the hat.
I just chose the robot arm and the eyepatch because they were so cliche, and I wanted to make him look as edgy as possible while still looking like somewhat of a hero.

Since these guys were some of the first heroes, I tried to make them look a little cliche.

I actually can't think of any besides the recent moebius-esque one
Sisters, Miss Melee, Carrion Girls, Green Knight... all not only white girls but PALE ones as that

yeah that makes sense.
>had they not invented nuance yet back then?
>you whippersnappers
etc

Annabeth is semi-brown.

Nice Maccree bootleg you got there. Frog girl, Fluttershy and now this? Stop stealing.

huh, who's that guy? and how old is the thing he's from? i'm trying to piece together now where this trope came from. becaus ei've seen a LOT of robot-armed poncho'd cowboys but i'm having trouble thinking of specific examples outside of mahoromatic's epilogue. and some of them definitely had eyepatches.

Annabeth also isn't a girl.

It's just The Man With No Name but a cyborg. Not exactly a super original concept. Wouldn't surprise me if a bunch of different people came up with it independent of each other.

Well, as I said before, I took all things from media that are SUPER COOL AND EDGY BRO, these days, mixed with a little bit of mexican.

Also, that looks more like a cape than a poncho.

There's that one with the hook-nosed British brown nerd.

>not knowing what Overwatch is

About the cyborg cowboy thing, what about Galaxy Rangers? youtu.be/n8sOc2T_Ckc

>Memewatch
Literally TF for SJWs.
Only thing redeemable about it is all the porn Blizzard is desperately trying to censor.

you're telling me that beautiful art / design comes from a recent game? maybe japan's starting to turn back around. in any case though there's no way that's the origin of it then. i've been seeing these fuckers in anime forever
>galaxy rangers
slightly different aesthetic there. i really think there is some grungy gritty 80s anime that started this specific look, and then the likes of Wild ARMs and then later Trigun and shit took from that. specifically the red poncho, the metal arm, some kind of a hat.. i think it's gotta have some specific origin.
then again japan is so shameless about ripping characters off that it's hard to pinpoint the origin sometimes. like, was tuxedo mask really the first masked tuxedo guy? seemed like everybody in the 90s had one.
nah pretty sure that's a poncho.

If you are some sort of autistic neckbeard, maybe. If you actually play this shit though you know it's a great game, and a great celebration of shooters in general. It borrows elements from TF, but its bulk borrows from other 90's shooters, and it even has a "modern shooter" hero, so in the end it isn't much like TF, it's its own thing.
Also, despite the diverse cast borderline SJW pandering, there's only one gross character in the whole cast of 21 heroes, so stop being triggered by brown characters, faggot.

nice bait.

>there's only one gross character in the whole cast of 21 heroes

I agree. I don't know why, but Roadhog being a fatass looks fine, but it's disgusting on Mei. I guess because Roadhog also has buff as fuck arms, so it's not like he's just a sedentary fatass like Mei.

in any case tf2 is nothing but gross people, so isnt that 'tumblr' or whatever?

It's kinda funny that people fell for the 'Overwatch is diverse' meme. All but one, maybe 2, of the girls deviate from the standard sexy girl, whereas the males are anything from midgets, lanklets, fatasses, robots, gorillas, edgelords, etc. It seems like something Tumblr would get triggered by if anything.

triggerdom is contagious. just like how whining-about-racism stimulated a lot more actual racism in places where a state of none had been achieved.

Well, Roadhog is a gigantic man so there's that. But to be honest he grosses me out much more than Mei. Mei is a mess, but she is a cool mess. Roadhog tho, at least put on a shirt you fat fuck.
Anyway, the best skin in the game is the one who covers Zarya from head to toe. I will finally be able to play her.

Nope, it's all cis white male so tumblr hates them. Also they aren't really gross. Not even Heavy, who is a fat guy is a gross fat guy like Roadhog, he has more of a strongman type body

Overwatch cast is diverse, but tumblr doesn't think it is. They still complain saying the same shit you just said.

youd think tumblr would appreciate things like tf2 or the incredibles doing to white people what artists have done to the negros and the chinese and everyone else, exaggerating their features to a grotesque extent

Man, you have all those things going for you, yet you're triggered by hugboxes. How sad. I'd offer you a hug, but that might offend :)

Is this really considered fat

Man, the one downside to all this buffer I'm building is how I need to worry a lot more about spoiling people.
Ah well.
Does this color balance seem about right for a bright-but-overcast day?

For a girl, yes.

reminds me of Metal Slug

i'm getting overcast, i'm getting saturated, i'm not exactly getting 'bright' like a day when the sky is blazing white, which is what i assume you mean. pretty close though, i'd say close enough
nobody but you makes me think of this stuff!

Well, it's pretty stylized - she's got chubby-girl face, but a flat stomach.
Also that one oversized forearm is really bothering me. Is this official art?

I think it's because that arm is more bent than the other. My mom has roughly that build and her forearms bulge up to popeye size when the angle of elbow-bend drops below 15 degrees

Yes, it's in game

why you you repost this picture but with a fucked up resolution? Yes, she has an unrealistic flat stomach, but she is still fat. Her in game model is also clearly fatter than this, even though she hides it with a coat.

It's official, it's a concept art, and the thingy on the left of the messed up picture labeled "casual" is an in game spray.

Question about writing. How do you do a dramatic/tragic twist in a story that is mostly comedy, without it sucking?

Totally depends on your tone. Don't repeat the mistake of loss.jpg and shift a gag-a-day into a drama. What are some specifics?

Make it dramatic/tragic. Don't soften it with a character acknowledging how tragic it is, or having someone make a shitty/sarcastic wisecrack.

There's nothing wrong with drama in comedy if it's not too out of place or edgy, or just badly written in general.

I don't know, but read Loss and then read the raccoon arc of Calvin and Hobbes for examples of how not to do it and how to do it right.

Depends on the situation. Usually you should either very gradually fade into drama with sparse comedy as opposed to the inverse. OR hint that something serious is going down but don't have a realization or reveal until it's least expected so it's really shocking. A good example is this song from Mulan. We know these people are soldiers but all we've seen them do is sing and make jokes so whenever they come across the dead village they failed to defend it's very jarring and emotional.
youtube.com/watch?v=5tOXEPNvNB8

What you DON'T want is something that does shallow jokes and has no ongoing story and brings up drama out of nowhere to make it seem deep like CAD

Guess I'll experiment with it a bit when I've got some proper sleep.
I hope that's a good thing. I fucking love thinking about art-as-light, and if I can share the love a bit that's great.

Also, posting panel that I'll probably have to cut entirely because the scene it's in isn't working too good with it.
Ah well, that's the price of working like an idiot I guess.

you mean like this? youtube.com/watch?v=XUhTKMBXWNg

To be more specific: I got a story set in an urban fantasy land. This place is in a cold war with its neighbors. And there's an "something can set the spark off and kill us all" vibe throughout my first two arcs. Then in arc 3 it happens, without too much warning, and one of my main characters is killed in an air raid.

It's not gag-a-day, more like gunnerkrigg with chapters/books etc. So I guess that helps.

>Don't soften it with a character acknowledging how tragic it is

That's a good call, thanks!

Was reading loss in the storytime thread the other day. Still can't believe it's been 8 years already. Will give the raccoon arc a try.

aw but i like this picture. for several reasons.

if youre going to make the audience feel a tragic loss, then let them. let it be real. explore it fully. then for god's sake don't constantly keep doing it. don't be a Tomino and constantly introduce new characters who die horribly so we learn war is teh suck. just let it be the one. that one loss that changes things and people REMEMBER the dude that died.

>And there's an "something can set the spark off and kill us all" vibe throughout my first two arcs.
So long as you've set that up, then you'll probably be fine.

I'm a big fan of the semen demon on the right.

Don't forget Commander Keen.
That'd work well if you understood the original content and were playing it on its own head. As it looks now, you just steal shit.

absorbing something through popcultural osmosis is every bit as valid as understanding the original content
consider the fact that we have a discussion in this very thread about what the original content is, and we haven't been able to nail it down

well as long as your goal is to get people to immediately go 'oh it's one of those kinds of things, from one of those kinds of things'
I do the same exact shit, just half-remembered videogame characters i might have seen in an old magazine or something. Ask any creative person and they'll advise you to always copy, and always copy poorly. that's all originality is.

Yeah, I like it too and I really nailed the pose* but the basic sequence it's part of isn't really doing what it should and while the problem is the panels surrounding it, I'm gonna need to change this one too to make it work.

*made the breasts a little too big tho - I really suck at consistent breast sizes

That's Göndul. She was in a previous strip, too, although I didn't get her name in at the time.
I'm pretty sure she's married to her job.

Fangs and blood and stomping and stuff.

vigormortis.co.uk

i'm so lost in this story and i don't even care, it's just so badass

Yeah this is awesome, keep it up. I personally would of tried to make the mouth less Predator/Blade but it's not a big deal.

Can you stick around and do normal /hyw/ stuff instead of just drive-by posting your comic for promotional purposes?

Hi /hyw/, been having a pretty good week, and a lot of it is due to me figuring out how to cut the stress from getting pages done on time to near 0: I've been waking up at 5 AM to get an hour of drawing done before work.
It REALLY frees up your afternoon schedule nicely and I feel that working on my page gets less tiresome because I'll work on it for an hour and then get back on it 10 hours latter in the same day. Also finished a MAJOR re-write of chapter 8 which was a bloody mess and that had been scratching at my head for months now... but now I think I'm FINALLY satisfied with it.

Stylized comics WILL generally do that indiscriminately, really. You'll only really ever see white characters with, say, long noses. The "tumblr" crowd doesn't like grotesque designs (though you might see that unintentionally), they like "safe" designs.

I dunno, I think it's been worth it for me so that people can point out problems in a page months before it actually goes up.
I was actually thinking of taking a break after finishing the current selkie chapter just for the sake of trying to improve my art without looming stress of the upcoming page. Also, links image ALMOST done. To be honest, I had actually forgotten I HAD a "links" page on my site until you pointed it out, but now that means I also have to make one for the other great comics here like Sisters or MM.

You make people care about the characters beyond them being vehicles to deliver gags. The reason people make so much fun of Loss is partially because nobody cared for the main characters; it's not even about Buckley all that much, it's really about it being very awkwardly delivered and just not fitting the comic AT ALL.

We'll take that - cheers!

We try to make all the Revenants' mouths different but I think we did look at the Blade ubervamp guy in passing for mandible reference.

Have really sporadic internet access at the moment due to life jank so it's the best we can do at the moment - am following the threads when possible.

Ugh, double "at the moment" - what is sleep?

links pages do seem to be going the way of the guestbook and the hits counter, don't they? it's a shame

Reminds me of that pinky and the brain episode
for once Brain remembers he's given Pinky the instruction to pull the switch when he says 'now', and is trying desperately not to say it while he talks to his this-episode girlfriend
>not... at present
>not at the moment.. uh.. at this point in time..
>what?
>oh let me turn this off. CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW? oh drat

finally free so i'm able to start participating in these threads again so yay

I'm terribly sorry, I saw the thumbnail and the "Hi /hyw/" and I thought you were Bones.

i just love the over the topness of this comic
gotta say though this panel layout does not work very well (i've been guilty of this before) because the staggered rows with uniform columns makes you logically read straight down before going across

Here's some rough pencils. I tried to focus more on backgrounds, as I noticed some of my earlier pages were lacking in them. Thoughts?

ahh dang i didnt really notice it but yeah youre right i'll fix the panel layout, im not very good at laying them out so ill remember not to do this next time

Does this mean Zeke is indestructible (superpowers!!!), or he lands in a marshmallow factory?

nice little cityblock
though the roof awning is crooked on the middle building. it doesnt follow the perspective on the others. pick up its far corner a bit

sometimes it just.. happens. one panel needs to be a lot taller than another. whattayagonnado?
i don't think you're supposed to take this as reliable narration

I fully believe the story Zeki is telling is true and canon.

tapastic.com/series/FrICTION

All criticism welcome. I realize the speech bubbles still need some polish, and I'm tweaking them as a type this. But I want thoughts on my art, if anybody has tips I would appreciate it.

Like I said last thread, it's about people who are turned into cartoon characters and are forced by some agency to live together.

then that is one doofenshmirtzian backstory

>mature content
tapastic forces you to have an account to see that.

well this comic isnt exactly serious, it started with her parents getting killed by a raccoon for one thing. But zeki is telling the truth.

Well one thing that would really help is cleaner/bolder lines. Your lines are so thin and fuzzy reading it is a little rough on the lines. Consider playing around with grey scale some more, or using more solid blacks or crosshatching. All the blank white space in the comic makes it look kind of empty.

hehehehe
debatable*
also would he really say 'i wandered and opened my backpack' ? that doesn't sound right