How's Your Webcomic? #351

Welcome to Cawmic Tawk. I'll give you a tawpic: How would your webcomic be different if it was made in a different era?

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=5xPvvPTQaMI
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/
mediafire.com/folder/9pf1nwwa92lbp/Comics_for_making_Comics
youtube.com/results?search_query=how to draw comics
youtube.com/watch?v=xb1eMQ4K17Y
youtube.com/watch?v=-bB0AMQYORk
themesbyeris.tumblr.com/tutorial01
ggz.thecomicseries.com/
jesse-the-art-maker.deviantart.com/art/GOTH-GRILL-Z-page-18-WIP-22-666458526
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

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/ (surprisingly not a typo)

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

>DISCORD CHAT going on,
Ask for an invite in the thread.

>Wise words from John Cleese:
youtube.com/watch?v=5xPvvPTQaMI

>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/

>Comics for makin' comics!
mediafire.com/folder/9pf1nwwa92lbp/Comics_for_making_Comics

youtube.com/results?search_query=how to draw comics

It would be overshadowed by the dozens of super hero comics.
I'm unoriginal sorry.

Concept art of my mc

Rate

Did you catch my comment in the last thread?

Yes, thank you very much for that

One of Laserwing's functions is to force me to work on coloring, so any specific problems you can point out would be good. I'm six pages away from the end of the current chapter and one of the things I want to do before I start working on the next is rework my color palette. I'm really eager for feedback so come at me.

The only thing I'd change in your place is hardening up the shading. It's so anime style it ought to be pretty much cel shading. It looks like you have switched from the softer brush you used to use, though, if I compare. It's pretty close right now to how I'd already do it, but the lighting can be so realistic sometimes that it swallows up whole areas. On the other hand your panels are so much less cramped now that there's more TO be swallowed up

>How would your webcomic be different if it was made in a different era?

It would be less likely to even be made. No one would accept a premise like this far back. On the contrary, if I did it in the early 2000s and kept up with it, with the quality it is, I'd probably be popular and rolling in megabucks and be seen as one of the "originals" today.

Oh well.

Shading's been a weird issue for me. I was using a soft brush to start because I could literally scribble it out and it wouldn't ruin the overall shape of an object. Speed was my main concern. I'm using a harder brush because it was pointed out to me that it didn't really match the line style, but I'm still kiiiinda scribbling. I juggle multiple projects pretty much all the time, so I had been worried for a while that if I didn't cut corners somewhere, I'd never get my pages done. That's also why I was cramming so many panels on each page, but I realized that putting 9+ separate small drawings on one page was actually taking more time than 4-6 big drawings.

I don't have a lot of recent examples, but I used to use a super precise hard shading for everything, and it took me a million years. Here's something from a few months ago, even this is sloppy to save time.

My comic with some EXTRA STUFF.

My friend help me with this.

I totally know that struggle. It's so hard to balance. My shit would probably look better if I put more time into shading, but some part of me says it would be the easiest thing to go back and add later, so just finish now and then decide

Got a con in two week so, designin' stickers...

that's a great design for stickers. have you done stickers at cons before?

I push forward because I know I won't find the time to add the shading later. But if the shading is bad, I always know that if I must I can go back and fix it.

thanks man. Kinda of with my comics I do two versions, standard and a deluxe where you get a badge sticker and mini print for an extra £1.

These will be sold as a sticker pack though, was think maybe for £2 and you get three in a pack (third design not shown)

is that a profit or just recouping costs?

On one hand, I feel I could add some more to this background to make it look a little more lived in, on the other hand, it's already going to take quite a while color and I don't want to prolong that.

there's a dilemma i know too well.

So what do you guys do in terms of concept/preliminary drawing stuff? Do you do the thing where you draw every character using every expression?

Each sticker pack should cost about £0.49 so making 3 times profit at £2

there's jontron on that drawing.

And no, i don't do that "draw every character every feel" shit. I work with lots of preliminary sketches tho.

My god, you're right. I've drawn Jontron.

I'm interested in what everybody's preliminary sketches consist of. If there's anything along those lines I "should" be doing, aside from getting better at art.

And you draw arin.

It depends on your comic. A schoolgirl drama needs different preparations than a martial arts adventure.
Draw your characters doing the things, feeling the feelings and going the places that they will throughout the story, rather than some generic "draw 25 expressions" challenge where your character isn't the sort to ever wear those expressions.

I just keep drawing the characters and locations until I feel I have a good grip on them and can draw them from memory. Most of my preliminary sketches were just figuring out character designs and locations, many of which were scrapped. l mainly just do concept drawings to get myself comfortable with drawing the subject before I jump ahead to the final product.
I don't think a character expressions sheet is as important if you're the only artist working on this comic, as long as you can remember what your characters faces are supposed to look like I think you're fine.

I'd read a comic about an explorator jontron.

Anyway, generally speaking I draw character references, posing them to get to see how they act more than "how they look". I try different looks for them like: "what kind of stuff they like to wear" and shit. After i'm done, I try to draw eventual character interactions, ideas for the comic. Generally speaking I use my acting experience to get a feeling. Preliminary sketching is like rehearsal, as I use my characters as actors (like you see one character can play various roles in different comics i draw, in differents stories altogether)

Thanks guys, I'll probably end up drawing some scenes/interactions to get a good feel for how they should emote. I didn't like the idea of a stiff expression sheet either.

whoa I see egoraptor too
ECCH

I wouldn't suggest anyone imitate me in any way, but I'm kind of proud of how I've progressed from "no preliminary work whatsoever" to "just a head and a brief expression" to this (and in some cases, full-on geometric construction (which I tend to erase lines from as I go))
and I can thank these threads for it. I got called on how poorly-planned everything looked, and put some more time into planning. and though I was reluctant to start using a larger canvas as the threads also suggested, once I did, sketching-out became more necessary AND more fun

This isn't a character in any current project, but its a design prelim sketch so maybe its relevant to you?

part 2

Nice, thanks, I like how you combined it with some written development, that way you have a reference for the changes you've made. He looks really cool.

facial proportions can be a real dick in the ass. My advice when you're struggling with that is to think about the forehead. My faces got a lot better when I started keeping the forehead in mind.

bump

Dude that's pretty cool

i've been busy with my new job but during breaks i've been updating my characters since i hadn't draw them in a while

while i don't have enough time to start making pages right now im sure that in a few months ill have way more time a and a lot more stuff to post

i think i'lll us the tumblr webcomic theme from the op picture to start posting stuff and eventually post a full fist chapter in a few months

i have never used tumblr before so i was wondering if there are any good tutorials on how themes work

i like how that one looks but i would like to know if it is possible to modify it a little bit since i have 2 comics

i basically just want buttons that link to

-Home(random drawings)
-about the comics
-comic 1
-comic 2

"finished" half of those number cards, the stuff on the screens is just placeholder but I think the monitors themselves are pretty finalized. I wanted them to make a good set without one of them standing out more than the others.

Any good tips on character development?

I'm still heavily in the design/concept phase here, so I'm kinda at "How I want these characters to look" but very little on "How I want these characters to act"

nice farting zerg spawn

i think i can help with that Mark crilley has a series on that

youtube.com/watch?v=xb1eMQ4K17Y

also i remember this interview with the creator of invader zim
youtube.com/watch?v=-bB0AMQYORk

basically it talks about how at some point your characters become people in your head, and i have used that alot when i write stories

Only 7 or so pages in and having scanner problems, but hey, at least it's happening now, which is better than I have been doing

congrats, you've definitely improved, and your coloring has officially surpassed your linework. Of course that means now it behooves you to work on the lines.
I'd say get yourself a mental grab-bag of basic simplified character archetypes, start choosing your favorites and combining ones you'd like to see combined. Then go into the deeper choices that flesh characters out and do the same thing. but the simple stuff has to come first because that's most of what you'll be depicting in the comic

themesbyeris.tumblr.com/tutorial01 this is what I reference when I need to theme stuff on tumblr

is this an example? because it looks well-scanned enough
tip from me: don't leave your scanner next to a major radiation emitter like a tv (no idea if modern TVs are like this as well), it'll warp the shit over time and start giving you ribbing and rainbow lines

naw it's a shit photo
When I was using the school scanner the images ended up incredibly washed out to the point where I couldn't compensate for white/black balance with photoshop at all, and I couldn't change the settings on the scanner

Decided to do a practice comic based on a dream I had to get used to my new tablet. Drew this up last night, gonna start page 2 now.

I wanted to practice on my new tablet and photoshop before starting my main comic, so I started sketching up a one-shot of a dream I had. I drew this mostly last night, starting page 2 now.

huh, washed-out... wait, your school scanner is the one that's messed up?
your dreams are cooler than most of mine

jut finished a new page, i hope yall like it.

website: ggz.thecomicseries.com/

what do you think happens to comics like Preteen Demon or that one with the alien cats, and how can we all avoid letting it happen to us?

Would you care to elaborate what happened to them, because I have read neither.

oh shit i forgot her eye shadow! FIXED IT: jesse-the-art-maker.deviantart.com/art/GOTH-GRILL-Z-page-18-WIP-22-666458526

*this is a low kb version encase you couldn't tell, HD version tomorrow!

>Preteen Demon
who?

>or that one with the alien cats
what?

Oops, that was unintentionally vague. I meant because they both disappeared from the face of the web right in the midst of a high level of activity and indeed participation in these threads

whoops, forgot to link previous thread

Sorry I took so long to reply, here's my opinion on how to improve your coloring:

Simplify your rendering. Since you are painting with flat colors, instead of picking 5 shades for each color, pick 2, 3 max. Focus on the color picks right now instead of the rendering itself.
Stop scribbling with your tones, it doesn't add texture, it just makes a mess.
Like on image 1, the artist uses two colors for skin, for the clothes, a third being used as sort of an outline, and they complement each other so well we don't even notice how simple it is at first glance. When he wants to add textures, he uses a different brush, but uses it sparingly.

Are you painting with black and adjusting the opacity for the darker tones? I am not sure you do this, but that's what it looks like to me, the colors are so boring. Try playing more with your palette, and don't use transparent brushes. Really pick a color, make the brush opaque and go for it. Avoid super saturated colors and the really dark values close to black like you have been using on your latest pages. I get it's night time, but instead of making everything super dark, change the colors to have a bluish hue or something like that.
Also try to avoid black in general, use dark reds or a dark blues, like you did on the line art for that one patreon image.
Image 2 is a page from a /hyw/ comic where the artist really only uses the base colors and highlights, but the dark red instead of black inking makes the colors pop, it's simple and pretty.

Finally image 3 is just a cool reference for serious rendering. I'd say study this stuff, but only add a more complex rendering to your comics when you are confortable with it. Don't use your comic as a sketchbook like Dewd.

What's wrong with using your comic as a place to experiment? As long as you don't think you're going to end up with a masterpiece when you're done and not a gradually-improving mess, which nearly all webcomics are.

yeah I have really vivid dreams. the only reason I don't take anti depressants is they might stop me from dreaming.

is this comedy?

Welp, time to apply nose to grindstone to see if I can't get this looking somewhat presentable within the next twelve hours.
Also it turns out I missed a vowel shift between medieval Icelandic and modern Icelandic and I've been spelling my main characters' names wrong for three years. Not sure what I'm gonna do about that.

You said it yourself, you will end up with a mess. There's nothing wrong with it if you want your comic to be your public trashbin, but if you want a cohesive work people will want to read and be engaged, you practice and experiment in... practice drawings, to just then apply that new acquired knowledge onto a project.

Whenever people try to describe coloring it always feels like a different language that doesn't apply. What I'm doing isn't something I consider 'painting.' Shading is a technical process. I know where the light and dark goes and I put them there. I probably do need to break the way I do digital art, which I learned from adoptable/sparkledog communities where the process is broken up to make more easily editable templates.

Here's an example image I did a while back to try and explain what I'm doing. The colors on the side are similar to the ones I'm using for my shading right now: desaturated purple for shadows and pale orange-yellow for light. I've never shaded with black, and I'm pretty sure if I tried to it wouldn't work. Maybe layers in Photoshop/Sai/etc. work differently than in GIMP. When I was a teenager I used to shade with grays, but that looks awful on skintones so I stopped that pretty early on.

re: color pallettes

This is the actual dumping ground for all the colors I've used in the current chapter of Laserwing. Currently I've been putting a layer of extra color (in a desaturated purple) over everything to make the default colors, most of which I picked for daytime, look more appropriate for night.

I'm absolutely going to have to pick better colors for my grass, trees, sidewalks, and other mundane background stuff, because most of them are a little too gray.

I don't know if that's the entire truth of the matter. I guess if consistency is very important to you or your audience, you shouldn't experiment in your comic, but if you've got the self-awareness and time to redo things more conventionally when your experiments turn out bad, it's not a big deal.

very nice environment, but that closeup of the paw looks really lazy next to those leaves.

In the fourth or the seventh panel?

the last one, that plus the mud beneath kinda makes it look like you just went 'whatever'

yo this is fantastic

eh, i think due to the nature of webcomic updates you can quickly recover from an experiment page and give your readers a heads up if you want (I forgot where I've seen this done though)

>experimenting makes your comic automatically awful
N
G
M
I

Alright, I already had my eye on the mud there, but I'll give the fur some extra time too.

just started your comic
your art is very pleasing

Thanks, I try!

>tfw working on a new story arc but I dont like it much. But I don't know what else to do so I keep doing it...

God damn that is beautiful

I was trying to develop a comic over 10 years ago,but the form it took I found too labor intensive. I work nights stocking shelves in a supermarket, six nights a week most times. That and drawing would cripple my hands,so I went with drawing individual elements of a panel and hammering them together in PhotoShop, which would allow me to reuse parts like backgrounds and props and speed up production. However,trying to process it all was time consuming,and for half a decade I was distracted by the very entertaining creating in Second Life. I resolved to try again 3 years ago,limiting the strips to newspaper comic sized chunks,but Life intervened. Now I am forced to scan stuff directly from my sketchbook for the "content",with minimal cleaning and dialogue fixing due to a lack of free time at home. I can only go foward and do the best I can to get updates produced. After I finish this story I will continue the original plan.

>finally finding a fast, reproducible and good looking colouring and shading routine.

Share your secrets

It won't be very impressive for any user that already knows alt+shift+backspace, but the fact i can just lay in basic shadows and highlights in greyscale and pick whatever colour i want later is a big weight off my shoulder.

Two levels of shadows in hardline brush, just low opacity black. Every shade gets a very slight gradient over it just hinting at source light.

Skin is different, you can give it the hard brush shade, but also do a light, soft brush around the dark parts in a more reddish (or whatever) hue. Gives it a sort of 'inner glow' look

Bump.

Your art has really improved since I started reading your comic, and it was unique and beautiful to begin with. Every couple of weeks I go back and read through what you have, and it's great.

So I was watching Storymind's videos on character archetypes and in one of her videos she pointed out that according to Dramatica they represent the different facets of a person facing a problem.
This made me think, what if I rolled all of those roles into a single character?

it's not serious, that's for sure.

That's overdesigned and too detailed. It looks really noisy. Think of the composition of each panels as a movie shot: what do you want to show? What are the most important stuff you wanna see in that?
The fact that backgrounds and characters have way too much details clutter the panels on your comic from what I see. It looks busy more than anything. If i'd were you, I'd put more emphasis on characters, composition of the shots than what I need to see. Also dat awful speech placement. I've got no fucking clue on how to follow that conversation.

...

>have time to work on comic today
>woke up with a sore throat and a fever

Goddammit.

how it's gonna stop you from drawing man.

I'm in pain. And my head feels full of cotton. I do not trust myself to make anything of quality with a fever. I think I'd trust myself drunk more.

dude get some aspirin and roll with it. Plan stuff, scribble ideas, come up with stuff to plan your comic.

If nothing else, I agree with you.

Fever might get in the way of fine details and precision inking, but if you can manage to get your pencil to the paper without dying, it's a decent place to be for thinking up interesting compositions for pages and panels. You'd have to review things later when you're clear-headed, but you might get some good stuff.

he's right. You can do plenty of stuff.


Working on the inking of the last page. They play a gig. I hid some easter eggs on my page.

i've had deeper dreams on my antidepressant
you're still putting more work into scandinavian orthography than literally anyone else

Thing is though, you chose to single out Dewd... if anyone here is suffering from the desire to be consistent over improved, it's him. Yeah he keeps using the comic as a guinea pig, but when an experiment fails, he abandons it after a few strips. When it's an improvement but also a departure, sometimes it's hard to convince him to hold onto it.
You read any webcomic's archive, you're going to see a huge shift in quality from beginning to end. It's unavoidable.

What setting do you find works best when you overlay shadows of a particular color on top of a work, instead of picking each shading color for each color-segment of the object to be shaded? I've never quite gotten any of the suggested layer settings to look right. Usually they'll shade some colors properly but not others.
Oh hey it's you! Is this what you're calling yourself now?
Yep that is what it was like..
Your art reminds me a bit of Ethan Nicolle's

yeah why not I don't really care. might use that name a few times but i dont wanna be a namefag.
and thanks about the ethan nicolle comparison, i wish i had his talents lol

Thanks!

>people reading it more than once
Ah, that's music to my ears, user. I always hoped I'd make up for how long I spent on each page by having people read them more than once, and I'm pleased as punch to hear it's working out in your case.

Well, I'm glad to hear you say that (I think some linguistics professors, like the one who made the video that made me realize my mistake), but you cannot imagine the amount of butthurt I am experiencing now that it turns out "Skalmold" is actually closer to the proper pronunciation of "Skalmǫld*" than "Skalmöld" is.

*it's like the "o" in "dog"

Crap. wrong tab

oh wait I mistook you for someone else who sketches in one-pixel lines, I think
you lucky bastage.
so it's mald rather than muld?
if the change you need to make is just the accent mark on the O, I bet you could go back and change that with relative ease. Or you could just silently retcon it, the way TMNT did with mich(a)elangelo

Oh, if that's the case I don't think anyone would notice if you went back and just adjusted that letter when it appears