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I deal with magic in my comic too... but I basically tried to steer away from the D&D style/RPG style stuff. It always sort of bugs me that like, magic is some super powerful thing and you can just throw around, like, fireballs or whatever. If so, wouldn't everyone learn to do this? Most fantasy authors then decide like.. 'well okay, you have to be SPECIAL' which gets into a really weird eugenics argument that I don't like. "Oh yea some people are just born with magic." You can replace magic with like..special powers, bending, whatever..and it just doesn't stick right with me. Sometimes it ends up just being an elite class withholding information, or something but it's always sort of boils down to something sinister, at least in most examples that come to mind. Anyway, I think you can use D&D as a model, but I personally think it'd be more amusing to see wizards deal with really boring, opaque ultimately useless stuff...like high level math grad students or something... Anyway that's my super nerdy magic rant.
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| # ? Aug 1, 2012 22:27 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 08:22 |
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Since you're not entirely sure how all his powers might come into play, I'd say get rid of the ones that make it easiest to avoid trouble. Evocation's pretty good.
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| # ? Aug 1, 2012 22:28 |
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Space-Bird posted:Anyway, I think you can use D&D as a model, but I personally think it'd be more amusing to see wizards deal with really boring, opaque ultimately useless stuff...like high level math grad students or something... Yeah, definitely. One idea that I want to convey is that magic can do nearly everything technology can do, at twice the cost. I'm going to try and continue putting in comics like this one when I get the chance -  But I don't want to overdo it.
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| # ? Aug 1, 2012 22:36 |
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Cross-posted from the character design thread, I'd love some digital coloring advice-- Here are some WIPs of the characters from my pirate comic and goodness gracious I am new at digital work so advice is greatly appreciated! The main character, Lottee Zotti...  And her crew.  Also I guess I'm building up a buffer of 3 chapters, all between 18-22 pages, before I try and make a website. I've sort of crashed and burned with this thing in the past, but I really want something illustration-y to do when I'm not working on stop-motion.
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| # ? Aug 2, 2012 07:05 |
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Hey so I guess this is the place you post comics you are currently making, right? I've lurked here for a bit so I guess I'll post mine that I started recently. http://www.thedrawplay.com/ I don't know if any of you guys are football fans (Otherwise you might know about it from TFF) but it's basically just a weekly joke about football. No recurring characters, no stories, so a little different from most stuff in this thread. I'm trying to spread it around to football fans, so if anyone knows some NFL nerds let them know, I'd really appreciate it. A lot of the jokes might not make sense to non football fans, though.
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| # ? Aug 2, 2012 20:45 |
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I like the way you draw nerds.
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| # ? Aug 2, 2012 21:20 |
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Febreeze posted:Hey so I guess this is the place you post comics you are currently making, right? I've lurked here for a bit so I guess I'll post mine that I started recently. I don't know much about footballing, but I checked out your comic..and I am dying to know what Gronk (gronking?) is? Is it a thing? Is it football specific?
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| # ? Aug 2, 2012 23:07 |
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Can I jump in on the subject of Aethen? I've really really enjoyed your comic and what's worked best about it for me is how slice-of-life it is. It's something approachable and I'd hate for that to be lost with something esoteric and arcane (no pun intended). Granted there's ways for 'rules' to work without bogging things down (this comic's actually a pretty good example), it's just worth keeping in mind that the comic might be bogged down if you have to sit the reader down and explain some stuff to them.
Nate Breakman fucked around with this message at Aug 3, 2012 around 00:13 |
| # ? Aug 3, 2012 00:10 |
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Space-Bird posted:I don't know much about footballing, but I checked out your comic..and I am dying to know what Gronk (gronking?) is? Is it a thing? Is it football specific? Rob Gronkowski is a giant meathead bro player on the Patriots. He's basically the epitome of the jock stereotype. He recently posed nude for ESPN magazine, has been seen dancing with porn stars and on dating shows, and half of his images on google have no shirt. He's basically a big dumb dude who you either love for his Gronkiness or you hate for the same reasons.
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 01:29 |
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Tank! posted:Cross-posted from the character design thread, I'd love some digital coloring advice-- Got no advice but your gals are totally adorable!
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 22:09 |
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Furikku posted:Got no advice but your gals are totally adorable! Thanks much! I'm contemplating just doing the pages I have with flat color for the time being, but that might be counter-productive to me actually learning how to shade properly? Any thoughts? :/ Like, sans backgrounds, this is what a page might look with flat colors. 
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| # ? Aug 3, 2012 23:21 |
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Tank! posted:Thanks much! I think the way you do linework more than makes up for any lack of shading. Looks good! Can't wait to see the full thing...
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| # ? Aug 4, 2012 00:05 |
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Same here. I can actually picture these ladies living the pirate life. Looking forward to more.
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| # ? Aug 4, 2012 02:01 |
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@Tank - the linework is really stellar and the characters have a ton of personality. As far as shading and coloring, a couple things stand out to me--there's places where your "shadow" color is not really much darker in value than the rest of it, and it's just desaturated or a different hue. That looks kinda weird in some spots. Also, in your flatshaded ones, the black earrings tend to draw the eye in the midst of all the purplish linework. Lastly the background stripes seem a little too clashy and saturated compared to the more muted character coloring. Rest of it looks awesome though, I would totally read this
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| # ? Aug 4, 2012 02:52 |
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Haledjian posted:@Tank - the linework is really stellar and the characters have a ton of personality. Thanks for the notes! The shadows being different hues are a horrible habit of mine and so I know I need to do some actual studies about that :T I'll try some more things and report back when I have everything finished.
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| # ? Aug 4, 2012 02:57 |
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Tank please make more of your pirates comic!! Along with what Haledjian noticed, I think something to consider is that when you have that nice creamy purplish color scheme on everything, a black object is immediately going to attract attention. I would save the black for areas that need extreme emphasis, like a character's eyes in a scene where their emotion is dramatic and key to understanding what's going on.
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 01:12 |
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Tank! posted:Thanks for the notes! The shadows being different hues are a horrible habit of mine and so I know I need to do some actual studies about that :T I'll try some more things and report back when I have everything finished. Your shadows SHOULD be a different hue than your local color. This will usually be blue, but it can be different when there's a strong ambient color.
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 01:38 |
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I need to do some real color studies then :[ Also I defs see what you mean about the black on purple. Thanks for your comments, dudes :o
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 02:04 |
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Space-Bird posted:I deal with magic in my comic too... but I basically tried to steer away from the D&D style/RPG style stuff. It always sort of bugs me that like, magic is some super powerful thing and you can just throw around, like, fireballs or whatever. If so, wouldn't everyone learn to do this? Most fantasy authors then decide like.. 'well okay, you have to be SPECIAL' which gets into a really weird eugenics argument that I don't like. "Oh yea some people are just born with magic." More recent D&D worlds address this sort of thing. At the base level, it's sort of like being pro athlete. Most people have the potential for it, but won't, don't or can't spent the hours and and hours it takes to get even remotely competitive at it. It also sort-of explains why some characters who aren't wizards can pick up a spell or two in their travels. One of the more recent D&D worlds, Eberron, takes place right after a sort of Magical-Industrial revolution, where lots of generally normal people find they can pick up a couple low-level spells and use them to, say, cast lightning bolt a few times a day to help power the city's electrical grid as their job. Similarly, there's a comic book series called Top Ten which is the superhero version: Millions of superheroes find themselves legally barred from vigilantism and have to find new ways to use their powers. So the guy with heat vision becomes a hot dog vendor (cooking the dogs on the spot with his powers) and the guy with the rocket car becomes a delivery man, and so on. I love that stuff. Related, for the first time in my comic's three year run, I've run out of buffer comics, and just when I needed them the most. So if anyone here is into that whole guest-comic-thing, I'd love your help! I get approximately 2500-4000 hits per day (less on the weekend), and I'll make sure your name and link is right under your submission, so it could drive a moderate amount of traffic to your site. Submissions need to be in by this Friday at noon (EST), which I realize isn't a lot of warning, but this whole snafu sort of blindsided me right as I was preparing for a trip out of town. Questions and submissions can be posted here or emailed to mike AT rustyandco.com Thanks!
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 05:23 |
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Tank! posted:I need to do some real color studies then :[ Also I defs see what you mean about the black on purple.
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 17:42 |
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I'm streaming some panel work for a while if anybody's interested: http://justin.tv/bigbigtruck - password is "tjandamal"
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| # ? Aug 5, 2012 18:04 |
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Well, since the topic of character design has come up I could really use some critique/suggestions: Black and White  Basic colours, no shading From left to right we have Klef, Izzy, Lucy and Felix. They hunt treasure in outer space. Felix and Lucy are the major protagonists, Klef and Izzy are recurrent rivals/antagonists I've been playing around with Lucy's hair (Used to look like this) and I'm not sure whether this is an improvement or not. So yeah, basically I want to know how these designs could be improved upon (Aside from the obvious "add some shading", that's my next step) Also, Tank: I am going to parrot pretty much what everyone else has said in that your stuff is awesome. If you're looking for some info on digital colouring I'd check out the tutorial Anthony Clark (The Nedroid guy) put out
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| # ? Aug 8, 2012 03:38 |
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KingKalamari posted:Well, since the topic of character design has come up I could really use some critique/suggestions: I think you should use a different palette. Right now your color choices are making Lucy really strongly resemble Chuckie Finster from Rugrats. You could maybe fix this by just switching some colors around. The designs are already super blue and red, so you could take the yellow from Izzy's costume and use it as a shirt color for her. Another thing I noticed: looks like Klef and Izzy are the same species, so why does one have vampire teeth and one have ogre teeth? Maybe Izzy's pupil's should be a little lighter? I feel like depending on lighting effects it might get hard to see where she is looking. Izzy's neck seems insanely long. Maybe that length could go into her legs. That would make her and Klef seem like their species is just especially leggy. I really like the silhouettes for Klef and Izzy. I love Izzy's costume, and I especially love the chunky heels she and Lucy are both wearing. Normally I would feel like heels are impractical for treasure hunting, but bare feet have got to be even more impractical so it kind of balances out for me.
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| # ? Aug 8, 2012 16:06 |
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Thanks for the suggestions thousandcranesthousandcranes posted:I think you should use a different palette. Right now your color choices are making Lucy really strongly resemble Chuckie Finster from Rugrats. That's probably a good idea. I'm kind of a sucker for orange/blue combinations so that's probably to blame for the heavy blue/red combo on this. I've done some brief, experimental tweaks (Including the ones you suggested to Izzy). I definitely like the Izzy tweaks but I'm a little wary of the yellow shirt idea:  Would it possibly help the overall design if I gave Lucy a more khaki-like pair of shorts?  quote:Another thing I noticed: looks like Klef and Izzy are the same species, so why does one have vampire teeth and one have ogre teeth? They actually both have shark teeth, I just couldn't figure out a way to note that when Izzy's mouth was closed without making it look like she has a massive over/underbite
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 02:43 |
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I run my webcomic off wordpress with the webcomic plugin. Recently I got a message from my host saying I need to update my version of wordpress because of security risks. However the last time I tried to update word press it screwed everything up, my site stopped working and I couldn't fix it without reverting to a back up. I remember a time this came up before in this thread and someone mentioned a program to test changes to wordpress site on a home system before committing it to a server. If I could get a link to that I'd really appreciate it.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 03:08 |
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KingKalamari posted:... I'm a little wary of the yellow shirt idea ... I think the yellow shirt works a lot better. It makes her stand out a lot more, especially stood around all that drat blue! There's just so much blue that having her with a contrasting shirt keeps her unique. If not yellow, try straight red? Even that is running the risk of beating your palette to death. Perhaps magenta, violet or some other purple as a compromise? As for her teeth, I'd suggest having two very tiny teeth sticking out at either side of the mouth, like double vampire fangs but very small. Keeps the teeth less intrusive but still gives a serrated, 'there's loads of these' look. Try making their lengths uneven too. I would just straight up doodle this but I'm on my phone. 
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 06:59 |
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My comic seems to be in "beta" a lot. Not permanent beta, I always eventually go back to colorize pages, but it's usually easier for my creative ebb and flow to put out a new black-and-white sketch page than to spend time perfecting all the details and then putting in the colors. That's pretty sloppy of me. I should probably get more of a work ethic about my hobby.
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| # ? Aug 9, 2012 07:05 |
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KingKalamari -- Yeah I like the yellow shirt a lot more. Just skimming the image over at thumbnail level, it really does stand out given how blue/red the other characters are. Try throwing in more green, orange, or purple on some of the characters and see how you like it.
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| # ? Aug 10, 2012 13:24 |
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Do you guys ever have trouble trying to balance momentum with nice drawings? Like I've been having issues lately with something coming out hosed-up, and part of me wants to just say "whatever, keep going or this'll never be finished" and part of me is like "are you kidding, look at his hand, people from the Dobson Mock Thread are going to think you are the worst artist ever." I guess the most important thing is to just not get paralyzed but man it's lame
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 03:57 |
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Constantly, but I'd rather be pushing myself and worrying than completely comfortable. Even if something's off, working outside your comfort zone will make you a better artist. Also, remember that text is extremely distracting- it's the first thing people will notice on a page and it commands attention away from little mistakes.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 04:27 |
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For sure! Meanwhile, I'll be making an rear end of myself in front of a webcam because I couldn't find any good punching references.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 05:44 |
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Haledjian posted:Do you guys ever have trouble trying to balance momentum with nice drawings? Yes, constantly. I'm also a super-slow artist. It's basically why I've descended into the messy pit of small sketch fan-comics. The last couple weeks I've been doing some watercolor pokemon though, which has given me some 'slow down, think about it, enjoy it' art time. I still can't manage to get it together enough to do an ongoing webcomic though, I don't think Old Batman counts. I think it's more a motivation problem- there's stuff I want to do, but nothing I want to do enough to spend as much time as I'd need to do the art properly on it. Don't be like me.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 08:31 |
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Is anime inspiredwebcomic ok with you guys? lol. name's Baracuda and you can check some of it here http://baracuda.smackjeeves.com/ it's about a mute, alien-infused-android protagonist hunting mutated giant monsters with his travel buddy, a rubber girl whose unsure if she's supposed to exist there (but living comfortably anyway). some sample pages  protagonist  in action dr. creator the rubbergirl old OLD concept sketchesthe whole thing is pretty much a throwback/love letter to some of my inspiration for doing comics: osamu tezuka, sentai/tokusatsu/kamen rider series, terrible scifi logic... haha. Mostly action with a bit of drama and comedy. I know full well i'll never make money from webcomics(or comics in general), so I'm doing it to just get it out and over with. It's pretty much experimental- so it probably wont be consistent artwise (especially there's years gap between pages.. started in 2008, updating every few years.. 1 mark on webcomic bingo card!), but the story will be consistent, or at least I THINK it would hopefully be ....  Currently for published work i;m doing something completely different, it is a webcomic but I get paid per page to draw and write it and published monthly. It's in Indonesian, though  It's a slice of life of cooking comic for all ages. here's a cover and a small sample:  My question is to you guys, do you think venturing into a few different genres at the same time a good or bad thing? What about style consistency- as a comic artist should you just stick to one style as it's good for your 'branding'? I always question that myself since I like trying new things and writing completely different stories and genres is always a good challenge, but as I heard from various people it's harder to 'stick' as a professional individual. not that I will make my webcomic professionally, but I sometimes wonder about the topic? Since most amazing webcomic artists tend to have their brand of style very recognizable and consistent. (...if this is in a wrong thread, i'm really sorry!!)
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 10:29 |
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This is really a question for everyone, but when drawing realistic city/landscapes, do you pull it from your mind or have a reference image to draw? One pitfall I keep running into is that I rush my surroundings, mostly because I have trouble conjuring up a really detailed cityscape. Also, I love the stippling in your pages, plaindot. I've always loved that style, very nostalgic for me. Dass Niemand fucked around with this message at Aug 13, 2012 around 13:32 |
| # ? Aug 13, 2012 13:29 |
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plaindot posted:My question is to you guys, do you think venturing into a few different genres at the same time a good or bad thing? What about style consistency- as a comic artist should you just stick to one style as it's good for your 'branding'? Hey, welcome! Your stuff looks really fabulous! As to the question, I really can't see a downside to doing multiple stuff at once if that's your thing. It'll keep you flexible, probably help against burnout, and show off your versatility. I personally don't worry that much about branding in that respect; it's more important in my view that the individual comics have a clear "brand" than the creator. Dass Niemand posted:This is really a question for everyone, but when drawing realistic city/landscapes, do you pull it from your mind or have a reference image to draw? One pitfall I keep running into is that I rush my surroundings, mostly because I have trouble conjuring up a really detailed cityscape. Both: I have oodles of reference pics that I crib from for details, but I use them as a jumping-off point rather than a direct reference. I study building heights and shapes and materials, sometimes also the architectural details, then keep those in mind when doing the actual panel. After that point it's mostly me drawing whatever bits appeal to me at the time, or seem like they'd be compositionally helpful. I tend to refer back to my pics a lot just to keep the inspiration flowing.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 15:08 |
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Haledjian posted:For sure! Meanwhile, I'll be making an rear end of myself in front of a webcam because I couldn't find any good punching references. If it helps, I found boxing photos are not the best. Movie stills and hockey fights turned out to be the most useful. Edit: and this is more motion/muscle than fighting, but National Geographic's "Fight Science" videos are terrific ref material as well. They're shot with strong directional lighting. http://channel.nationalgeographic.c...ence/index.html bigbigtruck fucked around with this message at Aug 13, 2012 around 15:31 |
| # ? Aug 13, 2012 15:27 |
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hi guys thanks for the responses! I guess what i should do is just do it and dont fret about those stuff about cityscapes, i tend to do it just randomly as I love buildings (despite being HORRIBLE at perspective) and i'm a masochist but for pro work i tend to reference it. I am a sucky photographer (like terrible), but it works well when I'm taking pics of buildings, since i can only see the photos as strictly reference/to get a gist of it. I think it's good to have some reference in terms of building designs, take note on how some buildings have similar set up for windows, and how some others have different layout depending on the purpose- and mix match them from there. It can be pretty fun! After a while you get used to it and you'll do it automatically.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 16:02 |
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Thanks bigbigtruck! I noticed that about boxing pictures, they're usually too controlled and don't have that huge comic book follow-through. I definitely poach from reference pictures for environments. Its great to find little details you never would have thought of independently but which ring true--in my most recent page I was trying to draw an alley, and was unsure about what to do with the ground until I found a photo of an alley with a long crack in the pavement running all the way down where the ground had sunk down a little bit. So I lifted that and it ended up being the perfect thing.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 16:13 |
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plaindot posted:Is anime inspiredwebcomic ok with you guys? lol. I adore your crazy old school anime science dad archetypes you have in the prologue so far. It looks pretty neat! I don't think there is anything wrong about taking inspiration from that sort of stuff... I guess you do see people fall into the trap of trying to draw 'anime', over learning fundamentals...but ultimately doing what you like is important! As for style and branding, I can't really say much other than I love seeing artists post things that are different than their normal stuff. Big style shifts can pay off too, in the end. I think Bad Machinery is a good example of that.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 16:25 |
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| # ? May 24, 2013 08:22 |
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plaindot posted:Is anime inspiredwebcomic ok with you guys? lol. A quick critique-- a small pet peeve of mine is not being able to see the comic navigation buttons and latest page immediately upon viewing the site. "Click to see the latest comic" automatically earns some negative points with me. I'd prefer it if you'd just shown the comic directly.
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| # ? Aug 13, 2012 16:37 |
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