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Star Man posted:Yeah, that's what I planned on doing. My tablet is a Wacom Graphire 4 How big is it? I dropped a bunch of cash on a fancy A3 intuos and I've kinda realised I just don't enjoy working digitally. Unless it's like A5 size, I wouldn't upgrade. When I said scan them first, I meant so you have a backup in case the markers don't work out.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:52
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lofi posted:How big is it? I dropped a bunch of cash on a fancy A3 intuos and I've kinda realised I just don't enjoy working digitally. Unless it's like A5 size, I wouldn't upgrade. Mine's 6 in. x 8 in. I understood what you meant by scanning first.
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Aug 13, 2018 20:58
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Fangz posted:Do a test page. Or splurge if it's fun. Just put it in your toy budget and not your "I need this" budget. Check out the tablet thread and this blog before you choose though.
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Aug 13, 2018 21:23
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I've had the same watercolors for 10 years, only ran out of a few tubes usually the neutral colors. Still have a bottle of bulletproof ink purchased in 2008 and I exclusively write with fountain pens. Physical media has been far more economical than any other alternative for me.
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Aug 13, 2018 21:33
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Depends on how much you paint or write. I really don't advocate spending on expensive materials because for me at least I find that it makes me super precious about not 'wasting' it and actively discourages me from doing art.
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Aug 13, 2018 21:45
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Yeah, I've been the same for ages, I'm sloooowly breaking myself of the habit, but it's still hard to use nice paper, etc.
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Aug 13, 2018 21:53
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lofi posted:Yeah, I've been the same for ages, I'm sloooowly breaking myself of the habit, but it's still hard to use nice paper, etc. I had a drawing teacher who taught me that there's no such thing as sacred paper. And myvwateyrcolor teachers both taught me how important it is to plan ahead with wet media.
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Aug 13, 2018 21:57
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I know that logically, it's nothing till you use it to make some art. But there's the stoopid voice in my head going but what if you use the nice paper and gently caress it up and then you won't have any nice paper later when you really want it and I just gotta learn to ignore it. Or go the other way and make a thing out of drawing on torn up boxes, I guess.
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Aug 13, 2018 22:42
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Fangz posted:Depends on how much you paint or write. It's true that you shouldn't buy stuff just to have it or whatever, but if you need it, it's good to get the stuff that's going to work well. Watercolor especially is much easier with good brushes, artist grade paints and paper that won't instantly curl up or flake off the moment water touches it. Watercolor brushes/paints also last a while, so you can start off with a small set of brushes/paint and slowly add to it over time. No reason to buy everything at once. Though I definitely think you can find ways to be economical about paper in particular. You don't need to practice on something like 300lb paper. 90lb or 140lb is fine if you stretch it first and don't overwork it. If you really wanted to cut costs though, you could always buy a couple sheets of Yupo and just rinse that off every time. Reusable paper! (well plastic, but yeah)
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Aug 14, 2018 01:32
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So, having been working on writing a large-scale comic project for the past year or so I had a moment a few weeks ago and sat down and seriously assessed my overall concept for how long this drat thing is going to be and realized in the form I had envisioned it I would be lucky to get the thing done in 20 years if I kept to a reasonable pace. For my own sanity I have decided to drastically cut back on the scope of the project to something that could conceivably be completed by one person in less than several lifetimes. I've managed to cut things down to telling a story in roughly four large parts (Whether this actually turns out to be feasible or just a slightly less ridiculous pipe dream remains to be seen). The only problem I'm running into is a general sense of anxiety at having to limit the length of the thing to "finite" and worrying it won't give me the opportunity to explore all the stupid plotlines and shenanigans I've had ideas for. Anyone else ever dealt with this? As well: Anyone know of any good articles on plotting out a long-form narrative? Articles about plot outlines are rarer than I'd hoped and articles specific to graphic novel format are virtually non-existent.
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Aug 14, 2018 03:38
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KingKalamari posted:So, having been working on writing a large-scale comic project for the past year or so I had a moment a few weeks ago and sat down and seriously assessed my overall concept for how long this drat thing is going to be and realized in the form I had envisioned it I would be lucky to get the thing done in 20 years if I kept to a reasonable pace. For my own sanity I have decided to drastically cut back on the scope of the project to something that could conceivably be completed by one person in less than several lifetimes. I've managed to cut things down to telling a story in roughly four large parts (Whether this actually turns out to be feasible or just a slightly less ridiculous pipe dream remains to be seen). The only problem I'm running into is a general sense of anxiety at having to limit the length of the thing to "finite" and worrying it won't give me the opportunity to explore all the stupid plotlines and shenanigans I've had ideas for. Anyone else ever dealt with this? you should watch this
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Aug 14, 2018 08:19
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Don't plot your story too far out cuz you're gonna get 1/10th the way through your script and come up with an even better direction to take it just from creating the world and fleshing out your characters and then all the other 90% of the prep work you did is useless.
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Aug 14, 2018 08:33
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Oh god, a million times the 'fail faster' thing - a year ago I chose to do a comic a month so I could get my fuckups out the way fast, and it was such a good move, it means I'm not hobbled with the poor choices I made starting out. Especially after listening to this dude who spent 13 years to try one method, I'm like 'yeah, I'd have done that for a month and gone lolnope and then be freeeee'.  Reiley posted:Don't plot your story too far out cuz you're gonna get 1/10th the way through your script and come up with an even better direction to take it just from creating the world and fleshing out your characters and then all the other 90% of the prep work you did is useless. I've heard this advice before, and it doesn't make any sense to me - unless your story is designed to be never-ending, surely you need to know where you're going so you can make the story cohesive? Not to mention redrafting the start to fit with the ending better, drop in some nice foreshadowing, etc. The Webcomic Alliance podcast sometimes does 'longform takeovers' which might discuss a lot of the issues relevant to you. Otherwise, I've been looking mostly at scriptwriting or short story writing advice.
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Aug 14, 2018 15:06
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quote:I've heard this advice before, and it doesn't make any sense to me - unless your story is designed to be never-ending, surely you need to know where you're going so you can make the story cohesive? Not to mention redrafting the start to fit with the ending better, drop in some nice foreshadowing, etc. It depends on how you see 'too far out' and also 'plot your story'. I tend to have the general structure of the story planned out but only in a very loose form. The point I find with too-planned out story is that it's hard to hit a point where the story is both clear in terms of how one thing leads to another, and isn't too *obvious* in terms of well, X is inevitably going to happen. It can feel intensely artificial if you are drawing a page to lead to the next pre-determined Event, especially if your story is very character led. My personal sneaky trick with foreshadowing is dropping in elements that *might* be picked up later but might also be left off as just one-off jokes that people just forget about. EDIT: Unrelatedly, what do people think about this video, that showed up in my youtube recs? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNHzLFIZs1s Especially asking folks like Reiley... Fangz fucked around with this message at 15:23 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 15:14
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hey you guys, I'm recently finally doing a webcomic full time after the last one I did failed in a dumpster fire. For an uprising comic artist such as myself, what should I do and what should I not do when doing a webcomic?
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Aug 14, 2018 19:16
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How did your last one fail
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Aug 14, 2018 19:44
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KingKalamari posted:So, having been working on writing a large-scale comic project for the past year or so I had a moment a few weeks ago and sat down and seriously assessed my overall concept for how long this drat thing is going to be and realized in the form I had envisioned it I would be lucky to get the thing done in 20 years if I kept to a reasonable pace. For my own sanity I have decided to drastically cut back on the scope of the project to something that could conceivably be completed by one person in less than several lifetimes. I've managed to cut things down to telling a story in roughly four large parts (Whether this actually turns out to be feasible or just a slightly less ridiculous pipe dream remains to be seen). The only problem I'm running into is a general sense of anxiety at having to limit the length of the thing to "finite" and worrying it won't give me the opportunity to explore all the stupid plotlines and shenanigans I've had ideas for. Anyone else ever dealt with this? Lately-ish my thoughts are to try and pack as much important info into a page as possible, and think about the distance in time you can put between pages. And also, have ideas for future stories down the line but not to rush them, or even make their happening a necessity for the enjoyment of the work. Have many ideas in flux and commit to them the moment you need to write them down. It's always about the journey, even if you have the destination in mind. Your comic's sci fi, would a serial format be a good fit? Even if it's working toward a larger thing. Like Bone.
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Aug 14, 2018 19:58
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Reiley posted:Don't plot your story too far out cuz you're gonna get 1/10th the way through your script and come up with an even better direction to take it just from creating the world and fleshing out your characters and then all the other 90% of the prep work you did is useless. co-signed, this is the best way ive seen this feeling put. i dont know about other people but i think a story is going in one direction and then it turns out to be a totally different story because i found a better, more interesting direction to go in and decided to chase it. i only have an end point planned out for story arcs, how i get there is whatever
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Aug 15, 2018 02:58
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Thanks for the advice, everyone! Funny, I actually watched that a few months ago. My initial reaction was "Hm, this seems like pretty good advice" but I feel I appreciate it and its relevance to my own endeavors a lot more rewatching it today. Reiley posted:Don't plot your story too far out cuz you're gonna get 1/10th the way through your script and come up with an even better direction to take it just from creating the world and fleshing out your characters and then all the other 90% of the prep work you did is useless. fun hater posted:co-signed, this is the best way ive seen this feeling put. i dont know about other people but i think a story is going in one direction and then it turns out to be a totally different story because i found a better, more interesting direction to go in and decided to chase it. i only have an end point planned out for story arcs, how i get there is whatever I can definitely appreciate this sentiment and am actively trying to keep what I have for the overall plot relatively loose and free to change, that said I do feel that I would at least want to get a basic skeleton of the plot put together before I start getting too deep into things both so I can write the earlier parts with a bit of forethought to where things are going and so I can get a fixed end point and a rough estimate of how long the story needs to be at minimum to cover all the important points I'm looking to include. That said I am definitely planning for a lot of the details and story points to end up changing once I start getting into things. lofi posted:The Webcomic Alliance podcast sometimes does 'longform takeovers' which might discuss a lot of the issues relevant to you. Otherwise, I've been looking mostly at scriptwriting or short story writing advice. Oh wow, I have never actually listened to this before! This looks right up my alley (As does a writing-advice centered podcast they linked to in one of the episode pages I visited), I am definitely adding this to my queue of podcasts to listen: I've been looking for a good writing advice one! FunkyAl posted:Lately-ish my thoughts are to try and pack as much important info into a page as possible, and think about the distance in time you can put between pages. And also, have ideas for future stories down the line but not to rush them, or even make their happening a necessity for the enjoyment of the work. Have many ideas in flux and commit to them the moment you need to write them down. It's always about the journey, even if you have the destination in mind. That's actually very much the format I've been thinking of as I plot this thing out: I've roughly divided the story into four overarching "Parts" that are each divided into 5 or so "chapters" with each chapter being divided into another 5 "acts" that are meant to stand at least marginally well on their own. The problem I was running into up until this point was that I was treating the whole serialization aspect much too heavily like I was writing a tv show as opposed to a comic: The plans I had for stories were ones that would take a significant amount of pages to convey the way I had imagined them which, coupled with the fact that I had planned to have things in a more or less episodic format that lead to a more long-form story arc meant I was looking at an amount of work that was not reasonably possible for a single person to complete in any reasonable amount of time (TV Shows have big production teams for a reason, I discovered...) Either way, I'm hoping that being able to at least set up a rough plot skeleton and impose some limitations regarding length on myself will prevent things from meandering or spiraling out of control.
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Aug 15, 2018 04:28
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my dumb comics It's been a few months since I last posted, but I've built up a bigger backlog of comics now. Come check 'em out. Here's an imgur gallery with the last month's worth of comics posted. links are at the bottom if you want to check out the rest of the batch. Lots of Hearty Laffs and a Good Time! 
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Aug 17, 2018 20:13
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I've been working on this for too long, but I decided to take a break, and now I can't bring myself to work on it any more. I may have gotten too ambitious with it, and I was experimenting with different techniques. Hope you guys like it.        I'm happy with what I've learned doing this project, and would appreciate any advice and/or criticisms.
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Aug 25, 2018 23:47
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It's kinda hard to say with an unfinished work what's helpful to comment on, and what's just something you didn't get round to. My thoughts, in no particular order: In general, you've got a good start (I like 'doing something he knows is wrong' as a hook - it immediately makes me want to know what he's doing, and why), and the story flows naturally enough. I'm not convinced by the ending though, it feels like it'd benefit from more struggle. As it is, it's just 'dude preys on sharks, gets eaten by a bigger shark' - I'm all for cyclic stories and people getting eaten, but it could do with more. Show us him struggling like his victim-sharks did, even if it's just as hopeless. Warm summer's day - naww, make him sneak out under cover of darkness, way more dramatic! Maybe in foul weather so no-one can spot him, etc. Warm, summer, and day are all safe-feeling, and that's not what you want. Or maybe it starts that way but a storm comes in, if you want to be reaaaaal subtle. In terms of 'making the project more managable', I think you could probably cut a lot of panels out without losing too much, just make things a bit more compact (ie, less to draw). Look at where you can tell story with pictures alone to avoid redundancy (eg, the first panel text is redundant, you can show that easily enough, meaning you can put words there about character's debts, etc. The sections with 'I raised the hook', etc. ditto - you don't need to tell me what I can see.) It looks like you were writing/sketching as you went - which is cool (idg how people write like that, but each to their own), but then go back and re-write/edit to cut the fat away. Get it all figured out in sketches, before you start drawing in any sort of detail. Fucken spellcheck/typos/etc.  I like the big glowy death-shark reveal, you could maybe foreshadow it beforehand, like have a big ominous shadow in the water or something. (continuity - shouldn't the pile of dead sharks be missing teeth? that page looks hella cool though, real nice colours) Also, you should end it with death-shark swimming away into the sunset and a 'fin' 
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Aug 26, 2018 01:28
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Thanks for the compliments, and yeah, you're right about the writing/sketching thing. Originally, the comic wasn't going to have any text in it, but halfway through I realized a good way to write for the fisherman. And the last page was pretty much a cop out because I just wanted to do 8 pages and needed a quick ending. I have an idea on how to continue the story, but I just have lost interest in the project for now. I'm hoping to pick it up again but that might not be for a while. E; lofi posted:Also, you should end it with death-shark swimming away into the sunset and a 'fin' I just got this, bravo sir! Johnny-on-the-Spot fucked around with this message at 02:44 on Aug 26, 2018 |
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Aug 26, 2018 02:37
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Finished uploading the first chapter of my comic recently, and I'm 90% done with the second chapter. There were only a few months in-between so not a huge leap in quality, just bit more time spent on backgrounds and shading. For panels where there's no background I'm trying to do a gradient with the same texture as the lineart but I'm only 80% sure it passes. 
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Aug 30, 2018 06:15
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Personally, I wouldn't do the gradient for every panel - as it is it grabs attention with its uniformity more than you probably want. Writing-wise, you're using a very modern voice ("super-close","a temp thing", etc.) which feels quite jarring against the generally low-tech (I think, there's not much to confirm either way) setting - is that deliberate?
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Aug 30, 2018 07:39
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It is actually! I wanted the setting to be a sort of early 1800s small scale society, while younger characters talk and act more modern to tie into the premise. I can see what you mean about the gradient too, either gonna cut it down to just be one shade or do a flat color like I did in the first chapter. Depending on what looks better.
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Aug 30, 2018 19:58
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New comic up! I'm still figuring how to put A7 comics online, the compiled format seems better than seperate pages to me, any thoughts? e: Apparently it was good enough to get me my ~*fourth*~ patreon subscription.  e2: Jesus, I really need to change website hosting, that load speed is pathetic. lofi fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Sep 2, 2018 |
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Aug 31, 2018 18:05
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I'd definitely say the one pager works better, since a good number of them are 1-3 panels, and you can avoid the loading problems that could break the flow of some readers.
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Sep 2, 2018 19:02
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Pretty much my thinking, yeah. Thanks, good to have fresh eyes looking over it, christ knows no-one reading it ever gives any feedback. (see, thread title)
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Sep 2, 2018 20:19
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Have you ever thought of formatting your webcomic in readers spreads, so you can do a twopage spread online?
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Sep 3, 2018 03:42
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I hadn't, that's a good idea. I'll make a couple of mockups and see how it looks.
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Sep 3, 2018 08:42
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This might have been my imagination, but didn't Clip Studio have a feature that put all the text on a page in boxes in some kind of toolbar, so that you can edit the contents of the text by just tabbing through textboxes instead of having to find them on the page and clicking them with the text tool selected each time? Or is my memory playing tricks on me?
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Sep 24, 2018 13:01
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Argue posted:This might have been my imagination, but didn't Clip Studio have a feature that put all the text on a page in boxes in some kind of toolbar, so that you can edit the contents of the text by just tabbing through textboxes instead of having to find them on the page and clicking them with the text tool selected each time? Or is my memory playing tricks on me? That's an CSP EX feature.
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Sep 24, 2018 13:06
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Thanks, that helped me track down the feature. But it's not working like I thought. Even though I entered text in separate boxes, all the text is all just in a single layer, with the text on separate lines. What am I missing here? I thought the idea was that I could input the text as though I was writing a script, then move individual lines to suit me later. Edit: Found a preference that makes it always insert a new layer when adding new text, which is fine by me--but now I have to know, what's the point of having the option to put them all on the same layer in the first place, if I can't move them separately from each other? Or can I move them, and I missed that? Argue fucked around with this message at 14:04 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 13:52
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I don't really understand what you mean or expect. You can have text in multiple layers and it'll appear all together in the story editor. Or you can type directly into the story editor and it'll all be in the same layer, but each paragraph will be in a different text element in the layer so you can reposition them individually. Make sure you press enter twice so each text segment is in its own 'box'. https://www.clipstudio.net/view/img/en/functions/csp138_02b.png The point of having it all in the same layer is so you can do stuff that affects all the text on the layer, e.g. apply colours, outlines, stuff like that. To move the segments in the layer individually use the Operation tool. (You use this to also move around stuff like rulers) https://www.clip-studio.com/site/gd_en/csp/userguide/csp_userguide/510_tool/510_tool_operation.htm Fangz fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Sep 24, 2018 |
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Sep 24, 2018 14:04
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Argue posted:Edit: Found a preference that makes it always insert a new layer when adding new text, which is fine by me--but now I have to know, what's the point of having the option to put them all on the same layer in the first place, if I can't move them separately from each other? Or can I move them, and I missed that? If I'm understanding the problem correctly: you can independently move text boxes on the same layer by using the Text tool to select them. The Move tool will move the whole layer.
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Sep 24, 2018 14:12
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Ah, that's what I was missing, the Operation tool. I was using (K) which I'd long forgotten was the "Move layer" tool so of course it wouldn't move the text separately. Thanks!
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Sep 24, 2018 14:13
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I use the story editor too, but it's far from perfect. I've set my default fonts etc in the preferences, but for some reason when I enter text into the story editor, it sometimes displays a random font, sometimes even with vertical text direction. As far as I know you can't change fonts in multiple textboxes or layers at the same time? Why can't you select multiple text layers or boxes holding shift? It's so tedious. Or am I missing something? I also wonder when they're gonna make it possible to do super basic text edits, like rotate. Or is this also something I missed? edit: I just found out about apply tool property to selected text. At least that's something. but when I drag text from one page to the next in story editor it keeps changing the text back to vertical text direction. mrfart fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Sep 25, 2018 |
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Sep 25, 2018 12:50
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my wabcomoc
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Sep 25, 2018 15:16
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i'm getting around to doing a comic after the ones i did died in a matter of weeks. how did you guys manage to remain passionate in making webcomics? everytime i tried to get a project done, all sense passion is sucked away and replaced with a feeling that this is one of those boring office jobs.
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Sep 27, 2018 20:06
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