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Dec 1, 2020 14:20
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pop punk posted:I wish this thread was more popping, I love everyone's stuff. Super clean inks, love em  .I've been making comics again myself. I feel weird promo'ing when I'm at, like, 3 pages uploaded but here's some finished panels I liked.    
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Dec 1, 2020 16:22
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I've been working on a new comic project as well. Since my main comic takes a long time to make new pages and it's a bit of a read for new people to get into, I started making cheap, quick little four-panel comics to throw on twitter and tumblr. I've been working on an arcade game so the original idea was "a comic about a game about a comic", but it's sort of a remix of my other work to put up in between main posts. https://twitter.com/deadwintercomic/status/1316066674857119746 https://twitter.com/deadwintercomic/status/1316066889496514564 https://twitter.com/deadwintercomic/status/1318612360635031552 It feels nice to actually have a buffer again.
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Dec 1, 2020 20:20
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Mercury Hat posted:Super clean inks, love em Sweet! I was thinking about you and some of the old keenspacers the other day. Glad to see you're still at it  I've had an extraordinarily fruitful year since moving from the now literally on its last breaths SJ* to ComicFury last November. For somethign I thought was going to be a huge setback, it actually ended up being the best thing that's happened to me, comic-wise, in years. I've almost finished an entire chapter and have been workign on a lot of silly side projects as well. *We didn't really talk about this here, did we? Last year, SmackJeeves got bought out by a company that turned it into an extremely generic, noncustomizable, "mobile-based"** host that filled no niche and disappointed everyone. Sometime this past month they finally announced they've been unsuccessful and the site will be shutting down entirely at the end of December. If you follow any comics that still host on SJ, just uh... well, get ready to update your bookmarks, I guess. **IIRC the mobile-friendly thing- spcifically having like an app and poo poo- just never came together properly. So everything good and recommendable about the site got axed in order to support a platform change that never made it off the ground.
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Dec 1, 2020 21:36
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Yeah, I think we've really seen the old webcomic hosts like DrunkDuck, SmackJeeves and Keenspace/ComicGenesis peter out and die. I've seen Tapas come up a lot - and Line as well. Anyone have experiences with them? Opinions?
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Dec 1, 2020 21:59
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pop punk fucked around with this message at 01:36 on Nov 20, 2021 |
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Dec 1, 2020 22:17
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more of everybody's comics, please
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Dec 12, 2020 01:06
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perepelki posted:more of everybody's comics, please LMAO I literally just finished one:  Thread with the rest: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3938333#post507622673 I'll probably be switching over to a Tapas page once this chapter is done. I'll also be experimenting with somewhat simpler art styles because doing textures with a pen is killing both my time and my hand.
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Dec 12, 2020 07:29
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Minor nitpick, but clé is feminine, it's "une clé". Looking good!
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Dec 12, 2020 15:11
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I've been updating for a month and I finally have a cover page to show for it  
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Dec 25, 2020 01:47
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I think I posted in one incarnation of this thread back when. I’ve been trying to seriously draw comics for a while now. For the folks with websites, what are you using for that? Are you making your websites from scratch or are you using templates? I’ve been posting on Instagram which is okay, except I have to slice up my pages and there’s a fair amount of artifacting. Also here’s my comic as well!   
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Dec 25, 2020 04:10
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Borden posted:I think I posted in one incarnation of this thread back when. I’ve been trying to seriously draw comics for a while now. First off:  Second: Post your Instagram while you're showing off at least! Third: I don't have a website for my comic yet but I am seriously looking into one and it's a bit of a crapshoot at the moment unfortunately. Your options at the moment seem to be: 1) Put it on Webtoon. This is your best bet if visibility is your top priority since they seem to have the most traffic. Personally though I hate it's weird phone centered layout that requires you to cut up your pages into long strips of individual panels so I passed on them. 2) Put the comic up on Tapas which is similar to Webtoon but seems to be more friendly to standard comic book pages. This is the one I'm going to go with fwiw since all they require is a cover illustration and preview tile to put into their library as well as an optional header image for your comic's main page. I'll let people know how this goes when I finally get the page up early next year. 3) Get a Wordpress page with a comics theme/template. This option is ~almost~ not a colossal pain in the rear end since you can upload a buffer and have it update automatically at specified times. The templates also offer some pre-made structures that save you a ton of setup time.. but only so much. I was originally going to go with this path but then the only theme I was able to get to work consistently with modern builds of WP is comicpress which is rigid, kind of ugly, and is generally starting to show it's age. All the other ones (Panel/Sunny and Blue) just wouldn't show comics correctly on the front page for whatever stupid reason which was a huge bummer (could have just been doing it wrong though). You will also still need to design many elements yourself (background images/colors, menu buttons, headers, banners, etc) which, while easier than working from scratch is still a lot of work. The end result will at least be functional though so you will probably end up going with this option if you've already decided against a third party company like Webtoon/Tapas. 4) Make a website from scratch. I do NOT recommend this unless you already understand a little HTML/CSS and know what you're getting into. It's not the hardest language to learn but there's still a learning curve and no, a program like Dreamweaver won't let you get around actually understanding the code. This path will be a pain to maintain (since you yourself have to handle updates and maintenance) and will require you do do pretty much everything by hand since you won't have Wordpress's features to do things like automatically generate an archive. On the upside though this option gives you the most freedom to do what you want in terms of adjustable layout, visuals, advertising, etc so if you're super picky about what the final result looks like and aren't afraid of spending the next month trying to figure out why the GOD drat SIDE MENU KEEPS TRYING TO JUSTIFY TO THE LEFT  then it might be worth giving a shot. It's a good learning experience if nothing else.Also I'd avoid SmackJeeves for the moment since it looks like the company got bought out recently and is going through some unfortunate changes which are pissing off everybody involved. Maybe consider them in a year or so if they've gotten their poo poo together by then.
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Dec 25, 2020 07:28
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readingatwork posted:4) Make a website from scratch. I do NOT recommend this unless you already understand a little HTML/CSS and know what you're getting into. It's not the hardest language to learn but there's still a learning curve and no, a program like Dreamweaver won't let you get around actually understanding the code. This path will be a pain to maintain (since you yourself have to handle updates and maintenance) and will require you do do pretty much everything by hand since you won't have Wordpress's features to do things like automatically generate an archive. On the upside though this option gives you the most freedom to do what you want in terms of adjustable layout, visuals, advertising, etc so if you're super picky about what the final result looks like and aren't afraid of spending the next month trying to figure out why the GOD drat SIDE MENU KEEPS TRYING TO JUSTIFY TO THE LEFT This is what I did because I'm not a fan of Wordpress's options for comics and I can't say I'd recommend it to anyone who isn't an old dinosaur like me  . Not having an automatic updater is a definite downside, but for a twice a week schedule, it's not so bad. You can integrate a comments system with disqus, if you want.Unfortunately, webcomics are still a niche enough format that I couldn't find many options for stand alone content management systems and a lot of the ones google pulled up hadn't been updated in 5+ years lol. The upshot is webcomics are a simple enough format that unless you want or need a complex archive and tagging system, you can get by with an HTML template and a copy of Notepad++.
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Dec 25, 2020 14:49
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Typical fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Jul 15, 2023 |
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Dec 26, 2020 04:31
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Borden posted:Also here’s my comic as well!
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Dec 26, 2020 09:46
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Thanks for the advice and encouragement! My Instagram is @cabermave It looks like Wordpress is the way to go from what you’re all saying. I guess if people aren’t already we can just link to eachother’s comics.
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Dec 26, 2020 17:14
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readingatwork posted:Also I'd avoid SmackJeeves for the moment since it looks like the company got bought out recently and is going through some unfortunate changes which are pissing off everybody involved. Maybe consider them in a year or so if they've gotten their poo poo together by then. Yeah SmackJeeves is actually closing down entirely in like, 4 days. If you don't want to build from scratch, I recommend ComicFury. I moved my site there as soon as SJ started licking its lips and eyeing the shitter last November. Very customizable and the new design customization system is absolutely a delight to use- you have a WYSIWYG option so you don't have to play broken code roulette every time you want to change something. Additionally the community is chill, quirky, and cool if that matters to you. Really can't recommend this host enough. Anything I would have recommended about old (pre-2019) SJ you can find on CF, and the site owner is EXTREMELY responsive to community needs and is always actively improving, not "improving," the site. I've had more success there in the past year than I have in the almost twelve years i've been publishing online
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Dec 28, 2020 00:06
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If you do build from scratch avoid Webfaction, they used to be top notch but they were acquired by GoDaddy last year and have become less great. I recently got bumped off the service because they were merging products with another host that didn't support part of my site so they just said, well, we're terminating your account.
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Dec 28, 2020 00:19
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Reiley posted:If you do build from scratch avoid Webfaction, they used to be top notch but they were acquired by GoDaddy last year and have become less great. I recently got bumped off the service because they were merging products with another host that didn't support part of my site so they just said, well, we're terminating your account. Haha they said this to me, then I removed the part that was causing them migration problems- then they deleted my account anyway and sent a "final warning" to an email they'd just deactivated and made unreachable. That was a fun afternoon of running about like an idiot
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Dec 28, 2020 18:38
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Technically not a comic, but my short featuring Famed Former Webcomics Character Nemo the Duck https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/775794 Now exists and is live, to watch.
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Dec 28, 2020 19:47
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I just finished the first chapter of my comic. Any feedback people would like to provide would be very welcome. My next goal is to get this thing up on Tapas by the end of January. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3938333 Some page-specific notes aside the main thing I'm hearing so far is that I need to work on visual clarity and I think they're correct. Right now the characters can get lost in the backgrounds and I need to work on composing panels in ways that don't have characters standing right on top of areas with complicated linework. I'll definitely be dusting off some manga artists like Oda and Tezuka and also probably some Bill Waterson and taking notes on how they handle similar compositions since they also tend to work with pure blacks and whites.
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Dec 31, 2020 06:36
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Hi! I do Rusty & Co., and I'm trying new things for 2021! I did my first streaming draw session on Twitch this week for a small audience, and recorded it so I could see the whole page's process condensed down to 6 minutes. I don't know how often I'll be doing it... depends on how many Twitch followers I get, I suppose. You can check it out here!
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Dec 31, 2020 07:13
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readingatwork posted:I just finished the first chapter of my comic. Any feedback people would like to provide would be very welcome. My next goal is to get this thing up on Tapas by the end of January. You can look at some Akira Toriyama stuff too, the Dragon Ball / Z manga has a lot of clear panels with minimal tone work. Pogo is also good, as is Bone for strongly defined character inks. The main thing I can see is you don't really make use of any solid black areas in either foreground or background details, but they can really help to draw the eye to the main parts you want readers to focus on. Since you mentioned Bill Waterson, here's just two random strips to show what I mean.   The background isn't very detailed, but in the first strip the blacks on the mountain ranges both imply shadow and draw the eye to the characters. In the second strip the black on the suitcase helps to isolate Calvin from it and similarly in panel two the blacks provide the contrast to separate the wagon from Hobbes. There's also the solid black of Calvin's pants and the not-quite-straight black stripes on Hobbes. This makes the characters distinct, even from a distance. I'm far from an expert, but I try to have at least one or two points of solid black on a character's wardrobe or design to break up their form and also have them pop on the page.
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Dec 31, 2020 16:16
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readingatwork posted:I just finished the first chapter of my comic. Any feedback people would like to provide would be very welcome. My next goal is to get this thing up on Tapas by the end of January. Lean into the idea that it's a set! Stuff like furniture, doorways, picture frames, are all in real life designed to direct your attention to people and to themselves, so it helps to always be in consideration of them as artificial framing devices. It looks like you're already using the paintings as framing devices for the taller one's head, keep pushing that. At the same time the area around the characters should be less complex than the details in the background, so when his face is overlapping a painting the details can clutter both. I did like the one where he had a sun for a halo though. I recommend this book https://www.amazon.com/Noble-Approach-Maurice-Animation-Design/dp/1452102945, it's about animation design but the advice is broad and simplified enough to be useful for anythin'. Also look at some backgrounds from animation without the characters so you can see how they're using light and positive and negative space.
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Dec 31, 2020 20:27
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Good advice all around. Thanks guys!
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Dec 31, 2020 21:28
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Hey look at that. Looks like the folks behinds hiveworks have released their own cms for comics! I'll be looking into it this weekend. https://twitter.com/comicctrl/status/1350139598110916615?s=19
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Jan 15, 2021 19:38
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Oh nice, comic control is really solid. nice to see it out for wider use.
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Jan 15, 2021 21:39
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pants
perepelki fucked around with this message at 07:27 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 04:31
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Despite the fact that the developer explicitly does not recommend using Dreamhost, I’m pretty drat interested in moving my comic away from WordPress forever. I’m going to assume that the recommendation against Dreamhost is made mainly on the assumption that the average user lacks any web hosting/server knowledge whatsoever. So I posted about this in the General Webcomics Thread and no one seemed to care much, but my comic, Blasphemous Saga Fantasy turned ten years old back on January third. I’ve honestly come super close to quitting altogether multiple times in the past few years, and I’m often unhappy that people aren’t as enthusiastic about my work as I am, but ultimately, I am glad to be telling my story and that this format has consistently motivated me to keep doing it. I guess I’m mostly saying all that because I figure everyone in this thread probably understands that weird conflicting mix of feelings about one’s own work. Hopefully you all still find it as rewarding at the end of the day as I do. If you feel like you’re doing your best work, then keep at it. After a decade my only real advice aside from “keep at it!!!” is... maybe workshop your title a bit more if you’re not super sure about it. I also owe a lot to this thread (and/or the contingent of some ancient general webcomics thread that became the first iteration of this thread back in 2012 or so) for a lot of constructive feedback and encouragement, so thank you, Making Comics thread. Even if the days of this thread being super active are over, I really believe that couldn’t have done it without you all.
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Jan 16, 2021 17:48
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Fortis posted:Despite the fact that the developer explicitly does not recommend using Dreamhost, I’m pretty drat interested in moving my comic away from WordPress forever. I’m going to assume that the recommendation against Dreamhost is made mainly on the assumption that the average user lacks any web hosting/server knowledge whatsoever. I don't really have any solid recommendations unfortunately since I moved to hiveworks, but the dreamhost warning is absolutely there for a reason.
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Jan 16, 2021 18:10
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Kojiro posted:Comiccontrol is great but I really would look at a different host to use it on- of the few I've tried dreamhost was the one that was down most often, also I got hacked twice while there. Huh. I've been using them for years and I always figured whatever (relatively minor) problems I had were WordPress related (I also got hacked once in 2011, and it was my WordPress installation that was compromised). I guess I'll keep an eye out for something better moving forward. EDIT: I only just now considered that changing CMSes would obliterate every comment I've ever received. I haven't gotten a ton over the years but I do like the (non-spam) ones I got. I guess this is a bigger decision than usual with a full decade of history. Fortis fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Jan 16, 2021 |
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Jan 16, 2021 18:24
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Fortis posted:Despite the fact that the developer explicitly does not recommend using Dreamhost, I’m pretty drat interested in moving my comic away from WordPress forever. I’m going to assume that the recommendation against Dreamhost is made mainly on the assumption that the average user lacks any web hosting/server knowledge whatsoever. congrats! I hadn't come across this before but you can really see the care that goes into it.
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Jan 16, 2021 21:33
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Fortis posted:So I posted about this in the General Webcomics Thread and no one seemed to care much, but my comic, Blasphemous Saga Fantasy turned ten years old back on January third. Oh poo poo I remember enjoying your comic back in the day (before I lost track of it like I do with all webcomics eventually)! Congrats! I'll definitely be catching up on it later.
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Jan 16, 2021 23:36
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Truman Peyote posted:congrats! I hadn't come across this before but you can really see the care that goes into it. Thanks! I appreciate that a lot. That's definitely how I feel about it, and if that shows up even a little bit, I'm glad. readingatwork posted:Oh poo poo I remember enjoying your comic back in the day (before I lost track of it like I do with all webcomics eventually)! Congrats! I'll definitely be catching up on it later. I remember your feedback in the first Making Comics thread was really helpful when I was starting out! I hope you still enjoy it as much as you did then when you catch up. And thank you!
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Jan 17, 2021 07:19
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Fortis posted:Despite the fact that the developer explicitly does not recommend using Dreamhost, I’m pretty drat interested in moving my comic away from WordPress forever. I’m going to assume that the recommendation against Dreamhost is made mainly on the assumption that the average user lacks any web hosting/server knowledge whatsoever. aaah congratulations! definitely feel that "come and go" of being really all about the work and then feeling really not into it for a while. 2020 was an unusually "on" year for me and then this year so far I haven't picked up a pencil once. But congratulations on that milestone, that's loving huge!
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Jan 17, 2021 23:04
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sweeperbravo posted:aaah congratulations! definitely feel that "come and go" of being really all about the work and then feeling really not into it for a while. 2020 was an unusually "on" year for me and then this year so far I haven't picked up a pencil once. But congratulations on that milestone, that's loving huge! Thank you! Yeah I feel the ups and downs really strongly. For me it’s probably a combination of ADHD-induced lack of motivation and honestly just sometimes thinking “barely anyone reads this, why even bother.” In most cases I’ve forced myself to keep going for the most part (if I skip any time it’s like two weeks at the absolute most, unless it’s an announced hiatus) and sometimes that means the pages aren’t super amazing, but it keeps the story moving forward and I generally consider this to be a first draft anyway. 2020 was a dogshit year for me (I mean, it was for everyone, but I got laid off from my day job and haven’t found new work yet) and it was really hard to stay motivated, but I did manage to finish out an arc I’ve been plugging away at since 2018. That alone gave me the motivation to actually build up a buffer for the first time since 2011. I started with a 36-page buffer, and this one isn’t nearly as impressive at only ten pages, but it’s enough that I don’t feel immense pressure whenever I work on pages, which weirdly enough keeps me motivated to stay ahead. I don’t entirely get why it works that way; if anything, I’d expect a buffer to motivate me to dick around and put drawing off since it’s already scheduled, but I’m not gonna look a gift horse in the mouth.
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Jan 18, 2021 16:35
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First go at making a comic in over a decade, created a little six pager about demons with my girlfriend. https://imgur.com/gallery/05l48gu Comments/Criticism appreciated, since I'd like to make some more in the future, especially in regards to layout and and flow and framing and dialogue, since she's the one handling the final lineart and coloring. Is there anywhere online to post/share short comics like this that anyone knows of?
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Feb 2, 2021 17:50
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sustaining attention, or perhaps more accurately ignoring tedium and fatigue, for long enough to get pages done was a lot easier when i was able to drink
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Mar 2, 2021 00:58
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Mar 2, 2021 05:16
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lmao
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Mar 2, 2021 05:30
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