I don't think I'd be able to do 24 either tbh. I like the idea of a oneshot, maybe with a loose theme to make up for the change? :Dc Could be like a challenge party lmfao. ... actually, shit, the entire process sounds kinda fun?? character design party, what whaaaat (also @rje I cheat lmfao. I got some free use panels off DeviantArt and cut and paste them around as I need usually till I get the feeling I want since I use SAI. Though now I've been toying with Medibang Paint Pro because its paneling tools are p neat, still feeling around on it tho)
@Elaienar Yes, that exactly haha. I have no program that has a grid to help with straight lines and I'm on a laptop with a tiny screen so it's just awkward and frustrating sometimes. I've heard really good things about Manga Studio @TheMockingCrows oh I haven't heard of that, is it free?
YEP! Totally free and really easy to use once you get the hang of it. I'm hella slow at learning/remembering things so I keep needing to look at the tutorials, but it's totally free and jam packed with stuff. you can also manage your pages and such from in here and keep organized. https://medibangpaint.com/en/pc/
Ooh, Medibang Paint Pro looks cool.... @rje One thing you could maybe do is just Google image search "grid" and copy+paste one of those into a new layer, turn down the opacity and use it as a guide, resizing as needed. Re: Manga Studio, I use MS Debut 4, which is the cheapsie version that doesn't have all the tools that MS EX 4 does (this means it doesn't have an eyedropper, which makes colouring a huge pain) but I mostly use it for the paneling tools, so I like it well enough. You can get it used for under thirty dollars these days, but I don't think they're making/supporting it any more, so.... Also Clip Studio Paint a.k.a. Manga Studio 5 is only like forty dollars on Amazon right now - I bought it a while ago but I don't use it much because it can't do story files like MS can.
i use medibang for my panelling! it's really easy once you get the hang of it i love it. i saw people on twitter doing 12 hour comic day (for ppl who want to do 24 hour comic day but love to sleep) we could do something like that? i'm also super up for a character design party. i have some characters i'm fleshing out atm and mmmmmm boi
Ooh that sounds fun. :o also heck ye character design party, that's probably my favorite part, just fucking around and coming up with people and creatures 8D
I'm at the shitty person stage of life where i'm like No I'm Totally Gonna Make This Comic Someday i rly wanna work on it but like. senior in college. animation major. i should've be working on it but i mighttt start scripting anyways because the ideas plague my mind for hours every time i return to it (its a warrior cats au so lol, wanting to rewrite a whole fucking book series, but shhh. theres warriors fancomics that get popular, i rly wan do it)
honestly i Struggle with the compulsion to just file the serial numbers off my fan characters and favs and try to pass my aus off as original content, so i'm not gonna like... ENCOURAGE you to do that but like..... u could totally do that.
Hh, sorta the essence of my thing is being a fan comic, I'd be using the canon characters. Like. Long story short, in warriors in the first series there's a prophecy that the main character alone can save their clan (tho slightly more vague) but I noticed like... Their clan didn't have life all that bad all things considered, whereas the Slytherin equivalent clan? Nearly got wiped out by awful leadership, then by plague, then was ruled by another tyrant right after and ended up in shambles. Sooo they sorta coulda used saving just as much, if not more, than Thunderclan, so. I wanna do an AU where main character is in Shadowclan instead and go through how things change and stuff It's not super original but. Idk. I get rly rly excited thinking about it
I just sat up aaaaall night actually rough sketching out/writing the Halloween porn comic idea I've wanted to do for months and I'm so proud of myself .....except for the fact it went from like 6 pages to 10 (so far) and isn't even halfway done and it was supposed to be a lighthearted, raunchy sex comedy but suddenly out of nowhere the main character expressed Deep Sad Feelings and now the tone's all shot to shit Dx I always do this arghhh...I can't just write a thing without that thing changing midway
Ten pages is a pretty great start! I've never done the tone changing in the middle of sketching, but @Key and I totally intended for Maria to be a comedy when we first started planning it. We wound up toning it way down because of reasons. Also I managed to dig up and transfer some stuff from my old computer, and found my practice page from back when I needed to draw a roach in a couple of pages of Maria. Seems like there was a tragic romance in one of the Youtube videos I watched to find references.... Spoiler: TW: A page full of sketches of roaches
..that video wouldn't have happened to be this, would it? Spoiler: cw: stop motion animation of taxidermied bugs
...No, it was some home videos of roaches that I was narrating to myself internally, but oh my goodness that's adorable. I can't get over Mrs Beetle and her parasol.
This crossed my dash and I think it's worth sharing. Spoiler: A friend told me they fired themselves from comics & illustration work A friend of mine stopped doing the small press comics circuit in 2015, and it’s made me think a lot about how we need to be more careful about ‘encouragement posts online’. You might say something that would kick yourself into action, but there’s actually people out there who don’t respond in the same way, and it can actively discourage them. So yeah, I think it’s important to tell you about what happened (because other wise you’d just never find out about this stuff, right?) …. So it started with arguments over fan art which caused the scene to get sour and hostile to new people. To me it highlighted a divide in attitudes. Relaxed ‘zinesters’ who believe in using self publishing to make whatever you want, whatever the quality VS. those pursuing a professional career, striving for the very best they can achieve and ultimately trying to use self publishing as a stepping stone to greater things. At that time people would say things along the lines of ‘if you can’t afford to table at a convention without the fanart, then your work isn’t good enough to be here.’ … I think the thought behind this was to encourage people to ‘STEP UP YOUR SMALL PRESS GAME.’ but it’s completely without context right? You know if you’re not trying your best and it’s ok to tell yourself to up your own game. But we’re all coming from wildly different backgrounds! You don’t necessarily know who is working full time with 3 kids and drawing comics whenever they possibly can, and who is working part time with no responsibilities to anyone. What if I’m already regularly crashing from the work load and I can’t work any harder? my comics could technically be at a high standard, but the ideas aren’t mainstream enough (we are self publishing them in the small press after all.) (this is also ignoring that both comics and illustration industries have fashion styles which change over time - you could just be unlucky with how you prefer to draw) My friend responded to the situation with ‘well if I’m not good enough, I guess I’ll stop self publishing comics and zines then. I’d be making a loss without the fanart anyway.’ … my heart broke a little bit. And this unhealthy ‘STEP UP YOUR GAME’ attitude towards work seems to pop all all the time online. People beating themselves up over not working hard enough. Kicking themselves loudly in public (online) and everyone agreeing with them. Reinforcing this weird idea that we could all always be doing more and that we definitely have to become some sort of crazy obsessed comics machine that does nothing else. Sell your soul to the comics gods or GTFO. I’m actually guilty of doing this myself. I’ve mellowed out over the years though. When I was being treated for an unrelated anxiety disorder, my therapist pointed out that I was regularly working myself up if I thought any amount of time had been wasted rather than used efficiently. We’re people, not machines and we don’t have to work all day every day, it’s perfectly ok to take breaks. In fact it’s probably healthier to regularly take scheduled breaks than to work until you burn out. My friend read some more posts recently which have lead them to quitting freelance comics and illustration work altogether. Which is just crazy because they’re very skilled at drawing (better than I can draw). I think we need to remember that you can’t just write something like ‘be prepared to give every ounce of your being to your comic project or you may as well just give up right now’ without considering that someone with a different disposition to you might read the same thing and think ‘Welp. OK. Bye.’ Keep kicking yourself into action if it works for you, but consider whether or not you need to air it publicly? And choose words carefully if you do decide it’s important to you to share it. I really hope that my friend ends up coming back to the small press world some time in the future. But until then - please be kind to each other - AND TAKE BREAKS <3 Sammy I dunno if it's just my bpd or personality, but I've been both heavily inspired by posts and heavily depressed/miserable by posts I've read that were meant as encouragement. and I think it -did- all come down to the wording as much as it was how I was feeling that day. Interesting read.
@Lerxst Dang that looks nice! 3D programs are lifesavers. In local news, I made a lot of bad decisions this week (or rather, made one bad decision over and over again) and now I need to pull an all-nighter to get the inks done for this page before the weekend arrives and does me in. (We're having a bonfire and we invited a lot of people. I will not be able to get any work done on the comic from around 9 am tomorrow until Monday morning.) So because it's a convenient place to scream I'm gonna liveblog my progress here. Er, livepost. Here's what I'm starting with: Spoiler I need to: - Edit the sketch for panel four AGAIN to account for the fact that it's a fancy imported car and the steering is on the left. - Change the angle of the sketch in panel five because I don't think I got a reference pic for the angle I wanted and I'm done searching. - Make sure I know what's in the background of panel four. - Ink everything. - Make speech bubble in panel one. Edit: - Make actual detailed sketches for panels four and five, where the car is, and houses and things in the backgrounds. I'm not screaming yet but I'll get there eventually, I'm sure.
