Come back to life, forum!!

[Neko]

Ok, phew... Finished the rotten thing. I'm all yours! I'll try to answer all your questions now, hope it'll help.

When you started up SoL, how much of it did you have planned out? Do you have it all figured out from beginning to end right now? Why or why not?

Heheheh. Actually. SoL is a textbook example of how NOT to draw a comic. Basically how it went is like this: I was browsing the internet and came across Ace of Abra. I was all like WOOWWW!!!
Meanwhile, I had wanted to build myself a website for quite a while. When I finally learned html, so I could really build one, I soon came across a problem: I had nothing to put on my website. Whoopsie.
My consequent train of thought can be summarized as follows:

1. Wow, this website is pretty dull without... content... What should I put on it?
2. *glances at AoA* Oh, I know! A comic! About... Pokémon, yes Pokémon! Alright! Let's do that!
3. ... I'll probably need a plot, though...
4. *shrugs* Oh well, I'll sort that bit out later. *happily starts doodling*

Obviously, this was a bit of a boo-boo on my part. So I highly recommend not doing it like that. I'm not saying you absolutely need to plan the whole thing out from beginning to end and in great detail, but it certainly helps to have SOME sort of idea where you're going.
Right up until about the middle of chapter 2, I did not have a very fixed idea about where SoL was going to go. I do know where it's headed now, and I'm quite happy with it (SoL's quite salvageable, jay!!). But there's no guarantee it'll always work out like that.

So tip no. 1: have at least some idea for a plot. My future comics will all have a general plot written out, and details if I feel like it. But I do like being flexible, so that's why I haven't fixed anything yet.

I know you've said this before but, about how long do you take per page? Or per step? [inking, coloring, shading, etc.]

It depends on the complexity of the page. It generally takes about 8-10 hours per page, but it can also be less or more. I work on it at night. Usually about 2-3 hours every day, starting on Mondays and (usually) finishing on Wednesdays.

I think I would be able to work a lot faster if I skipped a few steps here and there, but I don't know if I want to do that. If you want to spend less time, you might want to consider working more sketchy or skip shading. Skipping backgrounds would certainly help a lot, but... you need backgrounds. You really do. You could also work in grey-scale.

How do you figure out your paneling? My paneling... sucks. v_v

Panels... I just sort of... do them without thinking about it. I don't know if I'm really doing it right or wrong, but I do think it seems to work.

I do have some tutorials on dA for you, which can probably help you a lot better with this stuff:

deadrabbit13.deviantart.com/art/D-s-Comic-Tutorial-82183581
deadrabbit13.deviantart.com/art/Comic-Tutorial-2-84647005
deadrabbit13.deviantart.com/art/Comic-Tutorial-3-102258232

Hope that helps.

Adding to my list of questions, maybe this: Any advice to give to a newb comic artist? Anything in particular to avoid?

Oh well, some basic stuff really.

Do:
1. Make up a plot
2. Make decent ref pictures of each of the characters, so you can always check back on them. It help to have colors sorted out on them for easy reference. Perhaps stick some typical facial expressions on it too.
3. Set a fixed update schedule. It doesn't matter if you update once a week or five times a week, just try to be consistent. It'll encourage more fans to stick around. Nothing drains hits like a hiatus, or so I'm told.
4. In order to meet point 3, make a buffer. Personally, I like to have at least 5 pages, but preferably 10 pages worth of buffer space. If you ever mis a week's worth of drawing, you'll still be able to update.

Don't's...
Uhm, yikes... Well, the stuff in the tutorials are a pretty good start. Also, don't start without preparing. Comics are hard work and preparations are half the work. Also be prepared for some pages to be not as fun to work on. Comics force you to draw stuff you may not like or be good at. Like cityscapes in my case.

Oh, and make sure you have a goal for your comic. My goal was always to improve my art. I'm not afraid to admit that SoL is actually a practice project, until I feel confident enough to work on my original story.
That's my motivation. Other's just want to publish a story, make pretty art, make money, or whatever. Make sure you have your motivation figured out, because that'll help you keep going when the going gets tough.

I hope all that helps.

[captn]

v_______v

Chatboard ate up my message.

Anyways, suffice to say, thank you very much for taking the time to answer. ^_^

Just curious, though, what's the difference between gray scaling and colouring? Don't you fill them both in the same way? Or is there something I'm missing?

[Neko]

You're welcome!

And well, working in tones of gray is generally considered to be faster, as there are no colors involved; just different shades of gray. It's also a bit of a licence to be more messy, but don't tell anyone I said so!

[vyebrante]

Nov 15, 2008 13:01:32 GMT Neko said:

It's also a bit of a licence to be more messy, but don't tell anyone I said so!

It's true. Ha ha.

Or at least I'd like to believe so.

[Neko]

Funny, I wasn't actually thinking about Just Gotta when I wrote that. XD

[captn]

I don't get it though. Messy? o0

Phew. Anyways.
I now have SO much more appreciation for you authors out there.
-just finished a page that took like... 3-6 hours to finish-

I can't imagine 10 hours per page. I can't. @_@ And I made so many mistakes.



Ahhh, the learning curve @_@

-falls over-

===================

Anyways... can't wait to see the page tomorrow. ^_^

[captn]

Anyways, just lurking about...

I really love your wolf/Link pic. I loved Twilight Princess <3

[Neko]

Thank you! It was a fun piece to work on.

By the way, I've collected some more nifty comic/panel tutorials on dA. Head over to my dA page, go to my faves and then go to the folder 'tutorials'. They look very white, but they're very good. Made by a deviant called Mayshing. Sorry I don't have a link right now. XD

[captn]

Sounds good, thank you! ^_^


Eeeeeee, I'mso happyyyy, I'm going honme on Tuesday for a while. ^_^


Just curious though, you said you take up to 10 hours for some comics [or something like that o.o], how spaced out is it throughout your week?

I wanna restart my comic, but I wanna do it right. @_@ But anyways, I'm just bored, also. ..

And... I forget what else I was gonna say. =skitters off to tutorials=

[Neko]

Well, 10 hours may be a bit of a stretch. That is what it used to be and some of the more complicated pages still take about that long, but the easier ones take a little less. And by 'easier pages' I mean the ones with fewer panels and natural or no backgrounds. The more complicated pages have manmade backgrounds like cities and stuff.

The way the time is spaced out is usually as follows:

Monday night: roughly 17:00 - 22:00 or even 22:30: Inking and, if the inking is done, I start doing the flat colors
Tuesday night: roughly 17:00 - 22:00 or even 22:30: Finish up inking if I didn't finish it on Monday, do most of the flat coloring
Wednesday night: roughly 17:00 - 22:00 or even 22:30: On a good week I might have been able to finish up the entire page on Tuesday, but if I haven't, then on Wednesday I round up the final colors, then I shade, paint the backgrounds, add the text... Page is finished.
Thursday night: roughly 17:00 - 22:00 or even 22:30: On a particularly bad week, I might STILL not be done by Thursday. In those cases the page usually requires more work on the backgrounds, after which I finish up. Page is usually done by now.

You can add up the hours for yourself. I usually manage to finish a page by Tuesday or halfway through Wednesday.


There is no such thing as 'doing a comic right', though. There are just a few common pitfals to avoid and after that you pretty much make your own rules!

[captn]

Mmmm... Thank you very much! ^_^

[vyebrante]

On the flip side, those of us who do it in grayscale and don't draw most of the backgrounds, can finish a page in under two hours and have it looking pretty decent. I drew a page the other day and timed myself: 35 minutes. Heh. After inking, I had it finished in Manga Studio after like an hour, tops.

Depends on the page for me too and there's some that are a lot easier than others. I guess I just mean that I appreciate all the work Neko puts into it too. Just Gotta definitely wouldn't be updated as often if it was up to Stuff of Legend quality.

[captn]

Mmm... So for grayscale...

I still don't get what the difference is =(
I mean, for grayscaling, you pick a set of grays as your base colours for your characters and stick with them, mostly? Hair/face/clothes/etc. Right?

But isn't that basically the same with colours? xP -perplexed-

[vyebrante]

Well, you don't have to color skin, normally. That can save a bit of time. And I don't know about photo shop, but colors in Manga Studio have to be in different layers and normally are harder to fill. But with grayscale, I can just fill the image with whatever gray I want without having to worry about other layers.

It's also easier to get away with more white space in the backgrounds. It's hard in color comics I notice becuase the white seems more obvious. My comic Just Mewtwo is in color and I spend a lot more time on backgrounds figuring out how to fill them up with something where in Just Gotta which is grayscaled, I can leave panels white if I wish.

I work with 16 different shades of gray, (could be more if I wanted but I don't,) and basically can just pick any shade I want out of the 16 and use my fill. But when coloring, I have to figure out what color I want and so with stuff I haven't colored before and so I don't know what to work with, I have to spend more time figuring out what colors to use. I'm indecisive a lot with colors and somehow I manage to feel like I have run out of colors a lot. So that takes more time.

. . . That make sense? Any of it? Coloring always manages to take longer for me than grayscaling, to put it simply. Just seems to work out that way.

[captn]

Yeah, that all makes perfect sense. Thank you very much Vye. ^_^!

Hmn... I'll have to see about which I want to do. Because of time restraints, I might be better off trying grayscale >< I'll have to go experiment some more, I suppse : )