today's comic advice posting from the big boy published graphic novelist: stop thoughtlessly shading your comics. stop it. i see you reaching for the multiply layer, i see you selecting that slightly purple, slightly blue color to add shadows to the edges of your characters. oh my god get your hand away from the airbrush.
comics is a storytelling medium, which means that it's also a medium for conveying information. you are conveying information about the scene to me.
what information is your shading conveying, and what does that contribute to the scene? i mean, ideally you're telling me where the light is coming from, but...do i actually have to care about that? if the lighting isn't key to the mood of the scene...does it need to be there?
we're outside. things would have shadows, because there's a light source (The Sun) but don't you understand that just from the fact the characters are clearly drawn outside? does putting soft shadows under their arms and at the bottoms of their shirts convey that better? or is it already clear without that?
we're inside. there's probably some light coming in from the window, or maybe from a bulb in the ceiling. is there a mood you want to convey with the scene? is the light source contributing to the mood? is the light only coming in from the window, to remind us the room is dark? is there a spotlight on someone? is the lighting significant? if it's not, what is the shading telling me that i couldn't otherwise guess?
and in the same realm of that previous comic example i just used, and this one i will be explicitly prescriptivist about--if you MUST include shading, please don't put it on the panels where the characters are doing the big cartoonish expressions. it doesn't look good. it Just doesn't look good. you're turning a 2 dimensional shape into a 3 dimensional object for no reason other than 'well i did it to the rest of the comic' and it looks bad. it draws attention to itself, it makes everything stiff and constructed, you lose the animation inherent to the gesture. you are doing disney vhs cover shit to me.
but this all isn't to say that you should never ever involve shading in your comics. but it's more that you need to use it intelligently, not just because you think it 'would' be there. there 'would' be one million more wrinkles in everybody's shirts than we ever want to draw and nobody's advising you to do that in comics. but if there should be one million wrinkles in a shirt, to draw attention to the fact that it's wrinkled, that's a different story.
and comics are about telling a story.
if you found this advice useful, or liked the look of the examples i was using, you should read my comic.
