Three Goblin Art
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
blake kathryn
$LAYYYTER
todays bird
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Not today Justin
Mike Driver
Kaledo Art
ojovivo
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
Stranger Things
trying on a metaphor
No title available
Monterey Bay Aquarium
Xuebing Du
pixel skylines
Product Placement
@theartofmadeline
taylor price
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Iraq
seen from France
seen from Germany
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Netherlands
seen from United States
seen from China
seen from Türkiye
seen from United States
seen from Azerbaijan
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Italy
seen from United States
@januarycomicsmonth
Do you have any tips for thumbnails when drawing comic?? I'm not sure if you've answered this one...
hopefully this helps? otherwise idk, tbh i rarely do thumbnails and go straight to the rough stage because i usually already have layouts in mind... for example here’s a rough and the finished page!
This was a tutorial funded by the Patreon folks~! They have a new one coming soon so I thought I’d put this one up for everyone. :3
Webcomic tips
In the conclusion for now, some things I’d really recommend doing if you’re seriously considering making a webcomic (or really a comic in general). Some of these don’t really apply to strips or gag-a-day type of comics, but I’m not talking about those here.
1. Write down ideas\sketch stuff, LEGIBLY. “I’m gonna remember it later” NEVER works. And if you scribble it somewhere on a piece of paper, you’d better scan it or retype in one doc later, because tiny notes always get lost among other doodles in my skethbooks.
(i know it’s hard to keep everything clean and organized, but this mess is just not productive)
If your project is a collaboration, save your conversations. If you’re working alone, make a blog for your ramblings. You have no clue what tears of relief I cry when I open that blog and rememeber I don’t have to painstakingly look through my heaps of sketchbooks and folders for a tiny idea I’m not even sure I wrote down a few months ago.
2. Inspiration folders, or even better, inspo blog with tags also help with collecting and remembering ideas. Color schemes, landscapes, style inspirations, atmospheric stuff, maybe some photo references, all those neat things.
3. Basic tier: character design sheets. Top tier: common poses, expressions. God tier: outfits they wear throughout the comic. Holy cow tier: turnaround sheets for all those outfits.
(I’d die trying to find good pages for references without these)
4. If you haven’t finished detailing the plot, don’t even think about moving on to drawing the comic. You’re gonna regret it when you come up with a really cool plot element that can’t be incorporated anymore because you’ve already drawn all the parts you could’ve tweaked.
5. Don’t just define the plot, make a script. Writing down the lines and the brief description of the actions serves me fine:
(notice that I approximately divided the pages & the text that’d go to each panel on a page)
6. Hard mode: make thumbnails for all the pages, if possible. At least whenever a new chapter starts.
7. If your story involves some convoluted chronology shenanigans, you’d better write down the events of your timeline in the chronological order.
8. Backgrounds. You can’t avoid them, bro. Like half of the comics are backgrounds, especially if your story involves a lot of adventuring and looking around. I know it hurts, but you’ll have to become friends with them. Read some tutorials, practice on photos, go out and sketch some streets, use 3d programs (like Google Sketch) to understand the perspective, use sites like houseplans to visualize your buildings better, I don’t know. Just be prepared for their imminent evil.
9. If you’re drawing digitally, pick a brush size for the lines and stick with it. You don’t want your lines and detail levels to look all wonky and inconsistent in different panels. And I don’t mean the cool stylistic varying lines, I mean this:
Also, things on the background should have thinner and/or lighter lines to avoid distraction. Usually less details too, unless you’re making a busy background with a simple foreground to help it pop out. Or wanna draw the attention to an object on the bg.
10. Readable fonts. Even if you chose to ignore people with poor sight or dyslexia, the majority of your readers aren’t gonna be excited about struggling to decypher this:
Also, as much as I love my black speech bubbles, colorful text on black still kinda hurts the eyes. I wouldn’t recommend doing that for all the characters. Black speech bubbles are usually used for creepy, inhuman voices. And yes, having a colorful outline in this case helps.
11. Probably newsflash, but did you know that panels have their place, order and functions? They do! My favourite thing ever is how I used panels when I was like 12:
(comics ain’t rocket science, but this one is)
The composition of the panels and word balloons always serve for a better reading experience. They guide your eyes over the page, so that you never feel lost or confused. The images in the comic equal frames in a movie, so it’s pretty damn important in what order you look at things and how quickly you can understand what’s going on!
(Eric Shanower & Scottie Young’s Wizard of Oz)
12. One update a week is fine for testing waters. Don’t overestimate yourself, especially if you have a pretty busy life outside it. A stable comic that updates slowly, but regularly is better than an unpredictable erratic one. You can always pick up the pace later, if you feel confident enough.
13. Try to always have a buffer - a couple of pages in reserve. If you’re making the pages much faster than you’re updating, this shouldn’t be a problem. But if those paces are equally the same, it’s goddamn HARD. But on the other hand, if something happens and you skip an update, those come in handy.
If you’re looking at this list and thinking “wow that’s a LOT of work”, you’re totally right. And it’s okay to be intimidated at first! But that’s why it’s important to start with something small. Once you get the formula down, these things will be natural to you.
@sidelley
Here’s a walkthrough I made about my (probably weird) comic-making process. ;D
rapidpunches:
SHORT STORY/ONE-SHOT/ONE CHAPTER/COMICS 101 CRASH COURSE RAPIDPUNCHES’ STYLE
I’m NOT an expert but I have some working experience I can share. You need experience to become great. Here is my set of instructions, tips, and notes towards making a 12-page comic.
My method is to work backwards. Personally I work “backwards” because the end is the only wholly necessary page or set of panels in the story. Everything in between is open to editing and hacking as the most important moments are emphasized and chosen.
I even plan/draw the end page first. The end is the last page a reader sees- so spend your freshest energies on making it as epic, memorable, poignant, and beautiful as #$%^&.
If you draw the pages from 1 to 12 sequentially you run the risk of fresh to burnt out- an uneven distribution of drawing skill. (treat the first page and the 2-page splash as you would the last).
Roughly… the steps to making your comic is
WRITE
PLAN THUMBNAILS
DRAW
…BEGIN THE WRITING (DO NOT SKIP NO MATTER WHAT) like this, in this order:
How does it end?
Does the protag succeed or fail?
What is the turning point of their story?
What the protag do that led them there?
Where does it start?
Who is this protag?
EXAMPLE:
Guy gets mauled by a bear.
This is a fail on the guy’s half.
The bear must eat something or he’ll starve to death.
It’s the guy’s fault the bear can’t find other food. He caused the avalanche that buried all the cabins.
The guy is yodeling in an avalanche zone.
The guy is some guy.
CREATING “THE BEAT SHEET” Take the above stuff and reorder it to make sense.
This guy yodels.
Echoes roll.
Snow slides down.
Avalanche buries the mountain.
Cabins are engulfed.
This bear has no access to cabin food and garbage.
Bear eats this guy.
Expand. Blow up important beats for emphasis. Keep less important beats brief.
This guy is hiking in the snowy mountains.
He comes across an avalanche warning sign.
There is nobody around but him.
A dumb expression forms over his face and he yodels.
Echoes roll but nothing nearby is moved.
At the top of the mountain the snow drifts twitch.
Guy, satisfied, hikes away from there still yodeling.
Frozen snow cracks.
Snow puffs billow and great slabs of ice crash down the mountain side.
Guy sees this and hightails it to safer ground.
Animals, people, are all panicking and getting pushed over by the rushing snow.
Cabins are destroyed.
The guy takes cover by an outcropping of rocks, fastens himself securely to the rock face, and waits for the avalanche to die down.
Avalanche dies down.
A lone bear shambles over from the other side of the mountain.
The bear goes to where a cabin used to be (only roof tiles are left). Bear sniffs a dish satellite.
Bear forlornly eats a food wrapper.
Bear tries to dig.
Guy comes down from the rocks he as climbing and sees bear.
Bear stops digging and sees him.
Guy runs.
Bear chases him down.
Bear eats the guy.
BEAT SHEET COMPLETED!!!
After the beat sheet, write up all the sound effects and speech bubbles and conversation/dialogue you want to be in your comic.
Since comics are a visual medium, highest priority is given to the beats. If a story can’t be told with the art without the dialogue– you messed up and it’s time to rethink your life choices.
Try to keep all your text chunks as short as a tweet. Professionally you don’t want more than 25 words per speech bubble and no more than 250 words per page.
Next is translating the beats to pages…
STRUCTURE OVERVIEW:
[1] point of entry, in media res, hero intro
[2][3] conflict. establish conflict, setting, and mood by the third page. [4][5] rising action/false resolution to conflict/investigation
[6][7] turning point/plot twist/epiphany (this one epic image, to page spread is pivotal, spend a lot of effort into creating this)
[8][9] aftermath/“darkness before dawn”/struggle [10][11] recovery/“rise and conquer”/“fall”
[12] resolution/final end/cliffhanger
[front cover][interior] [interior][back cover]
——————–
My maximum per page is nine panels but I’ve seen pages that have way more. I like to have about 3 to 4 panels per row or less but I’ve seen the “rules” broken before. Advanced comic book artists manipulate time with the number of panels and the size of each panel.
remember, DIAGONALS!!! open up an issue of batman, superman, spider man, deadpool or whatever youre reading theyre everywhere.
———-
…DRAW IN THIS ORDER:
Page 12,
Page 6 and 7 (this is typically one large image that takes up the space of two pages),
Page 1,
and then the rest.
ONLY “DEVIATION” ALLOWED:
Page 12 and 1*
Page 6 and 7,
and then the rest.
*Draw the first and last page as a spread in situations where the beginning of the story mirrors the end of the story.
Cover is dead last.
———-
(If at the very end you find out you need more pages and it’s absolutely unavoidable and totally necessary you have to add them in fours. Try to stick to 12 pages for this crash course.)
——————–
FURTHER NOTES:
Plan and draw the pages in spreads (the twos) since this is how it will appear in print and when you submit them to an editor for review guess what, the pages with an exception to the first and last will be reviewed as spreads.
You at most only need one establishing panel of the setting and environment (scene) per page.
Forget “true to life” perspective outside of the establishing panel). Practice diagonal composition of objects and subjects within panels. For dynamism.
You don’t have to present the text all in one go (one paragraph or bubble). You can and should break up paragraphs, sentences, and if you need to single out words– to make smaller, more easily managed bubbles to scatter through the panel.
Less important moments have smaller panels and or lesser detail. More details (or more word bubbles) slow down time. More drawn detail also creates a concentration of values (it’s darker and sometimes combines together as one shape or mass)
Know your light sources. Control the blacks. Control the values.
TIPS | COFFEE? :3 | dA | IG | ♡ | ❤ | ⋆
(more coming soon 11/22/2016)
Not really an ask, just wanted to thank you. A few years ago I saw your post to make a 15 pg webcomic for January and 2 years later that webcomic is 200+ pgs strong ongoing with a large following and successful. Thank you!!
Awww, we’re all so glad our little event jumpstarted your project! Thank you, this means a lot to us!
-Mod Zee
Get some extra classes with the 11-page Clean up your Acting supplement~
This tutorial is about acting for comics! It’s not a subject people talk about a lot, at least compared to art and writing, but I’d argue that great character acting is one of the reasons we fall in love with fictional characters… and horrible character acting is why we stop believing in the characters, the story, and possibly the creator?? Fortunately, learning to spot bad acting is an easy way to correct it in your own work.
I was maybe a little snarkier in this tut than I needed to, but we’re friends here, I don’t need to pretend with you that I love every work equally. What I really do love tho, is when people learn to turn their criticism into corrections, which is the whole point of making and sharing these tuts! I hope you enjoy it :] You can also check out a bunch of human, monster, and alien crab acting in my own comics The Meek and Mare Internum.
My recent tutorials on Tumblr:
coloring with masks
writing for webcomics
researching for comics
All of my tutorials are released in lower-res format to the public 6 months after publication at the Shingworks Patreon. You can access the full tutorial archive, as well as nearly 1.5 years worth of bonus content, by becoming a Patron :] The recent tutorial is about Worldbuilding, so feel free to stop by~
and! thanks a ton in advance for not removing my text <3
This is great!!
One of the big tells for me that a cartoonist is a novice is when they rely too heavily on manga/anime exaggerated expressions - we see this A LOT with first-time webcomics. Even if you love manga and want to create works with that visual language, notice how those exaggerated expressions are most effectively used to enhance a moment. They aren’t there to handle the bulk of the acting or to carry a scene. If you use them constantly for every expression, it becomes visually exhausting (and reads disingenuous), and also you have nowhere left to go if you want to use a goofy expression as a visual punch.
Anywho, I back Der-shing on patreon and she always has good and insightful tips from a valid perspective with lots of experience!
(Eventually I want to back all the women in webcomics on patreon, but… that is a story for another day.)
hi- I was wondering if u had any process gifs of your background art? like how do you go about adding the textures? is it at the final stage that you do it? I'm also interested in working as a bg artist after I graduate and you're a really big source of inspiration!
hello! i dont have any process gifs but i put together a little tut for you, i feel like im overdue for a proper one :8) i want to make a more in depth tutorial on background painting (maybe a video?!!?!) but for right now i’ll just address your questions on texture if that’s okay!
here is an ultra basic bg we’re gonna spruce up. keep in mind i’m not going to talk about lighting and composition really so, try to put that out of your mind for now. anyway, there is no texture or edge difference in this yet. everything is smooth and samey (but there is a little bit of atmospheric perspective in the color). the most important thing at this stage is that every unique shape or plane is on its own layer. this is because all texture and lighting will be clipped to the corresponding layer.
sorry this is kind of ugly but this is how i arrange my layers LOL. everything is arranged on planes. i think of it like cut paper stacked on top of each other.
make a clipping mask for the texture you’ll put on each shape. i talk a bit about clipping masks and how to use them here. normally i’d have a clipping mask for texture, shadow, and light, so it can get a little crazy when you have a lot of layers but it’s invaluable for experimenting and getting things just right.
ALRIGHT SO LETS TALK ABOUT ACTUAL TEXTURE. i think about texture as having two functions: 1. to draw the viewer’s eye to where you want it to be, and 2. to describe the material/feel of objects. for our very first texture, we’re going to put some snow on the front tree. im using a variety of brushes, please check my FAQ for a full list. since i want the viewer to focus mostly on the front tree, i’m going to put the most texture on it. to answer your question about when i add texture, i usually just kind of follow my intuition and use it when i feel it’s needed. i will almost definitely go back and add/take away throughout the process of the image. a lot of things change and it’s cool to change your mind throughout. i don’t really follow solid “steps” for every piece, they’re always different for me!
now i am just continuing to add texture here and there. the middle ground trees get a bit of snow, but it’s subdued enough to not be the focal point. as well, i added some texture to the snow because i wanted the front plane to be the one you look at the most. everything behind the middle ground trees is wholly untouched. now we have a nice contrast between smooth/textured going on! and contrast/opposites is the key to guiding a viewer’s eye.
after all that i decided at last minute that the front plane could use some texture to differentiate it. but looking at it now, i’d probably go back and rethink it. that’s life.
finally! i added some color corrections and some gradients to push back the mountains and trees. i also added some falling snow and an overall paper texture to simulate a snowy feel without having to paint it all. the paper texture is behind the front plane, again to push everything behind it back. i would be very careful about putting a texture over everything, it can really flatten everything or make it look fake/gimmicky. clip it to shapes or erase where necessary.
lastly, a short word about more contrast. here, i am trying to push the contrast between soft and sharp. the only difference between this image and the last step is that i blurred and sharpened some planes. there are multiple ways to think about this, but for me, the photographic approach is easiest to understand and it’s just how i like my art to look. basically, i try to always make my focal point sharp and in focus, and blur other elements.
this felt a bit all over the place….sorry!! but, i hope it helped. i would like to do more in-depth tutorials in the future so please hang with me til then. thanks for the ask!!
just gonna reblog this to my main because I get asked about how I do my illustrations and I use a similar layers+clipping mask approach (and learned a lot from this post about creating depth and contrast!)
I heard about you last year and it made me start on my comic. But I was unable to finish the first chapter by the end of January. Can I still put up what I got done last time here with the tag for this year?
Sure, anon! it’s all the same #January Comics Month tag now, not split up by years, so that should be fine. I’m glad you got some done! ‘u’
-Mod Zee
START 2017 OFF RIGHT: DRAWING COMICS!!
#January Comics Month is a chill little challenge created by @noordzee, @internetkatze, and @pigeony back in 2014. We challenge ourselves to make a comic at least 15 pages long, and we’re inviting you to join us!
There are no rules or prizes, only the 15-page goal, and even then, we’re not gonna stop you if you go over or under! Style, content, color, fan/original work, collaboration... it’s all up to you! You can use it as an excuse to kick off that magnum opus you’ve been sitting on, or just a little one-shot you thought up last week.
You can post sketches, character sheets, progress, and finished pages to the #January Comics Month tag! During the month the three of us will be posting tips and tutorials and answering questions here at the @januarycomicsmonth blog, and you can also see everything we posted last year, of course!
We hope you join in and have fun!
are you planning on doing this in 2017?
Hell yeah bro you know it!
rapidpunches:
SHORT STORY/ONE-SHOT/ONE CHAPTER/COMICS 101 CRASH COURSE RAPIDPUNCHES’ STYLE
I’m NOT an expert but I have some working experience I can share. You need experience to become great. Here is my set of instructions, tips, and notes towards making a 12-page comic.
My method is to work backwards. Personally I work “backwards” because the end is the only wholly necessary page or set of panels in the story. Everything in between is open to editing and hacking as the most important moments are emphasized and chosen.
I even plan/draw the end page first. The end is the last page a reader sees- so spend your freshest energies on making it as epic, memorable, poignant, and beautiful as #$%^&.
If you draw the pages from 1 to 12 sequentially you run the risk of fresh to burnt out- an uneven distribution of drawing skill. (treat the first page and the 2-page splash as you would the last).
Roughly… the steps to making your comic is
WRITE
PLAN THUMBNAILS
DRAW
…BEGIN THE WRITING (DO NOT SKIP NO MATTER WHAT) like this, in this order:
How does it end?
Does the protag succeed or fail?
What is the turning point of their story?
What the protag do that led them there?
Where does it start?
Who is this protag?
EXAMPLE:
Guy gets mauled by a bear.
This is a fail on the guy’s half.
The bear must eat something or he’ll starve to death.
It’s the guy’s fault the bear can’t find other food. He caused the avalanche that buried all the cabins.
The guy is yodeling in an avalanche zone.
The guy is some guy.
CREATING “THE BEAT SHEET” Take the above stuff and reorder it to make sense.
This guy yodels.
Echoes roll.
Snow slides down.
Avalanche buries the mountain.
Cabins are engulfed.
This bear has no access to cabin food and garbage.
Bear eats this guy.
Expand. Blow up important beats for emphasis. Keep less important beats brief.
This guy is hiking in the snowy mountains.
He comes across an avalanche warning sign.
There is nobody around but him.
A dumb expression forms over his face and he yodels.
Echoes roll but nothing nearby is moved.
At the top of the mountain the snow drifts twitch.
Guy, satisfied, hikes away from there still yodeling.
Frozen snow cracks.
Snow puffs billow and great slabs of ice crash down the mountain side.
Guy sees this and hightails it to safer ground.
Animals, people, are all panicking and getting pushed over by the rushing snow.
Cabins are destroyed.
The guy takes cover by an outcropping of rocks, fastens himself securely to the rock face, and waits for the avalanche to die down.
Avalanche dies down.
A lone bear shambles over from the other side of the mountain.
The bear goes to where a cabin used to be (only roof tiles are left). Bear sniffs a dish satellite.
Bear forlornly eats a food wrapper.
Bear tries to dig.
Guy comes down from the rocks he as climbing and sees bear.
Bear stops digging and sees him.
Guy runs.
Bear chases him down.
Bear eats the guy.
BEAT SHEET COMPLETED!!!
After the beat sheet, write up all the sound effects and speech bubbles and conversation/dialogue you want to be in your comic.
Since comics are a visual medium, highest priority is given to the beats. If a story can’t be told with the art without the dialogue– you messed up and it’s time to rethink your life choices.
Try to keep all your text chunks as short as a tweet. Professionally you don’t want more than 25 words per speech bubble and no more than 250 words per page.
Next is translating the beats to pages…
STRUCTURE OVERVIEW:
[1] point of entry, in media res, hero intro
[2][3] conflict. establish conflict, setting, and mood by the third page. [4][5] rising action/false resolution to conflict/investigation
[6][7] turning point/plot twist/epiphany (this one epic image, to page spread is pivotal, spend a lot of effort into creating this)
[8][9] aftermath/“darkness before dawn”/struggle [10][11] recovery/“rise and conquer”/“fall”
[12] resolution/final end/cliffhanger
[front cover][interior] [interior][back cover]
——————–
My maximum per page is nine panels but I’ve seen pages that have way more. I like to have about 3 to 4 panels per row or less but I’ve seen the “rules” broken before. Advanced comic book artists manipulate time with the number of panels and the size of each panel.
remember, DIAGONALS!!! open up an issue of batman, superman, spider man, deadpool or whatever youre reading theyre everywhere.
———-
…DRAW IN THIS ORDER:
Page 12,
Page 6 and 7 (this is typically one large image that takes up the space of two pages),
Page 1,
and then the rest.
ONLY “DEVIATION” ALLOWED:
Page 12 and 1*
Page 6 and 7,
and then the rest.
*Draw the first and last page as a spread in situations where the beginning of the story mirrors the end of the story.
Cover is dead last.
———-
(If at the very end you find out you need more pages and it’s absolutely unavoidable and totally necessary you have to add them in fours. Try to stick to 12 pages for this crash course.)
——————–
FURTHER NOTES:
Plan and draw the pages in spreads (the twos) since this is how it will appear in print and when you submit them to an editor for review guess what, the pages with an exception to the first and last will be reviewed as spreads.
You at most only need one establishing panel of the setting and environment (scene) per page.
Forget “true to life” perspective outside of the establishing panel). Practice diagonal composition of objects and subjects within panels. For dynamism.
You don’t have to present the text all in one go (one paragraph or bubble). You can and should break up paragraphs, sentences, and if you need to single out words– to make smaller, more easily managed bubbles to scatter through the panel.
Less important moments have smaller panels and or lesser detail. More details (or more word bubbles) slow down time. More drawn detail also creates a concentration of values (it’s darker and sometimes combines together as one shape or mass)
Know your light sources. Control the blacks. Control the values.
TIPS | COFFEE? :3 | dA | IG | ♡ | ❤ | ⋆
(more coming soon 11/22/2016)
How to Make Your Art Look Nice: Thumbnailing
It’s here! For those artists who spend loads of time trying to figure out why their art is not coming out the way they want it to be, making thumbnails (or making studies) is the thing for you! It’s also great of getting rid of the habit of zooming in.
________
Mindsets | Reference and Style | Color Harmony | Contrast
@semitone-shift
Drawing Challenges Row 1 Row 2: Left, Right Row 3 Row 4: Left, Middle, Right Row 5
Making comics. Old vs New.
It’s free.
Android:http://bit.ly/1MKbZbM iPhone:http://apple.co/1Gg946X iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1003588804 Desktop: http://medibangpaint.com/en/pc/
OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
Waaaaat
yOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
YAS
If you’re like me (mod Zee) and also hate drawing comic panels, this looks like a great program!
QU's Comics Resource Library
These are all books that I either own or have read at some point, and which I recommend if you are interested in the art of making comics!
Comics Theory and Practice
Understanding Comics
Reinventing Comics
Making Comics Scott McCloud
Comics and Sequential Art
Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
Expressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative Will Eisner
These books are absolutely essential reading, to the point that recommending them almost feels cliche, but their importance cannot be understated. While they are somewhat academic in nature, they truly strike at the core of what comics storytelling actually is. That is; you could learn everything about anatomy, perspective, or inking, but these books will teach you how to use those techniques in the manner that is unique to comics. If you want to understand how and why comics work the way they do, and how to make their storytelling more effective, grab a copy of Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and Making Comics, and Will Eisner's Comics and Sequential Art.
(Reinventing Comics is denser and less instructive, but still worth a read if you’re interested in the theoretical debate side of things.)
Animation Technique
Tezuka School of Animation, Volumes 1 and 2 Tezuka Productions
Cartoon Animation Preston Blair
Recommending these books might seem a little weird, if we're talking about comics and not animation. However, these arts are closely related. You might not need to know the finer points of frame-by-frame animation timing, but I guarantee you that learning the basic principles of cartooning will strengthen your drawing abilities as a whole. I recommend these books due to their ease of reading, clear examples, and universal applicability.
If you would like to deepen your knowledge of animation, I also recommend:
Character Animation Crash Course Eric Goldberg
The Animator's Survivor Kit Richard Williams
Traditional Western Comic Art
The DC Comics Guide to Inking Comics (and others in the DC Comics Guide series) Klaus Janson
How To Draw Comics The Marvel Way Stan Lee and John Buscema
DC Comics Guide is actually a series of books detailing various stages in comics making, however I have only read one of them. I picked up "Inking" as a reference for Inktober, and if all the other books in the series are as good as this one, then I can recommend them wholeheartedly. How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way may be a little limited, since it is, well, The Marvel Way, but if that's what you are interested in, this book is an invaluable resource. I highly recommend it.
Perspective, Background, Layout and Composition
Vanishing Point: Perspective for Comics from the Ground Up Jason Cheeseman-Meyer
Perspective! for Comic Book Artists
Extreme Perspective! For Artists David Chelsea
These books focus on, well, perspective. But especially the kind of perspective you might need in comics, with its limited panel spaces and wild angles. One of my main problems with perspective textbooks is that they tend to either focus too much on math, or procedural exactness which leaves too little to the imagination. These books approach perspective in a refreshingly informal way which is both very easy to understand and complex enough to help with a wide variety of situations.
Chelsea's book also comes with a CD with pre-rendered perspective guides you can load into your drawing software and use as a base.
The Visual Story Bruce Block
Layout and Composition for Animation Ed Ghertner
These books focus on cinematography and composition for film and animation, but the principles described here are also highly applicable to comics. Layout for Animation is especially important, because as in comics, animation needs a fixed drawn background where a character can move around. Your panel design will greatly benefit from studying these books.
Sorry if this was already asked, but do you have any tips for making a website just for a comic? I've seen that a lot and wish it for my self.
Hello! QU here! There are many different ways to approach this topic.
1. If you would like to stay on Tumblr:
Simple Webcomic Theme allows you to use your Tumblr blog as a webcomic host. This is helpful since you can have your comic as a sideblog and control it from your dashboard, and take advantage of Tumblr’s reblogging features. The downside is that you cannot post anything else to the blog that isn’t a comic page, since it will appear on the archive and can be very disruptive.
2. If you want an external dedicated comics host:
www.smackjeeves.com is a service that I personally used for many years and greatly enjoyed. Customizable, easy to use, allows user comments and ratings on individual pages. You can buy your own domain name. When I used to use it it had a vibrant readership and very active forum. I don’t know if this is still true but it is worth checking out.
www.comicfury.com a service I have not personally used, but I heard is equally as good, if not better than Smackjeeves. Highly customizable and very user friendly. You can use your own domain name.
www.theduckwebcomics.com A very popular host for a long time, it has built-in comments and forum and is fairly easy to use. Unfortunately, has limited features which are not highly customizable, and is riddled with bugs. Still, check it out if you wanna keep your options open.
www.comicgenesis.com the granddaddy of comic hosting, very highly customizable, but also not very user friendly. Has no comment system.
tapastic.com optimized for mobile viewing, I’m familiar with this one because I have friends who worked there. Minimal customization: this does not give you an individual page but rather gives you a profile on the Tapastic platform. Good for people who like to read on their phone/tablet but I personally find it hard to focus on an actual computer.
3. Other external hosts:
Wordpress a blogging platform with lots of customization options, you can convert it to a webcomic host by using the Panel theme. There are other themes and plugins you can use for this purpose, so check them out!
Blogspot can also be used to host a webcomic, but it really wasn’t made for that purpose, and so can be rather inflexible. Still, it’s there if you want it.
4. Some More Helpful Links:
Web Design Tips for Webcomics
How to Host Your Own Webcomic
Webcomic Hosting Setup
