ranowa does art

[ranowa-arts]

[ranowa-arts]

and my favorite game, art progress:

2024 | 2022

maybe by 2030 i will both not spend all my bullets on this fight AND draw a good one wow wow wow. however i do love looking at my progress :3

[ranowa-arts]

[ranowa-arts]

[ranowa-arts]

fanart for the awesome Fool of a Took by AnonymousBookshelf on ao3!

their descriptions of legolas are really really cool and i just really wanted to draw their version of him and also what fun to find a fic that has a serious take on pippin too, go give it a read, i loved it!

[ranowa-arts]

[ranowa-arts]

[ranowa-arts]

newbie's guide to comics

I made this comic because my art has always gravitated towards comics, but my one attempt at a longform more original project was disastrous. I decided that everyone has to start their learning somewhere, so I did! I chose Kid Icarus: Uprising because the episodic format with a web novel style felt perfect to learn from and expand on. Also because the game is a banger. Here's some simple stuff that I took 22 chapters to learn, that is probably going to be even simpler than planned because my ipad died dead so I can't go for all the examples I had planned (give me a few days to type it all out).

REFERENCE SHEETS

Reference sheets serve multiple purposes and are honestly the most important thing to invest your effort in before starting a big project. Mine looked like this:

This is a good place to start! it gives a nice handy list of colors on a layer you can copy/paste into any canvas where this character appears. This is also where you should be understanding your character's design in order to draw it consistently. Their hairstyle, anything weird about their outfit, any details or decorations, this is where you need to iron it all out. Understand how it actually functions because that's how you're able to draw something from any angle. For non-OCs, this is where 3D models can be a big help, or even stuff like this little guy, who has lived on my desk for this entire project:

Say hi, Pit!

But there's also another use for the reference sheets, which I didn't understand at the time. In a longform comic, characters with a lot of screentime are going to need to be simplified, both for your mental health and the health of your hands. That damn crown, that shows up all the time at the start and mysteriously disappears at the end? Should've simplified it down at the start, that way I would've had a nice consistent design:

Those two side-by-side examples reveal another problem: those two Pits look nothing alike! That's because simplifying stuff down also means putting it into a style you're more comfortable with. Kid Icarus's style is pretty dissimilar to my own, so while I'm able to stiffly replicate it, when you're doing hundreds of pages, it will go much faster and easier if you use your own. Similarly, I should've spent longer on the reference sheets, making a version of the character I actually felt comfortable drawing, so that it didn't slip further and further away from the original planned design. But unless you're selling your comics for money, don't be afraid to streamline and improve stuff as you go. That's how you learn!

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART ONE

There's endless things to say and learn about panel composition (and I'm not pretending I've done any more than just started to learn). But one thing that's really easy to do and will really elevate your comics is keeping your characters' relative positions consistent. Here's what I mean:

The colors are taken out, and without colors both characters have an identical design. Why does this page not feel incoherent, then? Both characters' placements are kept consistent-- Pit on the left side of the panel, Dark Pit on the right side. This goes a long way towards subconsciously helping your reader follow the flow, and also helps YOU keep things straight as you work on the comic. Nothing worse than getting to the coloring stage and then not knowing which character is which, and yes I've had it happen a lot and you really feel like an idiot when it does :')

If this were a movie, if you didn't do this, it'd be akin to the camera swiveling wildly and characters running to different places around the room with each shot. You *can* do this if the goal is to create confusion or stage a disorienting scene, see here:

But unless that's a specific effect you're going for-- be kind to your cameramen :)

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART TWO

What's the difference between these two panels?

Well apart from my wildly shifting and weird methods of drawing hair highlights. One zooms way out for no reason at all and includes aaaaallllll of Pautena's elaborate jewelry. And the other doesn't, and instead gives the reader a nice close shot of her expression, the actual point of the panel. See? Isn't that better?

When you've finished sketching out your chapter you should always then do a once over, and one of the things you should be checking for is superfluous compositions like that. If a panel's focus is on a character emoting (many of them will be!) and you've thrown their whole body in there when only half is relevant, zoom in so the focus can actually go where you want it, and not on their stupid 15 piece jewelry set that you regretted including the second time you had to draw it. Also probably simplify designs so you don't have to draw 15 piece jewelry sets.

Constant crazy dynamic panels and perspectives is overrated, at least for me. It's very impressive on a technical level but can also leave the reader scratching their head and struggling to follow what's going on when used inappropriately. In something like a simple conversation you'll instead want a lot of panels no more complicated than the one above, and so you want to be able to spice these up and make them fun to look at as well instead of just a necessary step to get the dialogue out. The "just getting the dialogue out" trap was actually way bigger than I was expecting and something to improve on avoiding for sure.

Speaking of dialogue and struggling to follow a page, stay tuned for tomorrow's update...

[ranowa-arts]

DIALOGUE BUBBLES

Don't do this. Don't ever do this.

Here's some quick and easy rules about dialogue bubbles: -don't ever do that -you don't want the bubble to touch (or go over) either the panel lines or the text inside -if the speaker is in panel, give it a little line pointing to the speaker, preferably their mouth -their mouth which should be open. dialogue bubbles to someone witha shut mouth just comes across weird -if you have multiple bubbles from the same speaker in one panel, connect them if it doesn't result in too much visual clutter -oh yeah and don't ever ever do that thing right there above

Look how much neater this is!

For text in general, if you're a beginner like me your text is probably either way too big or way too small. It needs to be large enough to easily read because aint no one on social media stopping to zoom in and squint unless they're already invested, but also not so big it's causing problems with your dialogue bubbles fitting. You also want to choose a clean font, no trills and swirls and whistles, and probably will want to poke at your settings to trim down the space in between the lines (the default is huge!). Changing your relative font size is also an easy way to communicate volume, like in panel 6 there.

And another thing about text. SOUND EFFECTS

It's probably hard to realize when you're reading your own stuff, because you have the whole thing playing in your head like a movie, but no one else has that movie in their head. Without sound effects your comic is, to everyone else, a silent movie with subtitles. Traditional comics/manga are FULL of pow! and zing! and kaboom! and *step* and wind lines and fwoom! for a reason. Even if you're not sure where to start just trying to include them a little will start to breathe life into every page.

[ranowa-arts]

BACKGROUNDS

I think this is the last one. Also this one is going to be way less than what I had planned since I no longer have access to the original files. But first thing's first! A little goes a long way:

Gradients and textures take like ten seconds to apply and are always a simple improvement on an otherwise bland panel! Unless they need more careful and selective usage. Which plenty do-- most vegetation type textures in general don't work unless you're careful about using them. But if your garden arts aren't working then honestly that means you just need to not do a garden in a comic until you've learned how, because instead of one garden it'll be seventeen. Easier backgrounds to handle are skies, rocks, and mostly anything that's far off in the distance.

Let's talk, assuming you're doing digital art, the perspective grid:

This chapter was the first one that took me weeks, and this setting right here is why. I can't show the process anymore, but if your background is any kind of interior, you NEED to turn on the perspective grid no later than the preliminary sketch stage and you need to get it right. If your room's proportions don't make sense, and they won't, because free handing that isn't happening, even the casual non-artist reader will notice something feels wrong.

The perspective grid takes a lot of time to get used to if you're like me but the tradeoff is you get a room with perfect proportions, like above, that you can then copy and paste into every other panel. It also makes it easy to quick add those great textures (in a room you're probably looking at bricks or floor tiles or wood paneling). That should be how you approach most interiors. Make a few great looking shots from different angles, and re-use them over and over. You can make the shots not feel so blatantly copy/pasted by zooming in/out, changing little knickknacks, changing the lighting-- but the only way you're getting that room is the perspective grid.

It's not cheating to copy/paste. It's not cheating to copy/paste. It's not cheating to copy/paste. No one is reading your comic to see you individually draw fifteen hundred bricks because "it's cheating not to" and you have never read a single comic in your life because you thought it was cool that they didn't copy/paste those bricks. Copy/paste religiously.

Also, don't put your furniture *on* the grid unless it's aligned with a wall. Your own furniture isn't aligned with the geometric proportions of your room, and unless you have a specific reason to make it so, Blorbo's isn't either.

[ranowa-arts]

SUMMING IT ALL UP

Okay now *this* is the last post on this, for real.

Here is comic because I didn't realize I wouldn't be able to edit earlier posts up the chain... I swear you used to be able to do that.

If anything in this write-up was big news to you, then honestly, I think that means you're not ready for a longform comic yet. Because all of this was big news to me when I first started this comic, and I WAS NOT ready to do one. I was in completely over my head from day one, and that stacked up with complete burnout by the time I reached the Chaos Kin arc to leave me fighting to make it through every single chapter. I wasn't learning and improving as much as I could have been otherwise because so much mental energy was devoted to comic (which has been known as evil vile comic among my friends for like a year now because of this).

But the other side of things is that none of us will ever stop improving. There's no point we'll ever reach that's "well that's as good as I'm going to get, NOW I can start that dream comic!" And the only way to really learn is to do. Though I'd still recommend shorter projects first over a massive one like this. Like I said above I think I improved a lot slower doing this than I would have if I'd not had to use so much of my focus and willpower to just keep drawing Pit and Palutena. But I also now have a much better process for how to draw a comic chapter and stave off burnout and I doubt I would've gotten that otherwise, so everything's a tradeoff.

If you do start your own big project, or small project, or whatever you want, remember there's no shame in stopping if you want to, and that however far you get, that is COOL and WORTHWHILE and NEAT. Every art exp point gained is one that will be put to use in the future and every art made is real cool and something that could put a smile on someone's face as they scroll on this hellsite in this hellscape :)

Speaking of I was absolutely expecting this comic to get no views at all, so seeing those familiar names pop up in my notifications every day was really nice. Thanks to all of you guys for reading, I hope it was fun!

ranowa out

until i get replacement ipad

[ranowa-arts]

newbie's guide to comics

I made this comic because my art has always gravitated towards comics, but my one attempt at a longform more original project was disastrous. I decided that everyone has to start their learning somewhere, so I did! I chose Kid Icarus: Uprising because the episodic format with a web novel style felt perfect to learn from and expand on. Also because the game is a banger. Here's some simple stuff that I took 22 chapters to learn, that is probably going to be even simpler than planned because my ipad died dead so I can't go for all the examples I had planned (give me a few days to type it all out).

REFERENCE SHEETS

Reference sheets serve multiple purposes and are honestly the most important thing to invest your effort in before starting a big project. Mine looked like this:

This is a good place to start! it gives a nice handy list of colors on a layer you can copy/paste into any canvas where this character appears. This is also where you should be understanding your character's design in order to draw it consistently. Their hairstyle, anything weird about their outfit, any details or decorations, this is where you need to iron it all out. Understand how it actually functions because that's how you're able to draw something from any angle. For non-OCs, this is where 3D models can be a big help, or even stuff like this little guy, who has lived on my desk for this entire project:

Say hi, Pit!

But there's also another use for the reference sheets, which I didn't understand at the time. In a longform comic, characters with a lot of screentime are going to need to be simplified, both for your mental health and the health of your hands. That damn crown, that shows up all the time at the start and mysteriously disappears at the end? Should've simplified it down at the start, that way I would've had a nice consistent design:

Those two side-by-side examples reveal another problem: those two Pits look nothing alike! That's because simplifying stuff down also means putting it into a style you're more comfortable with. Kid Icarus's style is pretty dissimilar to my own, so while I'm able to stiffly replicate it, when you're doing hundreds of pages, it will go much faster and easier if you use your own. Similarly, I should've spent longer on the reference sheets, making a version of the character I actually felt comfortable drawing, so that it didn't slip further and further away from the original planned design. But unless you're selling your comics for money, don't be afraid to streamline and improve stuff as you go. That's how you learn!

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART ONE

There's endless things to say and learn about panel composition (and I'm not pretending I've done any more than just started to learn). But one thing that's really easy to do and will really elevate your comics is keeping your characters' relative positions consistent. Here's what I mean:

The colors are taken out, and without colors both characters have an identical design. Why does this page not feel incoherent, then? Both characters' placements are kept consistent-- Pit on the left side of the panel, Dark Pit on the right side. This goes a long way towards subconsciously helping your reader follow the flow, and also helps YOU keep things straight as you work on the comic. Nothing worse than getting to the coloring stage and then not knowing which character is which, and yes I've had it happen a lot and you really feel like an idiot when it does :')

If this were a movie, if you didn't do this, it'd be akin to the camera swiveling wildly and characters running to different places around the room with each shot. You *can* do this if the goal is to create confusion or stage a disorienting scene, see here:

But unless that's a specific effect you're going for-- be kind to your cameramen :)

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART TWO

What's the difference between these two panels?

Well apart from my wildly shifting and weird methods of drawing hair highlights. One zooms way out for no reason at all and includes aaaaallllll of Pautena's elaborate jewelry. And the other doesn't, and instead gives the reader a nice close shot of her expression, the actual point of the panel. See? Isn't that better?

When you've finished sketching out your chapter you should always then do a once over, and one of the things you should be checking for is superfluous compositions like that. If a panel's focus is on a character emoting (many of them will be!) and you've thrown their whole body in there when only half is relevant, zoom in so the focus can actually go where you want it, and not on their stupid 15 piece jewelry set that you regretted including the second time you had to draw it. Also probably simplify designs so you don't have to draw 15 piece jewelry sets.

Constant crazy dynamic panels and perspectives is overrated, at least for me. It's very impressive on a technical level but can also leave the reader scratching their head and struggling to follow what's going on when used inappropriately. In something like a simple conversation you'll instead want a lot of panels no more complicated than the one above, and so you want to be able to spice these up and make them fun to look at as well instead of just a necessary step to get the dialogue out. The "just getting the dialogue out" trap was actually way bigger than I was expecting and something to improve on avoiding for sure.

Speaking of dialogue and struggling to follow a page, stay tuned for tomorrow's update...

[ranowa-arts]

DIALOGUE BUBBLES

Don't do this. Don't ever do this.

Here's some quick and easy rules about dialogue bubbles: -don't ever do that -you don't want the bubble to touch (or go over) either the panel lines or the text inside -if the speaker is in panel, give it a little line pointing to the speaker, preferably their mouth -their mouth which should be open. dialogue bubbles to someone witha shut mouth just comes across weird -if you have multiple bubbles from the same speaker in one panel, connect them if it doesn't result in too much visual clutter -oh yeah and don't ever ever do that thing right there above

Look how much neater this is!

For text in general, if you're a beginner like me your text is probably either way too big or way too small. It needs to be large enough to easily read because aint no one on social media stopping to zoom in and squint unless they're already invested, but also not so big it's causing problems with your dialogue bubbles fitting. You also want to choose a clean font, no trills and swirls and whistles, and probably will want to poke at your settings to trim down the space in between the lines (the default is huge!). Changing your relative font size is also an easy way to communicate volume, like in panel 6 there.

And another thing about text. SOUND EFFECTS

It's probably hard to realize when you're reading your own stuff, because you have the whole thing playing in your head like a movie, but no one else has that movie in their head. Without sound effects your comic is, to everyone else, a silent movie with subtitles. Traditional comics/manga are FULL of pow! and zing! and kaboom! and *step* and wind lines and fwoom! for a reason. Even if you're not sure where to start just trying to include them a little will start to breathe life into every page.

[ranowa-arts]

BACKGROUNDS

I think this is the last one. Also this one is going to be way less than what I had planned since I no longer have access to the original files. But first thing's first! A little goes a long way:

Gradients and textures take like ten seconds to apply and are always a simple improvement on an otherwise bland panel! Unless they need more careful and selective usage. Which plenty do-- most vegetation type textures in general don't work unless you're careful about using them. But if your garden arts aren't working then honestly that means you just need to not do a garden in a comic until you've learned how, because instead of one garden it'll be seventeen. Easier backgrounds to handle are skies, rocks, and mostly anything that's far off in the distance.

Let's talk, assuming you're doing digital art, the perspective grid:

This chapter was the first one that took me weeks, and this setting right here is why. I can't show the process anymore, but if your background is any kind of interior, you NEED to turn on the perspective grid no later than the preliminary sketch stage and you need to get it right. If your room's proportions don't make sense, and they won't, because free handing that isn't happening, even the casual non-artist reader will notice something feels wrong.

The perspective grid takes a lot of time to get used to if you're like me but the tradeoff is you get a room with perfect proportions, like above, that you can then copy and paste into every other panel. It also makes it easy to quick add those great textures (in a room you're probably looking at bricks or floor tiles or wood paneling). That should be how you approach most interiors. Make a few great looking shots from different angles, and re-use them over and over. You can make the shots not feel so blatantly copy/pasted by zooming in/out, changing little knickknacks, changing the lighting-- but the only way you're getting that room is the perspective grid.

It's not cheating to copy/paste. It's not cheating to copy/paste. It's not cheating to copy/paste. No one is reading your comic to see you individually draw fifteen hundred bricks because "it's cheating not to" and you have never read a single comic in your life because you thought it was cool that they didn't copy/paste those bricks. Copy/paste religiously.

Also, don't put your furniture *on* the grid unless it's aligned with a wall. Your own furniture isn't aligned with the geometric proportions of your room, and unless you have a specific reason to make it so, Blorbo's isn't either.

[ranowa-arts]

newbie's guide to comics

I made this comic because my art has always gravitated towards comics, but my one attempt at a longform more original project was disastrous. I decided that everyone has to start their learning somewhere, so I did! I chose Kid Icarus: Uprising because the episodic format with a web novel style felt perfect to learn from and expand on. Also because the game is a banger. Here's some simple stuff that I took 22 chapters to learn, that is probably going to be even simpler than planned because my ipad died dead so I can't go for all the examples I had planned (give me a few days to type it all out).

REFERENCE SHEETS

Reference sheets serve multiple purposes and are honestly the most important thing to invest your effort in before starting a big project. Mine looked like this:

This is a good place to start! it gives a nice handy list of colors on a layer you can copy/paste into any canvas where this character appears. This is also where you should be understanding your character's design in order to draw it consistently. Their hairstyle, anything weird about their outfit, any details or decorations, this is where you need to iron it all out. Understand how it actually functions because that's how you're able to draw something from any angle. For non-OCs, this is where 3D models can be a big help, or even stuff like this little guy, who has lived on my desk for this entire project:

Say hi, Pit!

But there's also another use for the reference sheets, which I didn't understand at the time. In a longform comic, characters with a lot of screentime are going to need to be simplified, both for your mental health and the health of your hands. That damn crown, that shows up all the time at the start and mysteriously disappears at the end? Should've simplified it down at the start, that way I would've had a nice consistent design:

Those two side-by-side examples reveal another problem: those two Pits look nothing alike! That's because simplifying stuff down also means putting it into a style you're more comfortable with. Kid Icarus's style is pretty dissimilar to my own, so while I'm able to stiffly replicate it, when you're doing hundreds of pages, it will go much faster and easier if you use your own. Similarly, I should've spent longer on the reference sheets, making a version of the character I actually felt comfortable drawing, so that it didn't slip further and further away from the original planned design. But unless you're selling your comics for money, don't be afraid to streamline and improve stuff as you go. That's how you learn!

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART ONE

There's endless things to say and learn about panel composition (and I'm not pretending I've done any more than just started to learn). But one thing that's really easy to do and will really elevate your comics is keeping your characters' relative positions consistent. Here's what I mean:

The colors are taken out, and without colors both characters have an identical design. Why does this page not feel incoherent, then? Both characters' placements are kept consistent-- Pit on the left side of the panel, Dark Pit on the right side. This goes a long way towards subconsciously helping your reader follow the flow, and also helps YOU keep things straight as you work on the comic. Nothing worse than getting to the coloring stage and then not knowing which character is which, and yes I've had it happen a lot and you really feel like an idiot when it does :')

If this were a movie, if you didn't do this, it'd be akin to the camera swiveling wildly and characters running to different places around the room with each shot. You *can* do this if the goal is to create confusion or stage a disorienting scene, see here:

But unless that's a specific effect you're going for-- be kind to your cameramen :)

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART TWO

What's the difference between these two panels?

Well apart from my wildly shifting and weird methods of drawing hair highlights. One zooms way out for no reason at all and includes aaaaallllll of Pautena's elaborate jewelry. And the other doesn't, and instead gives the reader a nice close shot of her expression, the actual point of the panel. See? Isn't that better?

When you've finished sketching out your chapter you should always then do a once over, and one of the things you should be checking for is superfluous compositions like that. If a panel's focus is on a character emoting (many of them will be!) and you've thrown their whole body in there when only half is relevant, zoom in so the focus can actually go where you want it, and not on their stupid 15 piece jewelry set that you regretted including the second time you had to draw it. Also probably simplify designs so you don't have to draw 15 piece jewelry sets.

Constant crazy dynamic panels and perspectives is overrated, at least for me. It's very impressive on a technical level but can also leave the reader scratching their head and struggling to follow what's going on when used inappropriately. In something like a simple conversation you'll instead want a lot of panels no more complicated than the one above, and so you want to be able to spice these up and make them fun to look at as well instead of just a necessary step to get the dialogue out. The "just getting the dialogue out" trap was actually way bigger than I was expecting and something to improve on avoiding for sure.

Speaking of dialogue and struggling to follow a page, stay tuned for tomorrow's update...

[ranowa-arts]

DIALOGUE BUBBLES

Don't do this. Don't ever do this.

Here's some quick and easy rules about dialogue bubbles: -don't ever do that -you don't want the bubble to touch (or go over) either the panel lines or the text inside -if the speaker is in panel, give it a little line pointing to the speaker, preferably their mouth -their mouth which should be open. dialogue bubbles to someone witha shut mouth just comes across weird -if you have multiple bubbles from the same speaker in one panel, connect them if it doesn't result in too much visual clutter -oh yeah and don't ever ever do that thing right there above

Look how much neater this is!

For text in general, if you're a beginner like me your text is probably either way too big or way too small. It needs to be large enough to easily read because aint no one on social media stopping to zoom in and squint unless they're already invested, but also not so big it's causing problems with your dialogue bubbles fitting. You also want to choose a clean font, no trills and swirls and whistles, and probably will want to poke at your settings to trim down the space in between the lines (the default is huge!). Changing your relative font size is also an easy way to communicate volume, like in panel 6 there.

And another thing about text. SOUND EFFECTS

It's probably hard to realize when you're reading your own stuff, because you have the whole thing playing in your head like a movie, but no one else has that movie in their head. Without sound effects your comic is, to everyone else, a silent movie with subtitles. Traditional comics/manga are FULL of pow! and zing! and kaboom! and *step* and wind lines and fwoom! for a reason. Even if you're not sure where to start just trying to include them a little will start to breathe life into every page.

[ranowa-arts]

newbie's guide to comics

I made this comic because my art has always gravitated towards comics, but my one attempt at a longform more original project was disastrous. I decided that everyone has to start their learning somewhere, so I did! I chose Kid Icarus: Uprising because the episodic format with a web novel style felt perfect to learn from and expand on. Also because the game is a banger. Here's some simple stuff that I took 22 chapters to learn, that is probably going to be even simpler than planned because my ipad died dead so I can't go for all the examples I had planned (give me a few days to type it all out).

REFERENCE SHEETS

Reference sheets serve multiple purposes and are honestly the most important thing to invest your effort in before starting a big project. Mine looked like this:

This is a good place to start! it gives a nice handy list of colors on a layer you can copy/paste into any canvas where this character appears. This is also where you should be understanding your character's design in order to draw it consistently. Their hairstyle, anything weird about their outfit, any details or decorations, this is where you need to iron it all out. Understand how it actually functions because that's how you're able to draw something from any angle. For non-OCs, this is where 3D models can be a big help, or even stuff like this little guy, who has lived on my desk for this entire project:

Say hi, Pit!

But there's also another use for the reference sheets, which I didn't understand at the time. In a longform comic, characters with a lot of screentime are going to need to be simplified, both for your mental health and the health of your hands. That damn crown, that shows up all the time at the start and mysteriously disappears at the end? Should've simplified it down at the start, that way I would've had a nice consistent design:

Those two side-by-side examples reveal another problem: those two Pits look nothing alike! That's because simplifying stuff down also means putting it into a style you're more comfortable with. Kid Icarus's style is pretty dissimilar to my own, so while I'm able to stiffly replicate it, when you're doing hundreds of pages, it will go much faster and easier if you use your own. Similarly, I should've spent longer on the reference sheets, making a version of the character I actually felt comfortable drawing, so that it didn't slip further and further away from the original planned design. But unless you're selling your comics for money, don't be afraid to streamline and improve stuff as you go. That's how you learn!

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART ONE

There's endless things to say and learn about panel composition (and I'm not pretending I've done any more than just started to learn). But one thing that's really easy to do and will really elevate your comics is keeping your characters' relative positions consistent. Here's what I mean:

The colors are taken out, and without colors both characters have an identical design. Why does this page not feel incoherent, then? Both characters' placements are kept consistent-- Pit on the left side of the panel, Dark Pit on the right side. This goes a long way towards subconsciously helping your reader follow the flow, and also helps YOU keep things straight as you work on the comic. Nothing worse than getting to the coloring stage and then not knowing which character is which, and yes I've had it happen a lot and you really feel like an idiot when it does :')

If this were a movie, if you didn't do this, it'd be akin to the camera swiveling wildly and characters running to different places around the room with each shot. You *can* do this if the goal is to create confusion or stage a disorienting scene, see here:

But unless that's a specific effect you're going for-- be kind to your cameramen :)

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART TWO

What's the difference between these two panels?

Well apart from my wildly shifting and weird methods of drawing hair highlights. One zooms way out for no reason at all and includes aaaaallllll of Pautena's elaborate jewelry. And the other doesn't, and instead gives the reader a nice close shot of her expression, the actual point of the panel. See? Isn't that better?

When you've finished sketching out your chapter you should always then do a once over, and one of the things you should be checking for is superfluous compositions like that. If a panel's focus is on a character emoting (many of them will be!) and you've thrown their whole body in there when only half is relevant, zoom in so the focus can actually go where you want it, and not on their stupid 15 piece jewelry set that you regretted including the second time you had to draw it. Also probably simplify designs so you don't have to draw 15 piece jewelry sets.

Constant crazy dynamic panels and perspectives is overrated, at least for me. It's very impressive on a technical level but can also leave the reader scratching their head and struggling to follow what's going on when used inappropriately. In something like a simple conversation you'll instead want a lot of panels no more complicated than the one above, and so you want to be able to spice these up and make them fun to look at as well instead of just a necessary step to get the dialogue out. The "just getting the dialogue out" trap was actually way bigger than I was expecting and something to improve on avoiding for sure.

Speaking of dialogue and struggling to follow a page, stay tuned for tomorrow's update...

[ranowa-arts]

newbie's guide to comics

I made this comic because my art has always gravitated towards comics, but my one attempt at a longform more original project was disastrous. I decided that everyone has to start their learning somewhere, so I did! I chose Kid Icarus: Uprising because the episodic format with a web novel style felt perfect to learn from and expand on. Also because the game is a banger. Here's some simple stuff that I took 22 chapters to learn, that is probably going to be even simpler than planned because my ipad died dead so I can't go for all the examples I had planned (give me a few days to type it all out).

REFERENCE SHEETS

Reference sheets serve multiple purposes and are honestly the most important thing to invest your effort in before starting a big project. Mine looked like this:

This is a good place to start! it gives a nice handy list of colors on a layer you can copy/paste into any canvas where this character appears. This is also where you should be understanding your character's design in order to draw it consistently. Their hairstyle, anything weird about their outfit, any details or decorations, this is where you need to iron it all out. Understand how it actually functions because that's how you're able to draw something from any angle. For non-OCs, this is where 3D models can be a big help, or even stuff like this little guy, who has lived on my desk for this entire project:

Say hi, Pit!

But there's also another use for the reference sheets, which I didn't understand at the time. In a longform comic, characters with a lot of screentime are going to need to be simplified, both for your mental health and the health of your hands. That damn crown, that shows up all the time at the start and mysteriously disappears at the end? Should've simplified it down at the start, that way I would've had a nice consistent design:

Those two side-by-side examples reveal another problem: those two Pits look nothing alike! That's because simplifying stuff down also means putting it into a style you're more comfortable with. Kid Icarus's style is pretty dissimilar to my own, so while I'm able to stiffly replicate it, when you're doing hundreds of pages, it will go much faster and easier if you use your own. Similarly, I should've spent longer on the reference sheets, making a version of the character I actually felt comfortable drawing, so that it didn't slip further and further away from the original planned design. But unless you're selling your comics for money, don't be afraid to streamline and improve stuff as you go. That's how you learn!

[ranowa-arts]

PANEL COMPOSITION PART ONE

There's endless things to say and learn about panel composition (and I'm not pretending I've done any more than just started to learn). But one thing that's really easy to do and will really elevate your comics is keeping your characters' relative positions consistent. Here's what I mean:

The colors are taken out, and without colors both characters have an identical design. Why does this page not feel incoherent, then? Both characters' placements are kept consistent-- Pit on the left side of the panel, Dark Pit on the right side. This goes a long way towards subconsciously helping your reader follow the flow, and also helps YOU keep things straight as you work on the comic. Nothing worse than getting to the coloring stage and then not knowing which character is which, and yes I've had it happen a lot and you really feel like an idiot when it does :')

If this were a movie, if you didn't do this, it'd be akin to the camera swiveling wildly and characters running to different places around the room with each shot. You *can* do this if the goal is to create confusion or stage a disorienting scene, see here:

But unless that's a specific effect you're going for-- be kind to your cameramen :)

[ranowa-arts]

newbie's guide to comics

I made this comic because my art has always gravitated towards comics, but my one attempt at a longform more original project was disastrous. I decided that everyone has to start their learning somewhere, so I did! I chose Kid Icarus: Uprising because the episodic format with a web novel style felt perfect to learn from and expand on. Also because the game is a banger. Here's some simple stuff that I took 22 chapters to learn, that is probably going to be even simpler than planned because my ipad died dead so I can't go for all the examples I had planned (give me a few days to type it all out).

REFERENCE SHEETS

Reference sheets serve multiple purposes and are honestly the most important thing to invest your effort in before starting a big project. Mine looked like this:

This is a good place to start! it gives a nice handy list of colors on a layer you can copy/paste into any canvas where this character appears. This is also where you should be understanding your character's design in order to draw it consistently. Their hairstyle, anything weird about their outfit, any details or decorations, this is where you need to iron it all out. Understand how it actually functions because that's how you're able to draw something from any angle. For non-OCs, this is where 3D models can be a big help, or even stuff like this little guy, who has lived on my desk for this entire project:

Say hi, Pit!

But there's also another use for the reference sheets, which I didn't understand at the time. In a longform comic, characters with a lot of screentime are going to need to be simplified, both for your mental health and the health of your hands. That damn crown, that shows up all the time at the start and mysteriously disappears at the end? Should've simplified it down at the start, that way I would've had a nice consistent design:

Those two side-by-side examples reveal another problem: those two Pits look nothing alike! That's because simplifying stuff down also means putting it into a style you're more comfortable with. Kid Icarus's style is pretty dissimilar to my own, so while I'm able to stiffly replicate it, when you're doing hundreds of pages, it will go much faster and easier if you use your own. Similarly, I should've spent longer on the reference sheets, making a version of the character I actually felt comfortable drawing, so that it didn't slip further and further away from the original planned design. But unless you're selling your comics for money, don't be afraid to streamline and improve stuff as you go. That's how you learn!

[ranowa-arts]

and thank you so much to @hiding-in-the-vault for putting the finishing touches on this and comic after my ipad exploded also for editing all of comic even though you say you didn't raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa you da best

[ranowa-arts]

kid icarus masterpost

Volume I | Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Air Battle | Chapter 5 Land Battle Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10

Volume II | Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14

Volume III | Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Air Battle | Chapter 17 Land Battle

Final Volume | Chapter 18 Land Battle | Chapter 18 Air Battle Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Land Battle | Chapter 20 Boss Chapter 21 Air Battle | Chapter 21 Land Battle | Chapter 21 Boss Chapter 22 End Vent Epilogue Comic Process

[ranowa-arts]

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[ranowa-arts]

date created: 10-Jan-2026 <-previous chapter

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date created: 13-Sept-2025 <-previous chapter

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