Hello! I have to first say I love your comic, and I was wondering if you have any suggestions for artists just starting out with their comics? I'm new to comics and digital art in general, so I thought I'd ask you since you seem to be a pro. Sorry to bother you, and thank you so much for sharing your talent and Nuzlocke with the rest of us! -Vex
Oh wow, thank you so much!! ; v ; And absolutely! I’ll do my best!
Some general tips I have for just starting out are as follows:
No one else can or is going to write out/draw the story that you have in your head. Remember this when you get discouraged or frustrated, especially if you’re working on your comic long term.
Work on your comic in a way in which you’ll have the most fun and/or learn from. All of the lineart from NOICE is traditional and is drawn on paper, because I enjoy it a lot more than drawing on the tablet and I draw faster and more consistently on paper. However, I have friends who started projects involving their tablet in order to get better at digital art. It’s all up to you!
“Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water” (Kurt Vonnegut) – even if a character’s motivation is unclear (or even hidden from the audience), you as the creator should know what their needs or wants are in the story.
Whatever the length of your pages are going to be for your comic, try to have something that either a) reveals something about the main character(s) or b) advances the plot. To keep myself on track, I try to pace my own pages this way. (For instance, if you look at the latest page of NOICE, 1) Gary got Daisy caught up with the past couple of chapters [without any unnecessary cul-de-sac of dialogue], 2) we got Daisy’s reaction to it, thereby also showing more of her character as she interacts with her little brother, and 3) we got this weird ‘wait, what happened to Prof. Oak?’ mystery at the end.) Even if pages are slower and have a lot fewer panels (3 or 4), this guideline should still apply.
Work on your dialogue before you even start drawing the page. I call this the ‘script’ and have it saved as a Word document. Then, when I’m thumbnailing the chapter (crude sketches of what the comic page[s] will look like), I figure out where the speech bubbles are going to go in relation to the characters and the rest of the panel – because realizing you have to cover up something you spent a long time drawing is awful.
Avoid large walls of text with dialogue. They’re no fun to read, and they can be easily broken up into smaller bubbles that connect to each other.
Keep in mind the flow of each page and make sure the panel composition and the speech bubbles help with that flow. For instance, the pages in NOICE go from left to right, top to bottom. There is one instance where I break that, but the speech bubbles help serve as a guide to let the reader know where to go in the page.
Backgrounds. They suck, but they don’t have to be complicated. Even a gradient or tone can work depending on the mood being conveyed in a certain panel. A general rule I follow is to have at least 1 panel on each page with a detailed background, that is, grounding the readers to remind them where we are, and even that doesn’t have to be complicated. This page has a lot of effects and tones for certain panels, but we do have the 2 panels with leaves behind Roland and Blueberry to emphasize that they are (still) on Route 1.
Design your characters before they appear in the comic. Since my sketching and inking is done traditionally, I have my character refs in a notebook or on a separate piece of paper. It really saves you a lot of trouble and helps your characters look more consistent.
And lastly, read comics! Read lots of comics. Read comics you love! Try to figure out why you love them. Do you enjoy seeing certain characters enter the scene? What’s the dialogue like? Does the artist use certain techniques that you want to try out? Read comics you don’t like. Try to figure out why you don’t like them. Is the story slow? Are you not invested in any of the characters? Are the backgrounds bland? Are there scenes that don’t advance the story or help us learn more about the characters?
I’m just a hobbyist and have no education in this regard, but these are my suggestions for just starting out! I hope I helped, and I hope other people find this useful, too.
Thank you for reading, and good luck with your comic!! o/