#cartooning tips

[sketchworks-labs]

Webtoons Canvas put out a 30+ minute video on color theory for storytelling. Check it out!

[sketchworks-labs]

Webtoons Canvas will now slice and optimize episode images!

I love Webtoons Canvas because it's a great platform to publish on, but they have a terrible time communicating things. This was buried in their Instagram Stories.

So now you can upload long vertical images and Webtoons will slice them, rather than having to put images that didn't exceed 800x1280px up yourself. Online image slicing services are hit and miss, and uploading all those slices sometimes meant things got out of order.

EDIT: it looks like you can upload full rez images and Canvas will reduce them!

[sketchworks-labs]

https://mobile.twitter.com/radsechrist?

[acaseforpencils]

Mitra Farmand.

Bio:

I’ve been published in The New Yorker, The Nib, and The Funny Times. Also, I self-publish little books of my cartoons, but I’m not sure if that counts.

Here’s my one New Yorker cartoon:  

You can buy this print here.

No one seems to understand what I meant by this cartoon. One person asked me if it was about income inequality. I wish I had thought of that! So yes, that’s what it’s about.

I hope someday to have two New Yorker cartoons.

Tools of Choice:

I might sketch out things on scrap paper, especially if I’m at work (where my job is not drawing), but usually I start a drawing in Photoshop, using my Wacom pad.

I like drawing on the computer, but it’s a little bit of a curse. I can spend days drawing and re-drawing the same thing with my hand poised over the Cmd-Option-Z buttons (aka Undo). I’ve tried to use the lightbox, but I couldn’t get used to not being able to undo, zoom in, and lasso.      

I just changed the nib on my Wacom pen from a standard nib to a flex nib which has made all the difference in my line work. With the standard nib, the pen skates across the plastic and makes for a jumpy line. Now it’s much easier for me to get a nice, smooth line because there’s friction between the pen and the pad. I love having a smooth line, but I worry that it makes my art look less hand-made and more like a vector. I’m a person, damn it, not a machine!

I envy people who can just draw something simply and be done with it. I think that gives their art a really easy quality and it looks like they had fun making the drawing. I try to get my drawings to look like that, but I often fail. I get caught up in the details.

Tools I wish I could use better:

Photoshop. Lately I’ve been trying to Google all the things I do manually in Photoshop and I’ve found that most of the things I do manually, Photoshop will do for me. It’s kind of great and kind of awful to find out that something you’ve been doing manually for 10 years, you can do with one keystroke. Oops.

Tool I wish existed:

I wish I could erase a line on a piece of paper an infinite number of times.

Tricks:

Since I pretty much only work digitally and you probably already know how to use a pencil, here are my (mostly) Photoshop tips.

1. I said this above, but here it is again!  Because this changed my life. Changing the nib on your Wacom pen makes a big difference.  I just started using a flex nib instead of the standard nib and now my pen doesn’t skate across the pad making shaking lines. The friction between the flex nib and the drawing surface makes for much smoother lines.

2. If you draw all your lines in a flowing motion and don’t stop where the line stops in your drawing, you’ll get some really smooth lines. The boring part is going back and erasing all those extra lines.

3. You can buy a thingy that makes your Wacom pad wireless.

4. There’s a magic eraser in Photoshop that will (in some cases/sort of) erase only the color that you tell it to.

5. Instead of using the paint bucket to change colors, try the Color Overlay instead. I can’t remember what paint bucket used to do to my lines – I think they made them jagged, even when they were on a different layer from the color?Anyway, I’ve found that Color Overlay is better if you need to change a color.

6. Print out your drawing and look at it in real life. Though by the time a drawing is ready to print, I’m often so sick of it that I don’t want to look at it anymore or fix it.

7. Don’t stop drawing.  

FAQs:

Q:  Do you want to hear my idea for a cartoon?

A:  Sure.  

Q: [The punchline is a pun.]

Q:  Do you watch Game of Thrones?

A:  I got confused in the second season and gave up.

Q:  Do you want to see the dessert menu?

A:  Yes.

Q:  حالتون چطوره؟

A:  I’m sorry, I don’t speak Farsi.

[This question makes more sense if you could see what I look like. Basically, I look like someone who can speak Farsi. At my sister’s wedding I was asked in the middle of the ceremony (which was all in Farsi) to say something in front of everyone and I panicked and said, “Farsi balad nistam.” Translation: “I don’t speak Farsi.” Maybe you had to be there.]

Q:  Do you think Jane’s cartoons are funny?

A:  I think they’re hilarious!

Website, etc.

I have a website at http://mitrafarmand.com/ and an Etsy store at https://www.etsy.com/shop/fuffernutter.  If you want to baffle your friends and family, you can buy a print of my cartoon from the Conde Nast store. A friend of mine hung it in her bathroom right in front of the toilet. I highly recommend doing that. That way you can study it at your leisure and try to figure out what the hell it means. I recommend the big framed size for $839.

[acaseforpencils]

Edward Steed

Bio: Ed Steed is a staff cartoonist at The New Yorker.

Find this print and more here.

Tricks:

My Ideasmatron.

The Ideasmatron

Links: Find more of Ed's cartoons here.