I know you answered on background before so I REALLY don’t wanna bother
but I’m curious how you approach like- perspective in backgrounds? Especially for comics with like buildings and what not? (so I guess this is more geared towards your other comics)
just curious to see how different comic artists approach this! I have some ideas on how to simplify but it’s always nice to see how others do so! And ofc this isn’t forced!
I was joking with some friends literally this monday, but to me, perspective is literally all cubes. I can kinda free hand perspective (to mixed results lmao) so a lot of this stuff just feels innate to me, BUT the way it helped me to wrap my head around it was to think of it entirely in the context of cubes. to shape buildings and furniture and even some natural features...it's just cubes on top of cubes on top of cubes.
perspective rulers are your best friend (if you're working in csp) but if not it's fairly easy to set up a horizon line and vanishing points. There are a lot of helpful tutorials out there, and not something I am confident I could teach to other people (from experience of trying to explain it to people and them not getting it)
Here I drew an EXTREMELY rough building with a 2-point perspective ruler in csp.
you can mess around with the vanishing points to get the desired angle that you want, but it holds the same idea as above; It's many different cubic shapes stacked on top of others (the top layers of the building getting wider and thinner than the bottom chunk) as well as "carved out" cubic chunks of a main cube (the squares where the windows are, or where the foundation is gone to give way to a door) It's almost like 2d chiseling to me in a way. You need to make a basic shape and then you can start adding more and more details onto that.
I deeply wish I hadn't deleted the sketch and ruler layers for these panels but c'est la vie but you can see like. where I clearly had just cubes, and started chiseling and working off of that basic shape to make more.
Now, when I make a panel where the primary subject IS the background, I will often set up a grid for 1 or 2-point perspective to make sure that I get it right (since it is the primary thing people are going to look at, I don't want it to obviously look off) HOWEVER, with other backgrounds (primarily interiors where it's likely harder to like. find a horizon line and vanishing points, what I do is draw one element of the bg, and then base everything else on the perspective of that thing. (this is also how most of the bg perspective in cob was done)
let's say I draw a (very rough with a rough cube overlay) chair. since I have this chair now, I know the angles of a lot of others things in the environment! let's say I wanted to draw a table next to it and give it like...idk i little leg rest. I can use the lines created by the chair to map out what the perspective of those things should be.
and you can just keep adding stuff to the scene using the same guidelines over and over again
this often does create an inaccurate perspective because a lot of it has to do with your ability to eyeball if angles are correct, BUT if the primary focus of the scene is not the bg (or if you're a dummy like me and won't let yourself use the straight line tool in cob for some reason?) and you just need something down, it's a very very good option to do.
I’m VERY curious to see how you approach backgrounds in this! Especially with all the perspective stuff with the buildings!
so how do go about doing so? If you want to answer that is!
Btw I ADOREE this comic and its attention to detail! Gah it’s hard to express how much I LOVE the everyday life of people in the past (or an environment adjacent to it) to be portrayed!
Thank you so much! That means a lot to hear.
As for backgrounds, I mainly just use a lot of references. Half the battle is just finding appropriate ones. Sometimes for more difficult backgrounds I’ll photobash or trace my sketch from a stock photo. Work smarter not harder, LOL.
Perspective is hard for me, and I was not at all used to drawing urban environments or inorganic backgrounds prior to this. For the first chapter’s cover page I actually built a version of the bridge in minecraft and used a screenshot of that as a reference to help with the perspective…
There’s probably better methods but ehh it worked well enough. It’s hard to be a webcomic artist if you’re a perfectionist
but what’s your method/process of making comics? To be specific: how are you able to be consistent with making pages without serious burn out? I’m planning on making comics- and I’m curious on the process of my favorite comic creators- kind of like- as a point of reference!
The shortest answer I can give is I have been doing this for so long (since like 2020 i believe) it's just habit/muscle memory at this point. It's a very like "Ah I should work on my comic today, huh" vibe. Everyday. It's just my life lmao.
I do get burnout but I just kinda force myself to work through it. I think working in scene batches (doing all the lineart for one scene and then finishing those pages like that bc lineart is the hardest step for me) helps mitigate the REALLY BAD burnout personally. Bc it's like. Well at least this scene is done. It's doing little milestones like that that really help keep me motivated to work on my comic more.
also this isn't for everyone and I DON'T recommend this right out the gate......but.......having 2 comics IS nice bc I go back and forth on batches with them and it helps me keep from being bored/burnout of one specific story. The spice of life and all that.
I think what really got me in the Comic Making Groove was finding a work flow that meshed well for me. Batches are a lifesaver for me and really helped me get going and i still use them today. I do them by scene like stated above but I know a lot of people who do just like. 3-4 pages in a batch and I would recommend starting with something like that. You just gotta get into the groove of it.
