#snooze tips

[snoozelocke]

Hey Snooze! Sorry if I missed this topic in your FAQ. I'm playing a nuzlocke with the starter death game over rule like yours (for story) and so far I've been doing pretty well, I've almost completed the story. But my starter died to an unexpected Mirror Coat from a generic trainer, two battles away from the next plot event. I'm kinda at a loss, I don't have the heart to start all over again and I feel bad tainting the run... Have you experienced anything similar, and if so, what's your advice?

this is sortve a tricky situation and i totally understand. i’ve played more than my fair share of runs where i wiped or lost a teammate that i desperately wanted to keep.

first, i wanna remind you that nuzlockes (and nuzlocke stories) are things we do for fun! no ones going to come knocking on your door over whether you’re “playing right” or not. but on that note, i think you have a few options:

1. chalk it up as a game over and restart - personally, i do try to follow my ruleset to the letter and avoid “cheating” as much as possible, even if it means having to replay the game. this is the most “by the rules” option, if you’re like me and that kinda thing is important to you.

2. drop your starter death rule - if you don’t want to bring anyone back from being fainted but do want to continue to play your current save file, you could choose to do away with the starter-related rule and rework your story to incorporate the death of a main character/ protagonist.

3. sacrifice a different pokemon in its place - this is bending the rules a bit more drastically, but if you want to retain your starter clause and want to continue playing the current file, you can choose to kill off a different pokemon on your team. this lets you still have consequences for letting your starter faint without having to redo everything. (bonus - use rng to determine which team member gets axed so you aren’t playing favorites)

4. fuck it, pretend like your starter didn’t die - this is basically the “just cheat” option, but hey, nuzlockes are for fun so who cares? seriously no one is going to interrogate you over whether you’re telling the truth about your gameplay.

it’s really up to you and how you want to play your game! again, do what makes you happiest and makes the game the most fun!

[snoozelocke]

howdy!! first of all, i love your comic a lot!! it inspired me to play my own nuzlocke of x/y and im thinking of making my own gijinkalocke. i don't have much experience drawing humanoids however, and i fear i won't have much diversity with body types, ethnicites, etc. i've seen people become upset over this, i was wondering if you had any advice or tips that could help? thanks!! ((if you've already answered something similar you can delete this, i checked your FAQ before asking!!))

first of all thank you so much! ;;__;; im so happy i could help inspire you!

as for character diversity, i’m always still learning myself, but my best advice is this:

Use References - if you want to draw people with a certain body type, look up photos of real people with that body. If you want to draw someone of a certain race or ethnicity, look up photos of people of that race/ethnicity. etc. etc. Photo reference is absolutely indispensable when learning how to draw all kinds of people.

 Diversify the Artists You Follow - Seek to expand the kinds of artists you follow and study how they draw diversity. Look at how other artists portray themselves and others. We all learn from each other!

Research -  If you want to portray characters of a different gender/race/body type/etc than you, you should make sure you understand if there are any offensive stereotypes associated with that group to avoid. There are also plenty of tutorials out there with “dos and donts” for different body types, etc. to help you avoid common mistakes!

Practice and Don’t Give Up -  Learning to draw something new is difficult! But the only way to really get better is to keep trying and keep learning. Practice a lot, and always look for ways to improve! ( ’ v ’ )b

i hope that helps you! this kind of thing is constant, on-going process, so don’t get discouraged if it takes a while to really get the hang of it. good luck anon!

[snoozelocke]

Question: What is thumbnailing in a comic? I see you use that term over on Twitter and now here with what the current stage is but I don't know what that is so got me curious.

thumbnails are very small, crude sketches of what a comic page will look like. (the term “thumbnail” comes from how small they are: “the size of one’s thumbnail”)

the purpose of them is to plan out where panels, characters, and speech bubbles go so that i know what to draw when i sit down to make each page. it’s sort’ve like a sketch for my sketch!

thumbnails are not meant to “look good” - they are meant to be blueprints for my comic pages. i draw them fast and only focus on composition and action within the panels.

hope that made sense!

[snoozelocke]

how would you go about making sure ur nuzlocke updates show up in tags if they have links to outside sites or making a following on your nuzlocke blog? i have a couple followers but it seems really hard to actually get my nuzlocke out there in tumblr searches

ngl ive given up trying to get my updates in the tags o|-< tumblr really screwed us over on that front.

i have seen some other nuzcomic artists post their update alerts without the links, then post links in a reblog and that seems to work i think!

as for gaining a following - my best advice is to not limit yourself to just tumblr. join nuzcomic discords/dA groups/communities and just like participate in conversations, comment on others’ comics, etc. its fun + its a great way to make friends and find people with similar interests!

(also come off anon so i can see your nuz thats an order ( •̀ω•́ )σ )

[snoozelocke]

About how much plot/planning/outline did you have done when you started your comic? I'm afraid if I wait too long to plan out everything, design every single major character etc then I won't ever actually draw the comic bc my excitement to draw it might dwindle. I wanna get at least enough of a map of where I'm going and important bits, but I'm not sure how much is enough to start.

i started drawing pages about 2-ish months after i finished the gameplay. during that time i did some practice panels to figure out what style i wanted, designed some of the initial characters, and decided on some important worldbuilding and plot beats.

i knew the outline for the first 2 chapters really well and had a loose idea for the rest of the story (with some holes here and there). however, i left a lot of character designs for later (cousteau, rho, kazz, mirelle, most gym leaders, etc) and didn’t script out basically anything but the first handful of pages before i started.

honestly? there are still characters i need to design. i still continue to revise my future plot. a lot of burn away has changed from what i thought it would be back in 2016. for me the “planning phase” never really ends, it happens while i make pages!

if you’re afraid of losing steam while being stuck in planning, my advice is to give yourself a month or two to get a handle on a basic plot and the early character designs, then just go.

[snoozelocke]

Random question: What made you want to do longer pages rather than "traditional" shorter pages?

i went for long pages over short ones for a few reasons:

when updating my comic serially, i like posting more content at once. long pages allow me to get through whole scenes/ larger chunks of story at once so readers can comment on an entire “chapter” of events when i post instead of a few panels

it also means ppl reading the archive can read through more content with less breaks (ie - having to click “next page”) i like the overall pacing i get with fewer, but longer pages!

i like the opportunity for experimentation. the vertical format allows me to do things like the ulrich fall, abella’s final attack in the cyllage gym, etc by taking advantage of vertical scroll. its neat and i like it!

[snoozelocke]

hey snooze, i love how you draw your characters—they're so lively and i love how you do body language! was wondering if you had any tips for drawing expressions?

WAAAH thank you!! ;;___;;

i don’t really have any big tips for expressions except to try acting out the poses/expressions yourself and try to take photos of it to use as reference. :>

[snoozelocke]

hope you don’t mind me answering this on my nuz blog!

so, a huge rotation in a gijinkalocke comic! i’m going to be honest - this really isn’t a problem i’ve personally experienced. my play style for nuzlockes is very much “settle on 6 pokemon and don’t switch anyone off the team except for death.” and so its rare for me to box someone or have rotations of teammates.

it’s definitely a tricky thing. you could portray it as temporary/casual team members who leave and rejoin the team as they have time, or as a larger organization that sends teammates out away from the team to do other tasks? i think the key thing about it is figuring out reasons why teammates would need to constantly be leaving and returning - which i think will depend on how you set up your world and league!

sorry i can’t be of more help than that o|-< it really is an issue im inexperienced with, haha. best of luck though!!