Can you tell me what your inspiration or process is for drawing your comics? They are so expressive and dynamic, it's so inspiring and I wish to learn to add more of that to my own art.
Thank you for all the amazing art, I enjoy them all a lot! <3
Thank you guys, I don't know what to say!
I've done comics for a living for years, so experience is key, but I'll try to elaborate a bit on my process...
After I've decided what story I want to draw (and that's a whole other thing), I sketch down some ideas. As I've shown in a previous ask, I always start my comics with a very rough thumbnail of the whole sequence, to see how the pages interact with each other (I try to avoid repetitons in art and dialogue) and how many they end up being - the less the better. In comics you must be quite efficient with your storytelling, otherwise every comicbook would be huge. It's important to understand what are the key moments, actions and emotions you want to show per page, and how much space to give them. Sometimes it can be done in a few panels, sometimes in many (in actual work, there are also different type of comic languages and grids depending on the publications, but I digress). It's up to what you think is better both aesthetically and narratively.
Then I place the thumbnail in a grid in Clip Studio and I already put the lettering, to see how much space the balloons take. It's important that both them and the art are legible and clear (or as clear as possible, in my messy case XD)
Then there's the fun time (for me): the messy pencils! I draw everything, but without bothering to be clean and perfect. This is the phase where the actual bgs and characters are drawn. I cure the perspective and decide the final poses (being careful with their anatomy) and expressions. Sometimes I already think about the shadows, to catch the mood I want. I also keep many references under my nose, they're very important.
The last stage is the clean up, where I refine the rough edges and clean everything (especially for work comics, not so much for the fan ones XP). I also put the shadows (if needed) and check for mistakes and oversights.
(You'll see the clean up of the example page when the new comic is actually done XP hopefully soon!)
Aaand that's it! Thank you for the ask <3
PS I've already written about my influences, go check the askgiu tag if you're curious ^^