10 Things ALL Webcomic Creators Should Do!

it's that time again it's time for start a yellow about making Comics again we so I made a video recently called 10 things you should never do in a web comic and after I finish that video I wanted to make a follow-up with a more positive spin so this is that I racked my brain and came up with 10 more art tips for webcomic creators that I've learned from my own experience and I'm going to impart the wisdom upon ye in hopes that it'll help you on your webcomics journey I definitely recommend watching that first video as well you don't have to watch them in order or anything but if webcomics are something you're interested in that one will also offer some helpful advice I also have a bunch more art related videos on my channel so feel free to check those out as well also if you enjoy my tips and advice I want to point out that I have an entire book I wrote about making webcomics called how to webcomic we just dropped out the kickstarter campaign to fund the book printing a few weeks ago and if you missed the kickstarter the books will be added to my online store not long after this video goes up I'll have a link in the description once one's available as well as in my pinned comments so go check those out so let's get into it here's 10 things that every webcomic artist should do keeping with tradition I gotta start with a controversial one things every webcomic Creator should do number one start small I've seen a lot of the discourse around this topic on webcomics Twitter and other communities so I know exactly how contentious of a topic it is but here's my two cents on the matter if your goal is to make a webcomic there's a good chance that you probably already have some kind of story in mind and if you're anything like I am that story is probably very long very involved and will take you multiple years to fully draw in comic form but if you've never made Comics before jumping straight into a huge multi-year webcomic project is like jumping into the deep part of the ocean before you've learned how to swim it's so incredibly easy to get in over your head get scared because you don't know what you're doing and give up because you underestimated how difficult it is and how much work it takes it's only natural to struggle the first time you're working in a new medium after all so rather than jumping into your 1000 Page Long Epic Fantasy magnum opus right away I recommend cutting your teeth on some smaller SIM simpler comic projects you can easily finish to ease yourself into making comics and get used to the workflow before jumping into something larger for example when I was in Middle School I made a ton of dumb four panel comics about stuff my friends said and did they were just silly Doodles I did in my Sketchbook but those little Comics were good practice in figuring out comedic timing and basic paneling I eventually moved on to making a lot of fan art comic scripts in high school and started doing them digitally which taught me a lot about using digital art and how to color my comics I then started my first proper long form comic in college and if I didn't have that previous experience under my belt my first webcomic would have been a lot worse like using training wheels when you're first learning how to ride a bike starting with a smaller simpler comic project before jumping into a larger one is always a good idea in my opinion now if you already have your big comic idea that you're completely smitten with and you can't bring yourself to work on anything else my recommendation is to embrace that and maybe start with a short Side Story set in your Comics universe or something about your characters maybe make a short comic about a character's backstory how-to people in your cast met or pick a scene and make it into a one-off comic you can even go on to random writing prompt generation websites and see if inspiration strikes this is also a great way to get people interested in your world and characters before starting a longer comic Endeavor a long story short don't jump into the deep end right away I recommend starting with something simple and work your way up and speaking of keeping things simple things every web comic Creator should do number two keep your character designs simple and easy to draw so here's the thing about making Comics it involves drawing the same thing over and over and over and over and over again and the more detailed your character designs are the more difficult it's going to be to draw them over and over and over and over and over again on every single page I always hear artists complain when drawing fan art of say Genji impact characters that have crazy detailed outfits that take a ton of time to draw correctly but consider that's just drawing a character once on a single comic page you might have to draw that same character anywhere from two to eight times in a single page and when you're drawing that super ornate and detailed outfit for the 300th time and your arm feels like it's going to fall off you might wish you had stuck with something less detailed so my advice is that when you're designing your Comics characters make them easy to draw or at the very least design them so you won't go crazy drawing them over and over again one design tip I have is that once you think you've settled on a character's design try drawing them a few times without looking at your reference if you constantly forget parts of your character's design it might be a better idea to just toss that detail out fiddly little details will be hard to remember and it'll slow you down if you have to constantly keep looking at your references don't drive yourself crazy keep your characters easy to draw moving right along to things every web comic Creator should do number three back up your files let me spin you a tail dear viewers imagine you've been working on your comic for a few months maybe even a few years you have hundreds of hours of work every single page you've ever made for your beloved story saved on your one computer but then all of a sudden a rock flies through your window and destroys your computer or your hard drive Goes Up in Flames or your house floods in short circuits your PC or maybe one day your computer just I don't know gives up and refuses to boot up anymore if you only have your comic files saved on a single computer and don't have your files backed up anywhere you'll lose all your work all those hundreds of hours of drawing and painting God in a single instance of bad luck I don't think I need to tell you that that is bad this is why I always recommend backing up your comic pages in multiple locations in addition to having my comic pages saved on my computer I also have them all backed up on multiple external hard drives as well as an online file saving service the more places you can backup your files the less likely it is that you'll lose all your work if disaster strikes a college professor once told us the story of a student who had the files for a senior film backed up on his home computer the school's Network and an external hard drive in one day the school network crashed he dropped and broke his external hard drive and his house was robbed and his home computer was stolen in one day he lost a whole year of work it happened to him don't let it happen to you back up your files now this next tip is one that has actively started fights in my comment sections before and has made many many people very mad at me in the past it's a bit of a hard pill to swallow but it needs to be said so I'm gonna say it things every web comic Creator should do draw background you need to draw background I don't know how else to say it if you want to make a comic you need to learn how to draw background I know a lot of people don't like to draw backgrounds I don't like to draw backgrounds either but you can't just avoid it because you don't like to draw them you need to draw backgrounds please draw backgrounds backgrounds are a super important part of making Comics depending on the story you're telling your backgrounds can be just as important as your characters a comic that has amazing character art can still be held back severely if the artist doesn't take the time to draw nice environments for their characters to exist in however that doesn't mean you have to draw a super detailed backgrounds in every single panel and I'd even argue that you shouldn't in most cases I recommend at least one well-drawn background per comic page to keep your characters grounded in their environment this is especially important to do when you're starting a new scene zoom out and show us the environment the characters are in this type of panel is called an establishing shot because it helps establish the location that the characters will be in for the duration of the scene however once you've established the scene you can Breeze through on minimal details for the rest of the page here's a little example comic I made for my how to web comic book that illustrates this the first panel is pretty detailed and shows where all the characters are but the rest of the panels have either really simple backgrounds or even none at all another thing to consider is that depending on the type of background you're drawing you can and should reuse background art to save time when I was illustrating this scene in my webcomic cast off read cast off hyphencomic.com by the way cough link is in the description uh I drew the foresty backgrounds really well the first few times and then copy pasted a lot of the details over and over and over again and just filled in any holes as needed and you can do this too I'll cover some more ways on how to make drawing backgrounds easier a little later in the video but for now let's move on to the next tip things every webcomic Creator should do number five show feat no not like that you weirdos piggybacking off the previous tip in conjunction with drawing backgrounds it's also important to show your characters in relation to those backgrounds we all love drawing close-ups of our characters faces but it's important to zoom out every now and then and give your audience an idea of the character's surroundings we want to show your environments as well as your characters where are they standing who are what is around them how are they interacting with the space around them and how can you tell the story with the backgrounds and the characters the show feat joke means that every now and again you should zoom out enough that we see your character's whole body I recommend trying to fit in a full body shot of your characters at least once every two to three pages or so if you stay Zoomed In Too Close for too long your readers can lose track of where your characters are in the scene and you run the risk of your shots being too similar and your page is feeling a little claustrophobic don't be afraid to zoom out and mix up your shots a little bit drawing backgrounds can build character literally and figuratively and speaking of making interesting shots and panels things every webcomic artist should do number six study screen design so some of you who have watched my previous videos might know that I went to art school I have a BFA in animation with a minor in storyboarding and when I was going through the storyboarding classes for my minor I learned a lot about screen design the art of directing your audience's attention for storytelling purposes in films and TV this is about directing your shock composition camera angles and the way you cut between them to get your story and point across without confusing your viewers it's one of those things I'll nerd about for hours if given the opportunity and I actually have a lot of info about how it applies to comics in my how to web comic book Believe It or Not screen design is also extremely useful for Comic artists if you think about it comics and storyboards for movies are pretty similar mediums the main difference being that in film and TV your panels are all the same size the size of your screen but in comics your panel size changes depending on the layout of the page you're drawing while the two mediums aren't exactly the same there's a lot of principles that we as comic artists can learn from screen design and apply to our Comics to make the storytelling stronger I could make a whole entire other video on this topic and if enough people ask me to I might but I'll keep it simple to just one tip for this video a common mistake I see in comics is artists breaking the 180 degree rule the 180 degree rule is something that a lot of people probably realize exists but maybe don't know how to identify it until it's pointed out to them the idea is that when you're setting up a scene you should draw a line across it and your camera should never cross that line I'll put some graphics on the screen to explain imagine two characters are facing each other and talking now imagine there's a line that connects them this is your 180 degree line when you're planning your shots or in our case panels your camera should stay on one side of this line using this rule means that character a will always be on the left side of the screen and character B will always be on the right no matter where the camera is in the scene this helps a viewer understand what they're looking at more easily even if the camera angles change between shots or panels breaking the 180 degree rule is when the camera passes over the 180 degree line suddenly character a is on the right and character B is on the left this change can confuse your audience and disorient them causing them to question the layout of the scene where characters are standing which way they're facing Etc the 180 degree rule also applies to things like movement if your characters are running to the right in one panel but running to the left in the next your readers might get confused about which way they're meant to be running it seems minor but misuse of the 180 degree rule can cause a lot of clarity issues if you're not careful and it's especially tricky because from my experience at least this isn't something taught in a lot of comics education it's one of the first things you learn when studying storyboarding or film but a lot of comic books don't seem to know what it is there's tons of stuff comic artists can learn from screen design so I highly encourage you to do some further digging if this is something that interests you it's a really fascinating aspect of visual storytelling and it's a lot of fun to dig into okay now that I've had my nerdy screen design moment time for a swerve to a new topic is every webcomic Creator should do number seven work efficiently if you've seen any of my art related shorts or tick tocks or whatever you know that I love me some art shortcuts Comics are really time consuming and if you're doing a webcomic on top of school or a job finding time to work on your passion project can be really tricky luckily there's lots of ways to help speed up the tedious parts of the process of making comics and save yourself time in the long run Comics are already a huge time sink so if you can shave a little bit of time off of your comic work it'll make your life a lot easier in the long run as you get more comfortable with comics and your medium of choice you'll naturally get faster and find the process easier but here are some tips that'll help you save even more time number one learn and use keyboard shortcuts if you work digitally keyboard shortcuts will save you hours of precious time pressing a button is a lot faster than digging through menus after all your art program of choice should have some set up already but if you don't like the arrangement you can always customize them and even make your own number two is learn how to use Auto Actions if there's a step of your drawing process that involves several steps and you do it frequently I recommend seeing if your program lets you program actions actions are a bit like computer scripts once you've set them up you can repeat that entire process with just a single button press here's an example of how I use them since I post cast off pages on multiple platforms all with different size requirements I have an action setup that will export a page in every size I need and save them in their respective folders with one button press it saves me about 10 minutes of tedious exporting every time I finish a page and I love how efficient it makes my workflow I also use actions to make the work in progress collages I post alongside every page on my patreon patreon.comcast off by the way I can just press one button and it formats them for me saving me several minutes of tedious repetitive work number three make some custom brushes in digital art software you can create brushes to do almost anything and saves you a lot of time in the process custom brushes are like stamps and they can allow you to draw repetitive shapes extremely quickly each software has different features and limitations for their custom brush flow so I highly recommend researching experimenting with yours foliage brushes are fairly common as well as brushes for adding things like effects and textures I've made brushes to draw bubbles for underwater scenes books and crowded Library scenes like little strands and like flags and jewelry and things like that I recommend trying to make your own or browsing the web to see what you can find available for download if used well they can save you a ton of time number four is utilize 3D models 3D models can be your best friends when it comes to getting reference for your Comics whether it's moving a humanoid mannequin around to get the perfect pose reference designing a room interior to keep details consistent between panels or modeling an entire city block to quickly Block in complicated perspective like I have definitely done in the past I highly recommend using 3D models to your advantage clip Studio paint my comic making software of choice has a collection of 3D assets you can use to reference in your art programs like SketchUp or room Sketcher are good for building sets with existing assets and some modeling programs like blender are free if you want to make your own models for props buildings and more in the current chapter of cast off I've been making 3D models in blender for all the different sets in the abandoned school to help me keep details consistent and draw some more complicated angles for more interesting panels there are a lot of free Guides Online if you want to learn how to use these tools personally I like to use the models as reference and either sketch over them or Trace directly on top of them but some software like subsudio paint will allow you to directly convert 3D models into line art drastically simplifying the process it depends on what kind of software you have available and what type of style you're going for definitely play around do some research and see what you can do all right and moving along to things every webcomic Creator should do number eight build your own website if you've spent any time in the webcomic space at all you've almost certainly heard of one or more popular webcomic hosting platforms Tapas comic Fury and webtoon are the three I know off the top of my head but there's definitely others floating around on the internet with more springing up all the time and while I know these platforms and use them for my webcomic something that's become a little worrisome in the past few years is how many new comic creators are relying solely on these platforms for publishing their Comics most webcomics throughout the last few decades have typically been hosted on their own websites hosted by their creators while platforms like webtoon are great for attracting eyes to your work I highly highly suggest having your Comics Primary Home be on a website of your own creation why control firstly making your own comic website allows you full control over the look of the site and the content that's posted there most webcomic platforms aren't as customizable as the site you built yourself and you'll have to bend to their rules regarding page size and other factors plus webcomic platforms typically don't have good ways to manage side content things like character pages concept art gallery social media links Etc plus if you're like me and make lots of bonus comics and little things like character playlists and whatever you can make a page for them on your own site to show them off fairly easily on a webcomic platform however you can typically only post comic pages and maybe make posts on your profile page it's really limiting and can really stifle your creativity secondly say you only post your comic on the hypothetical webcomic hosting platform coolcomics.net you have a huge audience of thousands of readers that love your comic and everything is going great for you but one day coolcomix.net shuts down and suddenly all the work you put into growing your audience there just it's gone your audience scatters to the wind and you're left with nothing completely abandoned by the platform you trusted this is not a hypothetical this can Will and has happened multiple times over I've been doing webcomics for over a decade and I've seen my fair share of platforms that I used to use every single day just disappear overnight ask any web comic veteran what happened to smack Jeeves and watch their face fall it's a whole thing the problem with relying on external comic platforms is that you have no control over them sometimes a website might make changes you don't like or disappear entirely rest in peace smack Jeeves this is why having your own comic site is good if you're in charge you don't have to worry about sudden changes out of your control you can also do what I do have a main website for your comic but also post pages on platforms like webtoon and Tapas to get some additional eyes on your work that way you can take advantage of the benefits a platform provides without being completely reliant on them now the downside to making a custom site for your comic is that it will ultimately cost money you'll have to pay for a domain name as well as a hosting service to store your files on so if you're just getting started and are mostly doing Comics is a fun little side hobby maybe you decide you don't need to have your own website but if you intend on taking your comic seriously I always recommend having your own sight to fall back on be in charge of your own site and don't leave your Comics fate in the hands of a platform you don't control next up some important advice things every webcomic artist should do number nine take care of your body you know what sucks carpal tunnel carpal tunnel sucks repetitive stress injuries also suck and back pain oh man back pain sucks you know what sucks even more trying to make comic while dealing with the consequences of that pain being hunched over a drawing desk or an art tablet drawing for hours and hours without taking a break and other common activities for artists can all result in some negative effects on your corporeal meat suit I know several people from my art school days who work themselves too hard and Drew for so long without stopping that they're now physically incapable of drawing they were going to school to make comics and now they physically can't because they didn't take care of themselves and hurt themselves to the point where they can no longer draw it sucks and it's such a huge problem that in one of the comics classes I took in college our professor spent a chunk of the first day of class showing us gory photos from carpal tunnel surgery to scare us into taking care of our hands carpal tunnel sucks injuring yourself in any way because of your art sucks don't let it happen to you so how do we avoid this remembering to take breaks and stretch is a good place to start every hour or so you should be getting up walking around and doing some wrist and arm stretches to keep your muscles limber I'm not like a fitness buff or a physical therapist or anything but these are some of the stretches that I like to do go ahead and pause if you'd like to read another tip I learned from art school that's been majorly helpful for not just my wrist Health but for the quality of my art in general is learning how to draw from the shoulder not from your wrist it sounds a bit odd at first but it's actually pretty effective a lot of times when drawing you probably plant your wrist on your drawing surface and rely on the movement of your hand and wrist to do all the movement when you draw these kinds of repetitive small movements can be a big contributing factor for wrist injuries like carpal tunnel instead of making your wrist and hands do all the work try using your whole arm when drawing Instead try to draw from the shoulder focusing on using your full arm to draw each line it's a little weird to get used to at first but once you get used to it it makes drawing a lot easier keeps your art hand loose and relaxed and with a little practice it'll make it so that you're able to draw for longer periods without hurting yourself this is how I've been doing it for years and it's helped keep my wrist healthy so I can continue you working on Comics without pain my last tip for this is to just listen to your body if your wrist hurts stop drawing and let it take a rest if your back hurts take some time to lay down and rest your spine forcing yourself to work past the point of pain will only make things worse so please take care of yourself and lastly it's time for our final tip of the video things every webcomic artist should do number 10 make the comic you want to make I discussed this a bit in my last webcomics tip video but I still think it's important webcomics are hard they're a big commitment and making them takes a lot of work if you're going to spend hundreds of hours on your comic Probably with little to no pay you should be making something that you love rather than making choices based on what's popular or what you think will be the most marketable or accessible to an audience I recommend writing the type of comic that you'd love to read if you write something that you're passionate about other people will be into it too be your Comics biggest fan don't be afraid of tropes be self-indulgent put all your favorite things in your comic I mean my comic is extremely self-indulgent castoff's got all my favorite tropes and character types in it carefully curated for maximum Creator enjoyment it's easier to motivate yourself if you genuinely love what you're working on do you love World building design the most interesting setting you can think of and play around with how you'll show it off in the comic drawing backgrounds is a good place to start sorry I'm sorry draw backgrounds please draw backgrounds uh anyway um what happens in this world how do the characters and story fit into it do you love drawing your characters think of interesting situations to put them in and different ways to challenge them and see where it takes you draw them in the style you love drawing in if you hate coloring you don't have to make a Color comic there's tons of beautiful black and white Comics out there most manga is done in black and white I mean come on if you hate reading comics in a vertical scroll style yours doesn't have to be that choose an art method that you love doing and a style you love to draw but also try to stick to one that's simple enough that it doesn't wear you out you should do your best to enjoy the process of making Comics as well as the finished product a note on this topic as well a weird side effect of me starting to make my webcomic tips and tricks videos is that I've started getting a lot of comments that are phrased like they're asking for my permission to make their comic a certain way I get a lot of comments like is it okay to make a comic like this should I make a comic this way am I allowed to do this in my comic and listen I know I like to come on here and talk your ears off about making web comics but I am not the Arbiter of all Comics I am just a simple person who is spouting my opinions based on my lived experience if you want to make your comic a certain way then just do it seriously just do it you don't have to ask for approval from me or anybody else the joy of webcomics is that you make them for yourself if you're doing this for fun as a hobby you aren't beholden to the whims of a publisher you're the pilot of this ship you're the owner of your destiny if you have a vision for your comic what's stopping you from making it a reality go out there and make the comic that you want to make follow your bliss and all that just go make something cool alright all right cool all right and that's gonna do it for this video once again if you enjoyed this and want more advice about making webcomics you can check out my other web comic related videos in my art tutorials playlist and also check out my book how to webcomic links for all that will be down in the description the art in the background of this video is some Hollow Stars en fan art I finished recently they'll be up in my shop as stickers and keychains later this week so go check that out if you're interested lastly hey if you like webcomics maybe you'd like to check out the one that I make I make a fantasy Adventure web comic called cast off that has a backlog of almost 700 Pages available to read right now for free at castoff hyphencomic.com link is down in the description all right that's all for today's video I hope you enjoyed it now get out there and go make some heckin web comics bye

Channel: TheStarfishface

Views: 34,821

Keywords: thestarfishface, starfishface, vtuber, giftuber, pngtuber, comic, webcomic, castoff, webtoon, artist, art, top 10, tips, advice, tutorial, blender, 3d model, clip studio paint, csp, tapas, tapas.io, holostars, holostars en, tempus, magni dezmond, vesper noir

Id: H-NWzXoKyBY

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Mon May 29 2023