Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

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Art tutorial: 5 ways to add some life to your drawings

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Do your comics panels lie flat on the page? Struggle to make your characters more dynamic and your backgrounds more authentic? Here are 5 quick tips to making your comics come alive!

1. Wind

Yes, wind! We often forget the weather when we are making comics, but this is just another case of a little going a long way. A puddle or a snowdrift can give off the same effect and help us determine where and when we are.

wind

2. Foreground

Put something in the foreground of your frame will make it look like there is an actual world around your characters.

foreground

3. Shadows

Same as with foreground, the shade of something that is NOT visible in the frame, will give off the illusion of a bigger environment.
shadow

4. Tilt

If all your lines run parallel with the borders, you run risk of confusing and/or boring your reader. Tilt the image, make it seem more dynamic.

tilt

5. Trash

Put some paper scraps, dead leaves or cigarette butts in your frames to make them seem more lived in. A cracked pavement, a grafitti or some peeled paint gives the same feeling: The world exists outside this one, static image!

trash

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Seeing the images before drawing them

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I got a really good question in an email the other day. A subscriber in Nigeria (Hello, Africa!) asked me about conceptualizing: “How do you see each drawing before you actually put pen to paper?”

My gut response was: Well, it just pops into my head.

I realize that’s not very helpful – although it’s very close to the truth! The whole truth is of course more nuanced.

The reason why these images just pop into my head on a very intuitive level is because I’ve put them there. Not on purpose, not by design. But by watching a whole lotta stuff over the years. Comics, painting, movies, real life – all of the things I’ve seen with my eyes, my brain remembers. All right, maybe not ALL the things I’ve seen. But you get the idea. The more you look at images, the more likely you are able to remember and replicate an image.

But again that’s not the whole truth.

Drawing these images vastly improves your ability to remember and replicate them. The more life drawing, the more copying you do, the more images you solidify in your subconsciousness.

The images that pop into my head probably do so, because I’ve seen them or drawn them before. Not that exact image, but something similar.

A few exercises:

  1. Watch movies. Pause the dvd, draw the image on the screen. As fast as you can. Study the composition, the lighting. Save your sketch for later. Steal from yourself.
  2. Read comics. No, in fact just pick a few comic books off the shelf and flip through them before you start your work. Put some images in your head (but don’t copy them!)
  3. Sketch. A lot. Try out several versions of the same image, different angles. Do thumbnail versions of your pages and be conscious about varying the sizes of the panels, shift between close ups, tilted shots, silhouettes – whatever you can do to shake things up.

The image the Nigerian subscriber mentioned as a reference was this one.:

DC-excerpt

I can see why it looks seducingly easy, like I’m some comics genius. But I probably made half dozen versions of this image before landing on this one. At least in my head. That’s where the images usually come from, as I’m writing the script.

It’s not easy. But it get’s easier. The more images I see, the more images I draw, the more I have to replicate from.

And you know that feeling of having an image inside your head and not being able to get it down on paper? Yeah, I get that too. But I’ve learned to ignore it. The image in my head washes away and is replaced with whatever is on the page, and that’s OK. It’s just one drawing out of hundreds, thousands. I get less attached the more I draw. I feel like that’s the secret to making comics in some weird way. Not caring so much for the individual image but caring about the flow of the story.

Hope the longer answer is more helpful!

Related podcast: Drawing Every Day

ProFile: Jules Rivera

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ProFile-Jules-Rivera Jules Rivera is a Los Angeles-based sequential illustrator and animator.  She has worked in small press publishing and TV animation, and has self-published several graphic novels including Misfortune High and webcomic Valkyrie Squadron.

 What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?
I’ve always been a writer and a storyteller. I’ve also had an interest in animation and visuals.  Eventually, I discovered I could tell stories visually through the comics medium, and I’ve been doing that for the last ten years or so.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?
Always starting with a blank sheet of paper is rough.  Trying to figure out what the right layout is, or what the right camera angle is as you draw is tricky.  The key to overcoming it is to put something down.  Anything.  This is true of script or art.  A first draft’s only job is to exist.  

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?
Never give up.  There are many external and internal forces that would stop a creator from working. Self-doubt, lack of family support, the difficulties of breaking into a saturated entertainment industry. There are many things that will make you want to quit, but don’t.  Ever.  Even if you have to put things on hiatus for a while, never give up on creating the things you love. Creation is the thing that sets us free.

Digital vs. drawing on paper

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digital-vs-paper-drawing

Everything seems to be moving towards going digital – even making comics. But are you ready to make the jump?

While the digital possibilities are vast and very tempting, I still see advantages in the oldschool method of drawing on paper. Here is a list of pros and cons as I see it.

Pros of going digital:

No scanning.

Since you’re drawing your art directly in the computer, there is less hassle scanning and cleaning up your original artwork.

Possibilities

Being able to move and scale ANYTHING, including reference pictures, sketches and word balloons is definetely an upside. With a CINTIQ , you can even draw directly on the pressure sensitive screen (which also turns for maximum line control) and you have everything in one place.

Undo

Am I the only one who sometimes find myself searching for the “undo” button, when I’m drawing on paper? Granted, the so called “lucky accidents” that come from working with a pen or a brush can be a pro as well, but more often than not, you end up with plain old UNlucky accidents – and correcting is a lot easier to do digitally (and with nicer result).

Speed?

It seems for some artists, the possibilities of going digital also offers more speed and momentum to their work. They are simply able to get to a nice result faster. Used efficiently, digital saves you a ton of time.

Cons of going digital:

Speed?

In my experience, any task I take to the computer takes double the time. You can zoom in way too much and nitpick details. You’re working on a device that also has Facebook, Twitter and a gazillion other things running at the same time. I believe “PC” stands for “Procrastination Central”. And the speed of your work depends on the speed of your computer, your software, your file size and all sorts of other fun factors which you have little control over.

Price

You can work digitally with just a computer and a Wacom tablet. But if you really want to go all in, with all the advantages a Cintiq has to offer, get ready to throw almost two thousand dollars on the table. Ouch! You better be sure you can make that money back. Remember though, that equipment you use for your business is usually tax deductable (depending on where you live).

Updates and breakdowns

When has a piece of paper ever asked for an update, or asked for you to plug in the power cord? The reliability on hardware and software is slightly scary (at least for me) because those things can go flaky on you with no warning.

Low mobility

This is a big issue for me. I like being able to sit with a sketchbook or work out of the house for a day. If I had a digital setup, it would most likely be at my studio and too bulky to bring anywhere. However, Wacom has put out a 13.3″ Cintiq  that is really lightweight and portable – But you still need to hook it up to a computer to work on it.

Back up

A piece of Bristol board doesn’t suddenly crash on you and leave you to have to reconstruct hours of work. Unless you spill coffee all over your original art, it will usually outlive any computer. And if you scan it in, you have a digital backup as well, a lot safer than having just one file.

No original artwork!

Having drawn it all on the computer, you have no originals to sell at conventions or exhibit at your local library or whatever. Sure, you can make nice printouts, but that’s just not the same, is it? Note that this con could be a pro, since you don’t need storage space for your original art! You can put it all in your Dropbox or on a portable harddisk.

So, what’s the conclusion?

Given the price, low mobility and given the fact that I don’t have the time for the learning curve that going all digital will require (at least before the result is anywhere near what I can produce with pen and paper), I don’t see myself going digital anyt time soon. And I don’t like having to rely on power and technology to be able to make comics.

Creating comics can easily become more than just a hobby, regardless of your preferred drawing method. To find job opportunities for comic book artists, consider exploring platforms like Jooble.

What do you guys think? Are there any pros or cons I missed? And what do YOU use to make comics? Comment below!

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Art Tutorial: Light and shadow on a face

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bland-faceBland. That’s how I would describe this face. I obvouiusly drew it like that on purpose to make a point. But without really changing the expression of the character, I can easily make it more interesting to look at, by adding some dramatic shadows.

downlit-face1: Downlit

The safest way to apply shadow, is under all the features of the face that extrude – The chin, the nose, the eyebrows (and in this case, the hair).

Effect: If applied lightly, like shown here, not much. But it DOES make the drawing quicker to read, as the main features stand out.

Pitfalls: Shading under eyes and chinbones can make characters look very old/bony.

uplit-face2: Uplit

Oooh, spooky! Who hasn’t held a flashlight under their chin to look like this?

Effect: Dramatic, fearful, scary.

Pitfalls: That shadow on the upper lip could easily look like a moustache. Handle with care.

backlit-face3: Backlit

Another great dramatic shading technique, allowing you to hide facial details = less to draw!

Effect: Makes the character look menacing and/or makes the reader uneasy, because the expression is unreadable.

Pitfalls: Too much black, and you can’t recognize the character. Too little, and it will look like a smear right down the middle of the face.

sidelit-face4: Sidelit

One of the most used ways of shading is the light from one side. It also helps reader navigation, like if you cut between two characters talking – one would be lit from the left, the other from the right.

Effect: I guess you could go Freudian, and imply split personality, but… In reality, it just looks cool.

Pitfalls: Too sharp lines between the light and dark side will make it look like the person put on half a cowl. Put some dark areas on the light side of the face and blend the lines: Problem solved.

double-lit-face5: Double-lit

Almost the same as above, only with a second light source, to make the face seem three-dimensional and add to the atmosphere.

Effect: Makes it look like you are the best artist in the world! Seriously!

Pitfalls: It’s tricky to tackle both light sources at once, so draw the primary shadow first and then apply the secondary light source in highlights after the fact. Here I added a little more dark to widen the distance between the light sources. It’s also a good idea to make one highlight sharp and the lines on the other more fuzzy.

Homework assignment: Print out a bunch of copies of the shadowless, bland face and test your newly achieved skills!

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