My Self-appointed Rules For Drawing Comics:

My self-appointed rules for drawing comics:

No pages with only talking. If all the characters are doing is talk, they should be doing something while having this conversation. If that is not possible, there should be something happening in the background - even if it's just a faceless background character spilling a glass of water and cleaning it up.

The illustrations should be clear enough that even a person who can't read the text would have some kind of a grasp of what's going on, and how the characters feel about it.

Every character who is speaking in this panel should be in this panel, unless it's explicitly funny that they are not.

Each character's design must be distinct enough from each other that they can't be confused with any other one from any angle or distance.

Make the characters' body language clear enough that a reader could tell how they are feeling even if their face isn't visible.

Fit the characters around the dialogue, never the other way around. They should be positioned in order of who speaks first, no matter how strange of an angle that must take. A character whose speech bubble is on the left should be on the left of a character who says something on the right.

In both setting and characters, quality is measured by consistency, distinction and clarity. As long as a reader can tell who the characters are, where they are and what they are doing, it's a good panel. A comic consisting of extremely well-drawn individual panels, but where locations and characters aren't recognisable on sight, or are hard to tell apart from each other, is worse than one drawn with stick figures.

In the end, it mostly boils down to consistency, clarity, motion and emotion. As long as each individual panel meets those standards, it's good enough. Anything above and beyond that is a bonus, not a requirement.

If you ever think your chapters are too long: don’t.

I once read a fanfic that had a chapter totaling 60k words. A chapter.

You’re doing fine.

Billford is so… interesting 👀💛

Every piece of dogshit art makes the world a better place to live. Better to create poorly than not at all.

Being a writer is trying to google things as inconspicuously as possible so you don’t end up on a watch list.

Anyway does anyone know how many pounds of force would be required to break a windshield with someone’s head?

*white knuckle grip on the bathroom sink, through clenched teeth* you write because you love it - because you love it