Making Comic Pages

Making Comic Pages

It’s been a bit since the last chapter of Red Muscle came out and i felt like making a post about how i go about making the comic from beginning to final page since i don’t know, maybe it will be helpful to some to just see how other people do it? I also love to say too much about the things I draw, so this will be fun for at least me!

Since this story is my first exploration into making comics that are over a few pages long, I had a lot of trouble figuring out how to get the mess of ideas in my brain into tangible story beats that I was really enthusiastic about. I have a hard time feeling confident about my visual thought process for ways of telling a story so I started my chapters as outlines in pure text. It might not work for everyone, but I’ve found that I can most easily get myself in the headspace of a story if I can just write it down, almost conversationally. This helped me push past the initial fear of trying to tackle drawing things that my brain kept telling me are above my skill level (which can keep a lot of people from starting their dream projects). I’ll write all the general story beats and keep dialogue to a minimum and just focus on the events. I treat is as if it was an outline for a short cartoon, and try to keep the story moving pretty fast.

After I feel I’ve got a good chapter going and I’ve written enough that I can start thinking visually, I’ll start doing really tiny layouts in my sketchbook. This step is the most loose and scattered part of the process, and I think where I purposefully limit myself to just get it done. I’ll try to get general placing and sizing of panels down to keep a good amount of story happening on each page and something interesting to go at the bottom to take the reader to the next page. I tell myself to keep this comic’s layouts really basic shapes, no diagonal panels or fancy tricks, and even though it might not be the BEST looking pages, the basics always work and teach you just how versatile their uses are (and where you feel like breaking from that will ADD to the story).

I’ll start to write down really rough speech for the characters here, which I hadn’t always done but I take so long drawing out layouts that I’d forget what I wanted the characters to say (story beats will get written down here too). I do a lot of rethinking the pages or specific compositions as I draw these, so panel replacements/inserts are scattered around the page. A lot of times I have trouble thinking up how I want to place the characters, so I’ll end up with sketchbook pages with multiple tests on posing/acting to teach myself something that will work well enough and I’ll move on.

After I get the layouts done, I move to photoshop and start drawing thumbnails with more cleaned up and clear versions of the pages. I’ll spend more time making sure the poses I put in the panels are something I’m more satisfied with. Some people might think of skipping either this step or the previous step and that might work better for them, but i’ve gotten into the habit of doing these 2 passes of pages. It probably stems from my weird habit of overworking the HELL out of these thumbs, I draw way too much detail on them!!! If you’re like me, adding the previous step to let yourself draw loose and messy and decide your panels there will make the neurotic clean thumbs feel like less of a chore to draw up.

When the thumbs are done, I just resize them and start final inks. This part of the process is the funnest!!! all of the hardest work is done (except maybe some BG design because i wait until the last minute) and I just get to draw pretty pictures. I’ll also type up the final version of the text because if I try to write the text too early, I’ll always hate it! something about deciding what the characters say when the final poses/expressions are drawn helps me work through it better (but I know dialogue is one of my weak points!).

From here, I just color all of the characters on one layer and the BG elements on another layer underneath. Before i start coloring though, I’ll try to decide on a color set or a feel that I want to execute for the chapter and go looking through my references to get some color ideas. This part is something I really enjoy, but I know I’ve been locking myself into pretty muted warm colors a lot, so it’s something I try to challenge myself with whenever I color more things.

After the colors are in place, I’ll just draw over the text because I like the look of handwritten text, and I’ll make the speech bubbles.

Then I just repeat these last steps for the rest of the pages!!! Even though i love the last steps a lot, they take up so much time, so I keep my colors flat and keep the shading for limited situations that need them.

I’m still honing in on improving the parts of my process that need work, but I’ve completed about 36 pages just for this story alone! Hopefully seeing all of the steps will help someone reading this feel like they can approach their own stories a little more prepared. I just rewrote some chapters of Red Muscle recently to be a stronger story after completing 2 chapters and seeing what works and what needs to be improved, and just getting work done is the best way to see and tackle the things you need to work on to be a better creator!!

Good luck to you all on your comics that you’re working on, and thanks for reading!

ayo i found 2 pages with head angles of humans and animals, could be useful to anyone reading this

hoomans

animals

Any tips on drawing Military camos?

Hello Anon!

It's been a long time since I made a drawing tutorial/tips. This one actually caught my eye since I did have a hard time on this, but after a few months of research, I finally got the hang of it!

Here's my way/tips on military camos!

Know that there are LOTS and LOTS of camo patterns, each one is for different types of terrains, and each country's military uses different types of camo patterns as well.

So, decide where your character come from. Then, look up on Google the camo patterns that the military uses, or you can use these websites :

Camopedia, a website that is dedicated to documenting the camouflage design, development, and history.

Wikipedia List of Military Clothing Camouflage Patterns according to the countries.

2. Once you found the name of the pattern, search it up on google for tracing and reference. You can even find the a free vector on google as well. If you can, find a large image and repeatable image so that you can make it look seamless.

3. Trace it/ just save the image. Yes it's fine. camo patterns doesn't really belong to anyone, and you can use it freely, especially for art. I usually make vector image and saves it as an asset so I can just use the image every time I'm drawing a military character.

How I Apply Camo Pattern Image to My Characters!

I'm going to draw Captain Eleanor "Ladybug" Graham, my Call of Duty OC. She's an American combat medic, which mainly uses Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP). Here's how I apply the camos :

Draw the character and add base color with the clothes on different layer.

Color the character on a different layer. Alpha Lock it.

Open the camo pattern image, put it above the base color layer, then clip it down! IMPORTANT : the size of the camo pattern is actually pretty big on the uniform. Look up references to see how the camo pattern scales to the clothes. Don't make it look too small.

Don't be afraid to copy paste it over and over and place it carefully to make it seamless.

4. To shade the clothes, add another layer above, clip it, then change the effect to multiply. Then, shade away!

Tadahh~! Now you have a badass soldier as your character! (👉ﾟヮﾟ)👉

Hope this tip helps! (★‿★)

20 ways to draw a more consistent character

TAKEN FROM HERE: https://sites.google.com/site/houseotwisted/junk/20drawings

1. Draw the most common appearance for your character. This is your comfort zone. (Color)

2. Draw your character from the front, the side, and the back. This is something called a ‘turn sheet’. It’s a little boring to do, but will be very helpful to you in the future to have on hand.

3. Draw your character from the front, the side, and the back, but have them in nothing but their undies at most. This is to show off how your character is built. Drawing nothing but a straight pant-leg with no structure under it is no way to learn! (Skip this if your character doesn’t wear clothes)

4. Draw your character at three different ages than they currently are. (Must be noticeably different. No ages: 4, 5, and 6, etc.) Color one of them.

5. BANG! Your character just heard a loud noise right behind them. Draw their reaction!

6. Draw a bird’s eye view of your character.

7. Draw your character feeling very happy. Show body language.

8. Draw your character feeling very angry. Ditto.

9. Draw your character feeling very sad. You know the drill.

10. Draw your character with a different body type than they usually have. This helps you map distinguishing features onto different ‘templates’.

11. Draw your character if they were the opposite gender.

12. Draw your character as a different species than they normally are.

13. Somebody has just handed your character a live duck. Draw their reaction. Keep them in character.

14. Mary Sue the HELL out of your character. (Due to being asked “What is Mary Sue?” several times, I have included a link to the evil that is Sue: [Click if you dare.]

15. Draw your character lifting something heavy. (no magic allowed!)

16. Draw your character in an opposite role than they appear in your story/continuity.

17. Draw your character doing something they enjoy.

18. Draw your character doing something they do NOT enjoy.

19. Draw your character in a dynamic pose that is not a profile shot (from the side).

20. Draw the most common appearance for your character. Color it. (Pssst! See if it improved from the first one you drew. I bet it did!)

PSA: Just a friendly reminder that whenever you start a creative project, you will invariably hit a phase where the Thing™️ appears horrendous and you start asking existential questions. But if you keep working, it invariably passes and starts to resemble something less like the devil’s vomit. Doesn’t matter if it’s art, writing, or what–this happens repeatedly. Carry on.

disclaimer: I am east asian. if anyone who is not white sees anything wrong with my phrasing, inaccuracies, or insensitivity, or something I missed, please feel free to add on. I'm just one person with one perspective; none of what I say should be taken as The Singular way to draw an Asian character. if you havent done so already, please take the effort to expand your view of Asian culture outside this one tutorial.

if a white person reblogs this and adds something stupid I'm going to bite and kick you like a wild animal