Hey guys, I’m getting a lot of asks about the same things, mostly questions about how to make comics, how to “break into comics” (haha, oh dear), working with publishers, that kind of thing. I’ve done some blogging on many of the subjects, so instead of repeatedly replying in private with links to those posts, I’m going to do a master post thingie with links to all my blogging about how I work. Hopefully some of you will find some helpful nuggets in there! I remember when I first started trying to transition into making comics for a living, and there wasn’t much information about that online. I spent a lot of time wailing about it on a locked livejournal. XD But anyway, I hope my blogs help a wee bit.
Disclaimer: these blog posts are all based on my own personal experiences as a cartoonist, and the advice therein might not work for everyone. The most awesome thing about comics is that there is no one way to make them, nor is there one direct route into becoming a full-time cartoonist. The more pro cartoonists I meet, the more it drives home how different our methods and origin stories are.
Anyway, here you are! (With all of these, scroll past the placeholder image at the top of the post.)
Okay, I think that’s it! Whew! The remainder of the Friends With Boys blogging archive is here. It has some other bloggings that aren’t advice-related (mostly ramblings about comics I like), if you’re interested. If you have any other comic-related subjects you’d like me to blog about, feel free to drop a suggestion in the ask box.
I hope this was helpful. Share and enjoy!
Updated 08/12/15
I added some of the more recent blogging I’ve done on making comics to my Making Comics Master Link List (1A, 14, & 15), and tossed a couple of dead links. If there is a comic making related question you’d like to see me write about, drop a question in my ask box.
Drawing perspective is considered one of the hardest things in art, except the mistakes usually done are pretty much always the same and can be avoided with a little care.
1. Lines not reaching the vanishing point
Well this is pretty simple to avoid but it’s the most common mistake. It’s probably due to either carelessness or really not having understood the basic of perspective. I encourage you to go back and find some basic tutorial for this.
Anyway, be ALWAYS careful about where to ‘send’ your lines, they NEED to go towards the correct vanishing point or it will just look awkward. Double check if necessary.
And always, ALWAYS use a ruler.
If your style requires lines that are a bit less geometrical (as mine do, I have a style of inking that’s sketchy so ‘perfect’ lines drawn with a ruler usually don’t fit well in the picture) use a ruler anyway for the pencils and then ink later by freehand. At least you’ll have correct guidelines underneath.
For traditional drawing be sure you have a ruler and be sure to use it for each one of your lines.
Modern drawing software will help you a lot with this if you draw directly on computer: painting software such as Clip Studio Paint or Manga Studio 4EX or 5 have perspective tools that will automatically snap your lines towards the vanishing point.
it’s quite a long tutorial, you’ll find the rest under the Read More or you can download the pdf file here
I promised I’d give some tips and once again I got carried away. Please enjoy this hastily put together tutorial. I REALLY hope I make sense here and it is somewhat useful.
A few peeps were wondering how I drew attacks in my nuzlocke comic, so I made a quick/kinda sloppy tutorial about it! Tbh it’s just me spamming luminosity and overlay layers haha ;yyy Hope this somewhat helps!
I'm just curious, how did you come most of those location on your world map? The style reminds me of Super mario world or something I think its quite lovely! Any tips for a beginner or someone taking drawing fantasy maps up again?
AW THANKS. I didn’t think someone would ask me this. Well, I’m a beginner myself (that’s actually the first “serious” map I’ve ever drawn) but I guess I can share with you the experimental method -I- followed to draw my own fantasy map:
1) Find a theme. (adjective(s) + noun). This may sound obvious, but whether it’s a small islet or an entire continent, you should always start by knowing what kind of setting it is. The adjectives should state what makes your land special or relevant. They are what give it a “personality”, aka what makes your audience actually care about your map and not consider it another cookie-cut regular fantasy map. You should know the way someone feels when they visit your fantasy land. You should know what happens there. You should know what makes it important. Why would you bother making a map of it if it wasn’t?
-Amon-Het’s premise was very straightforward.
2) Make a list of needs. Why are you planning to draw a fantasy map in the first place? It’s because you want somethingspecific to happen and not a single already-existing map satisfies your needs entirely. You have a scary, burning desire of places that you can control without anyone else getting in your way. Oh no, YOU WANT TO BE GOD. That’s why it is important to adjust your map to your own needs and not vice versa (”Oh, my map is finished but now that I think about it, I didn’t include a single dungeon for X to fight Y. AH WELL, I’ll just have them fight in an undetermined location” or worse “AH WELL, they’ll fight on top of *stares at map* Honeybee Hill. Yes. This will work.”) BEFORE drawing a single line, I wrote a list of sentences consisting in “I need” + important plot points.
-I needed an arid region where I could develop Thauma’s story without the American Western theme of Appleloosa and the so.
3) Make a list of locations. The fun part starts here, YAY. Now that you know what theme you should stick to and what will happen in your fantasy setting, it should be way easier to come up with the mini locations that form your map. Just make a list of them, including their names and their general looks. It’s some sort of brainstorm, so they don’t have to be in order.
NAMES: Uh well, actually I have no tips for these. Just try to make them somewhat uniform and loyal to your general theme. (Having Candy Castle and Sector WiawehaffeX 35 in the map of the Land of Orrinshire is a bit unpleasant, unless that’s the point.) A nerdier more advanced technique is making up a fantasy language and naming your locations in it . Fantasy place name generators can help you as well.
LOOKS: Mine come from balancing them between what I call the natural aspect and the artificial (architectural) aspect.
-Natural dominant: Forests, mountains, deserts, steppes, lakes, swamps, etc. These locations are interesting because of the way nature happens in them. Wikipedia will // save your life here. Don’t just consider inanimate elements and flora when thinking about natural dominant locations; planning fauna can enrich your locations IMMENSELY (huge migrations, exotic mating rituals, dangerous behaviors that make a place uninhabitable, highly valued animal products, etc.)
-Artificial dominant: Floating cities, pirate towns, isolated villages, creepy tombs, toxic factories, huge castles, etc. These locations are interesting because of the way sentient beings designed them and react to them. Wikipedia will // save your life // here as well.
Why did I say balancing them? Because your locations may as well be natural dominant + architectural recessive (forgotten ruins, forest shrines, stone circles, abandoned monuments in the middle of nowhere, etc.) or natural recessive + architectural dominant (stone-cut cities, tree cities, palaces in the bottom of the sea, etc.)
ALWAYS consider having what I just decided to call “locations with future development potential” in your map. They’re places with vague names and looks that will save your life when your fantasy setting has already been drawn and you want to add a super ultra amazing location idea you happened to have later on. ex. “dark cave” “forest” “village”
The way you’ll deal with this stage is determined by the quality of the research you do. If your brain is dry already, fantasy setting generators can help A LOT.
*NOTE* You don’t need to draw your mini-locations thoroughly yet, but you should have a general idea of how they’ll look. Knowing things like flora, architectural styles, materials, colors, etc. will help you greatly when you actually start drawing your map.
4)Sketch a general conceptual map. Just that. Grab your mini locations and smash them mercilessly against a blank canvas.
Play with various ways of distributing them and keep the general form you consider the richest and most interesting. That should be determined by the kind of possible interactions between locations -and thus how cool your hero’s journey will be-. How does one travel from X place to Y place? How do merchants travel through your land? Where can one restock their adventure supplies? Are there things that keep visitors from going to X city? Enemy settlements? Blockades? Would placing X city next to Y city instead of on the other side of the river affect their political views of each other? Would that make them fight for resources? If X city was next to Z lake, would they need a port? Now what if it was in the middle of Z lake? Where would it be convenient to add a railroad? Where should you put a path? What kind of natural disasters happen in your land? Here you’ll discover possible historical events and architectural/engineering solutions that you may hadn’t even thought about. As with characters, if your locations don’t react to each other, your audience won’t react to your entire fantasy setting either.
To make your map designing easier and less confusing, you may want to consider marking the five points of the following crappy example when distributing your locations: inhabited settlements, natural barriers, water bodies, paths and points of interest (you can add or remove points according to your own needs, I promise that won’t break my heart.)
*NOTE* Considering latitude and sun(s) path(s) when designing your map will make it way more accurate. (I’m not asking you to give me scientific numbers. I just want you to know things like you won’t find a scorching desert in the North Pole or a place with a never-ending night in the equator.)
-YES. Having multiple suns and moons is allowed, and it makes your fantasy setting 10000000 times cooler. (Just think about all those weird day-night cycles and the way they would affect your poor planet and its helpless inhabitants.) Why not?
*NOTE* As you may have noticed, maybe not all of your mini-locations will make the cut. Try to keep the most valuable ones and consider that you’re not “leaving out” the discarded ones entirely. You’re just saving them for your future maps.
5) START DRAWING! I won’t describe in this post my own way of actually drawing an already planned fantasy map, but I can later on. C:
AND THERE YOU HAVE A SOMEWHAT FUNCTIONAL FANTASY MAP.
Every artist who sees this post should do the following:
- Watch the video.
- Follow the instructions
- Reblog
I can’t stress you enough about how important these exercises are for your drawing hand. You don’t wanna get CTS of Tendonitis and similar stuff that will prevent you from making art or even hold a pencil.
Okay, this guy is my HERO. I just did these exercises as I watched the video, and already my arms and hands feel better. I have a degenerative tendon disease that prevents my muscles, tendons and ligaments from retaining their elasticity, and so anything that maintains the health of my bendy parts is important.
I URGE YOU. Even if you don’t draw, do these several times a day. Even just sitting at a computer can do serious damage. My dad, who was a rugby player, a carpenter, and now a handyman, suffered from severe carpal tunnel syndrome, simply as a result of sitting at the computer at the end of the day to play a little solitaire. Don’t let it happen to you!
((Guys, I will reblog this like, 5 times a day just so you all will see this. This is REALLY helpful, and it’s quick and easy.))
Wow, these are REALLY helpful. And yes, this is not just good but IMPORTANT for more than artists — if you type a lot, play a lot of video games, do anything that requires lots of repetitive movements of your hands, wrists, and arms (gardening, sewing, factory work), these can help. Even if you don’t yet get pain these are a great preventative measure, because the damage builds up over time. Youth is no protection.
And like he says, you should feel a stretch, but don’t push it too far!
Signal boosting. Guys, I just did this and holy cow do I feel incredibly light and limber in my arms. Again, even if you don’t have any sort of disease, do this as a preventative measure.
I have pretty f’d up tendinitis and this felt awesome.
This. If you even care just a little bit, you should do this
I'm SkunkStripe/Rayne and this is my main tumblr page thing where I will basically post everything I draw and occasionally shit about fighting games
Commissions currently available
art tags #SkunkySketches and #SkunkyArt
