Comic-making shortcuts

After a long comic-making hiatus, I’ve had several ideas for comics in the last little while. Working on the first one, though, I’ve realized that unless I get a heck of a lot faster at drawing it's unlikely that all of my ideas will ever come to fruition. For amateur comic artists, one of the toughest parts of webcomicing can be keeping a regular update schedule. With less time to spend perfecting their art, very few will become as efficient as the professional artists who churn out manga and superhero comics. Sometimes you just have to find ways to make your work faster.

Simple art featuring characters who can be drawn in a few lines can be a shortcut in and of itself, but not all comic stories are suited to that. Backgrounds are often the bane of the comic artists' existence, and so I used to use a recycled background pretty consistently in Izzy Wanders (see above!). Some artists may even recycle entire panels. I don't have a big issue with that practice, but I do always have an extra little bit of respect for artists who take the time to re-draw a scene even when it's identical to a previous panel. And of course there are the little things you can do to save time, like keeping a colour palette handy in photoshop.

What shortcuts do you use, or have you used to make your work more efficient? Are there any shortcuts that you consider "cheating," or that you think compromise the artist's work?


DRUNK DUCK AWARDS

First of all, the awards still need judges! Now is the time to sign up if you haven't already.

Second, JustNoPoint has taken over the judging portion of the awards from Niccea and has altered the timeline a bit. Here's how everything will be going forward:

Judging ~ August 16 - September 25

Emergency Wrap Up ~ September 26 - October 11

The Ceremony Begins ~ October 12

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Have a comic milestone, a community project or some comic-related news that you'd like to see here? Do you have original art for our newspost image database? Send it to me via PQ or at hippievannews(at)gmail.com, or leave a comment below!
For more info on News, please check out this DD Help Site article: https://sites.google.com/site/theduckhelp/getting-started/news-and-getting-your-news-in-it