The most important thing when doing your comic is to maintain your enthusiasm- THIS is what helps you keep working, not feedback, not praise, not fans, but your own internal passion. Feedback is great, but you can become addicted to it and when it's not there or there's not …
Paris Street; Rainy Day, Gustave Caillebotte, The Art Institute of Chicago
In less than twenty-four hours I am going to board a plane and end up in the city of my childhood. I am returning to the Windy City because it is Spring Break and because I yearn to …
There have been posts before (I think) about how to go about creating a world, especially when it comes to fantasy settings. You’re supposed, if you want to do it right, to build everything that makes up the world in general: …
We've all been there: all of the sudden, the trajectory of your own life seems to thwart you from your ambitions! Maybe it's obligations to schoolwork or your day job; maybe your partner or family; maybe you wind up homeless or awkwardly crashing on a series of couches and shuffling …
I've never consciously designed characters this way, but I recently remembered hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated movie or show. I don't remember which one. Characters derived from basic shapes can give a …
Ying and Yan are twin brothers who are joined at the hip…and the shoulder, and everything in between.
It's a simple, perfect premise for standalone jokes playing off the brothers' conjoined status, or the difference in their personalities, or snarky commentary on life in general. …
Today we interview Hannagrid Wright aka 5thezombie! She's the creator of the great Sci-Fi webcomic To The Galaxy And BACK! -featured by Kawaii last year. To the Galaxy and back features Kat and Zoey, two girls that have been drawn together by fate, across the universe, to have all …
There are some comics where shadows don’t really exist- like Tintin where nothing casts a shadow at all. In other comics, shadows play a huge part, like Sin City. And yet in others they are just part of the natural environment of the comic and nothing more.
Aight! It's that time again, ain't it? Now we been talking a lot about rules and limitations and discipline and approaches to making your comics and making them better. This week we're gonna step away from all that for a spell and talk about how not making your comics can …
They say that how hands are drawn is a good indicator of the technical expertise of the artist. Makes sense!
Hands are definitely the most varied parts of the body, capable of the most diverse configurations. Add in the always-challenging angles and forshortening and you have a very difficult hill …
High school student, Hitomi ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time of night when she witnesses a young girl wearing her school's uniform get attacked. Strange events begin happening around town including an unexpected visit to her room by Hayate, a young man who was seen the …
For this Quackcast we decided to chat about quirks- the things that stand out about a character, help you remember them, get interested in them, traits that pick them out as individuals and can ALSO be used to point at deeper character traits! These are so useful in so …
Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith beheading Holofernes, 1611-12, oil on canvas, (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples)
There are several different ways to read a painting. The perspective of the reader adds a new insight to the history behind the art. For the purpose of this article, I have selected Judith beheading …
So last time I talked about the little extras that can go into dialogue and how that dialogue can be presented on the page of your comic, so I was thinking today might be good to continue in that general trajectory and talk about little extras in your character design. …