Adorabledesolation wrote:Every time I draw someone they always look different. The only way anyone can tell which character I meant to draw was to make the whole cast color coded!
I've been practicing and it is a little better then when I started, but the inconsistent artwork frustrates me something fierce.
This. The inconsistency in the characters I draw. That and they sometimes look way more Disney-Saturday-Morning Cartoony than I intend.
Thirded. They're never quite the same.
Or, rather, maybe they're too much the same. Michelle has trouble giving distinguishing characteristics (besides, like, hair), and even if a character's original concept sketch design had some sort of nose/eye/chin/whatever thing going on to separate them from the crowd, they all seem to eventually fizzle down, and the characters end up looking mostly the same.
Also, she's really slow.
A scary thing is when you have your set traits that you give each character, and you get into a "way" of drawing them, but then you go and compare a current drawing to the initial concept drawing and have no idea how you got from A to B. Features that were distinct but somewhat subtle at first become YEYAHHH LOOK AT ME I'M A FEATURRRREE WOOOHOO YOU CAN TELL I'M THIS CHARACTERRR
Edit, to add superfluous example:
Don't kid yourself, friend. I still know how.
"I'd much rather dream about my co-written Meth Beatdown script tonight." -JSConner800000000
VeryCuddlyCornpone wrote:
A scary thing is when you have your set traits that you give each character, and you get into a "way" of drawing them, but then you go and compare a current drawing to the initial concept drawing and have no idea how you got from A to B. Features that were distinct but somewhat subtle at first become YEYAHHH LOOK AT ME I'M A FEATURRRREE WOOOHOO YOU CAN TELL I'M THIS CHARACTERRR
Edit, to add superfluous example:
I don't know if that should really be seen as bad or frustrating, though. Caricature is the nature of cartooning, and what you've described tends just to be the natural evolutionary process of a character as you grow into the look of the strip.
"Just because we're amateurs, doesn't mean our comics have to be amateurish." -McDuffies
I agree with VeryCuddlyCornpone, I look back to 2008 and the characters look completely different. Also, when I'm coloring and the computer crashes and I forgot to save
Which my fault, because I meant to save but I forgot.
Adorabledesolation wrote:I agree with VeryCuddlyCornpone, I look back to 2008 and the characters look completely different. Also, when I'm coloring and the computer crashes and I forgot to save
Which my fault, because I meant to save but I forgot.
Because of years of this, I now automatically hit Ctrl + S after every fill. I don't even notice I'm doing it anymore. It got etched into the lizard part of my brain.
siguyva wrote:
Because of years of this, I now automatically hit Ctrl + S after every fill. I don't even notice I'm doing it anymore. It got etched into the lizard part of my brain.
That is a habit I'm desperately trying to cultivate.
MixedMyth wrote:Perspective! And backgrounds! And perspective and backgrounds combined! They hate me soooo!
They hate me tooooo. I think backgrounds are an equal opportunity hater.
Cope wrote:The days when I have to fight the urge to ragequit because the art on the most recent page ended up being unmitigated horribawful get me down a bit.
Know the feeling, mate. Join the club...
RobboAKAscooby wrote:
MixedMyth wrote:Perspective! And backgrounds! And perspective and backgrounds combined! They hate me soooo!
Ditto. Which is why I often avoid drawing backgrounds, I should work on that.
Also the fact that I'm constantly making little improvements and then I look back and go "oh dude that's f***ing dreadful".
I tend to avoid BGs, too. Mostly because they're a pain in the ass to keep doing over and over again, and they slow me down. I tend to draw one panel that has a full BG to kind of give a sense of place, but after that either drop it, or just give hints of it. I lot of comics - most notably, my favorite, Scott Adams' Dilbert is one of those which uses minimal background.
"I've come to accept a lot of what's wrong with this world, and there's not much I can do about it." - Johnny "Rotten" Lydon
Thirded. They're never quite the same.
Or, rather, maybe they're too much the same. Michelle has trouble giving distinguishing characteristics (besides, like, hair), and even if a character's original concept sketch design had some sort of nose/eye/chin/whatever thing going on to separate them from the crowd, they all seem to eventually fizzle down, and the characters end up looking mostly the same.
I used to have a problem with coming up with faces with distinctive characteristics, so I started collecting photos of interesting faces whenever I run into them. Like, particularly male haircuts, it seems to be impossible to come up with decent male haircuts so I had to make a collection.
Better question would be what doesn't frustrate me about my own work...
Long before I was into writing comics, fan art was how I spent much of my free time. When internet art forums sprang up, I had to deal with mass indifference for only the second time. At first, I couldn't quite figure out why I would never get any feedback on anything I published. As this went on, it appeared that those who could ape whatever comic style was popular were worshipped to the exclusion of everything else. Yes, I was a little jealous, but I also still believe that this kind of environment creates a feedback loop that makes art boards really boring. Penciljack a few years back was a perfect example; they should've re-registered as BroodingWolverineSketches.com.
I didn't give up right away though. I was looking for a niche and thought I'd make my mark doing animated art and possibly even the occasional commission. That went over like a lead balloon. You know, it's one thing to draw one picture that subsequently gets ignored, but it's a different story to compile 24 of them for the same level of indifference. Don't ever ask why or suggest how much more effort is involved or the peanut gallery is liable to go apopleptic. I quit hanging around art forums (and was banned from at least one) shortly thereafter. There was no point to posting my work and there weren't many fresh projects to follow.
Playing Ultima and a little exposure to manga was what eventually got me back into art because they brought some comedy into what had become a dreary pursuit. When I started writing more I said I would not run a serial, favoring instead loosely-linked multi-page issues. This decision was rooted in my hatred of abuses in other popular works from anime to comics. So I would often get a funny idea that would either peter out towards the end of I would be interupted and forget where I was going (notes and rough sketches always ended right where I needed them most). Usually I would just start the next issue, expecting to be inspired later as to how to bridge the gap, but in practice it was rare.
The end result was an idea I thought could really go somewhere but was hobbled by a large number of incomplete stories that couldn't be excised without damaging others that were actually complete. Realizing where this was headed, I experimented with page-sized gag strips set in the same canon/theme. Somewhere, I've got notebooks and notebooks full of this stuff. That idea never really went very far either because I never really established the story it was a sideshow to.
Some time later, I decided to switch gears and do commentary on being a fan of a specific sci-fi universe. At the time, everyone and their brother was doing "picfics" (usually manifested as photocomics where the toybox denizens come to life and go on a beer run or something equally inane). The few sporadic commentary comics out there always disagreed with my point of view so I found them inane. How many times can you ridicule adult fans for being a little fanatical? I swear, everytime a fan is critical, there's an accusation of living in a basement followed by a canned laugh track.
Anyway, I went on to produce about 40 full page editions and posted maybe 25, which, to my surprise, recieved a fair amount of feedback. To my even further surprise, it was largely positive when I had expected hate mail if anything. I wanted to go back and ink them properly, as I think the unfinished pencil format hindered uptake against more polished (but inferior IMO) competitors, but couldn't meet the quality standards I wanted to on top of generating new material. Unfortunately, I largely fell out of that community when movie talk snuffed out everything else. There was no way I was going to do 2+ years of movie-related jokes.
Now it's been a couple years where I haven't had time to do more thana couple skethces here and there...which would be the most frustrating part these days!
Also I like drawing backgrounds. I think there are ways to make them more interesting to do. But I usually tend to put them in, like, 30% panels on the page, anything more, I think, is too crowdy.
Backgrounds are tricky, because sometimes they're necessary and warranted, and sometimes they're not. The illustrator in me really gets off on seeing deftly-drawn overdetailed backgrounds gracing every panel on a page, but the cartoonist in me knows that that is simply not needed or an effective use of time and energy. Add to the fact that panels still need to be composed to generate visual interest and contribute to the overall flow of the narrative, no matter how big the panel is. So, it's a fine line, choosing between fully-rendered settings, empty panels, or visual effects that fall somewhere in-between. It's something I'm pretty mindful of when I work, and something that I think I'm still learning, even after many years.
"Just because we're amateurs, doesn't mean our comics have to be amateurish." -McDuffies
Bustertheclown wrote:Backgrounds are tricky, because sometimes they're necessary and warranted, and sometimes they're not. The illustrator in me really gets off on seeing deftly-drawn overdetailed backgrounds gracing every panel on a page, but the cartoonist in me knows that that is simply not needed or an effective use of time and energy. Add to the fact that panels still need to be composed to generate visual interest and contribute to the overall flow of the narrative, no matter how big the panel is. So, it's a fine line, choosing between fully-rendered settings, empty panels, or visual effects that fall somewhere in-between. It's something I'm pretty mindful of when I work, and something that I think I'm still learning, even after many years.
This is something I've always struggled with. I have difficulty comprehending where on the Realistic/Cartoonistic spectrum my style falls, and have a compulsion when I draw a background to be detailed and accurate which is tempered by my impatience and acceptance of sloppiness in my own work. When it comes to coloring I really am at a loss, because I know you don't need to make everything in the background be the color it would be in real life, but the "kid coloring a coloring book" in me wants to make everything photographically colored correctly. Efforts to simplify coloring lead to sloppiness because I have not yet learned how to do it effectively, something I need to work on.
Don't kid yourself, friend. I still know how.
"I'd much rather dream about my co-written Meth Beatdown script tonight." -JSConner800000000
Another thing that frustrates me about my work is it takes sooooo long! I must be doing something wrong! I'm not even shading. Just flatting the colors takes forever.
Perspective and size relationships are trickiest for me. Sometimes characters look too large to fit through doors, or too small standing next to cars, and so on. Should've paid more attention in class back when I was studying animation. I'm finally seeing some improvement in it now though, so that's cool. Just need to sharpen those powers of observation some more!! *shakes fist*
Well, it annoys me how I have trouble drawing the same characters' faces. Sometimes they don't look the same at all. Which annoys me.
And then there's the body frames, I'm always adding something new to the skeleton. I can't just stick to a standard thing... grrr!
And then there's the backgrounds... I cannot do manmade backgrounds like buildings or rooms. They annoy me oh so much. I did this spread in which I wanted to draw a whole city. It was hell. I had to draw every single, friggin' window. But in the end it was worth it. I hope I can find an easier way to do it.
I hate forgetting things I know... or having things I know not show up on the page. I know perspective, I know the differences between my characters, I know that broccoli trees are lame. But I usually rush through my pages as quickly as possible (because it still takes two weeks per page when I do that) and end up with something that doesn't take into account even basic anatomy knowledge that I know I possess.
Getting a trend here.
Consistency of art and characters
Backgrounds
Speed
Perspective (which is kind of a consistency problem)
Only a few of us actually LIKE drawing backgrounds (I'm looking at you, McDuffies)
But mostly it seems to be the consistency thing.
. . . OH Thank god, for once in my life I'm NORMAL!!!!!
