Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
What? Me? Oh, I'm just passing by with some characters. I actually dare to try and make a comic. Not that anyone's interested in that. So here goes the main one and her - duh, shall I say friend? (No, she's not evil.)
And before I forget; licoot, that's one good idea. Puppet rulez!
__________________ A creature that has never seen the sunset or sunrise, isn't living. We have to see the beauty of the world and open to it. If there's some beauty left. I love art..
Avatar by me. The previous ones too.
Some awesome comics:
Spoiler
By CoffeeIncluded
By Zexion
Oh yeah; I'm not an English native speaker. So please, execuse me for my mistakes!
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Quote:
Originally Posted by Green-Shirt Q
Okay then. How about a talking Electric Joybuzzer? They're shocking AND awesome!
But seriously. You're going to have to give us a little bit more than that. What kind of suggestion are you looking for? Class? Personality? Appearance? Gender? Be more specific, because that really dosen't give us much to suggest.
Hm...First of all sorry I was in a bit of a hurry. Okay, so I want him to be a necromancer, possibly with an artifact, he has his own party of evil adventurers. When he is confronted with someone more powerful, he usually runs away (but gracefully). He has an archnemesis in an insane melee PC whose entire party died because of him. He like to experiment (read:homebrew) with undead. On a related note, I'm thinking that the story starts off with (or introduces later on) the first arc detailing the aforementioned fighter and his party. It will involve the BBEG winning over his party (all on the Good axis) and then they are replaced by the current party (predominantly neutral)
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
You misspelled "Unfortunately," "puppeteers," and "forcing. Also, "Sowing" refers to planting seeds. The spelling you're looking for is "sewing."
Speaking of Ideas, I got a brilliant one about a story that's told backwards, with the epilogue coming first. Sort of like reading a book backwards chapter by chapter. Good Idea or bad?
__________________
I keep quoting your posts. But they might not mean what I think they do...
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
@licoot: Pretty good apart from the rampant spelling errors. For some reason, though, the whole thing looks sort of...blurry to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Herpestidae
You misspelled "Unfortunately," "puppeteers," and "forcing. Also, "Sowing" refers to planting seeds. The spelling you're looking for is "sewing."
Speaking of Ideas, I got a brilliant one about a story that's told backwards, with the epilogue coming first. Sort of like reading a book backwards chapter by chapter. Good Idea or bad?
It's been done. Watch the movie Memento. It's pretty good, actually, although the payoff in the end wasn't as big as I would've liked.
Anyway, my point is that it can work, but it can also feel very gimmicky and unnecessary. I'd advise against it simply because once the initial novelty wears off, unless you know exactly what you're doing, it can go very, very badly.
Still, you can try it. But if you're going to do it, make sure there's a reason for the format beyond "it's cool" and give it some significance within the context of the story.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Well, I was writing the story normally at first; I have all the necessary plot points set up already, bar anything I randomly think up at any given time.The thing is that I have a bunch of cool fight scenes planned out for the end/climax and don't want to lose them in the dark abyss that is my mind.
Incidentally, I'm kind of busy drawing for my other comic, and would need an artist to collaborate with me for this story.
__________________
I keep quoting your posts. But they might not mean what I think they do...
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Well, you could still draw them first and just not post them until later. It would give you extra motivation to actually get to that point in the comic without calling it quits.
If your only reason for the backwards storytelling is "My ending is going to be AWESOME!" I'd say nay.
After all, if your ending is so awesome, wouldn't it be more awesome as, well, the ending?
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dvandemon
Hm...First of all sorry I was in a bit of a hurry. Okay, so I want him to be a necromancer, possibly with an artifact, he has his own party of evil adventurers. When he is confronted with someone more powerful, he usually runs away (but gracefully). He has an archnemesis in an insane melee PC whose entire party died because of him. He like to experiment (read:homebrew) with undead. On a related note, I'm thinking that the story starts off with (or introduces later on) the first arc detailing the aforementioned fighter and his party. It will involve the BBEG winning over his party (all on the Good axis) and then they are replaced by the current party (predominantly neutral)
You misunderstand me.
Once again, what kind of suggestion are you LOOKING for? It looks like you already have this mapped out in your head pretty well. I don't know what else you want.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Oh, right . I don't know what's wrong with me, I guess i'm unwilling to put anything out there unless it's absolutely perfect. I'll delete all my posts now
EDIT:Wait, then what should I title it? If I basically have a story set up
EDIT2: Oh! I'm asking for suggestion on the race of the villain. Vampire or Dragon? (can't believe I forgot that)
Last edited by Dvandemon : 06-02-2010 at 09:11 AM.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Quote:
Originally Posted by Herpestidae
Well, I was writing the story normally at first; I have all the necessary plot points set up already, bar anything I randomly think up at any given time.The thing is that I have a bunch of cool fight scenes planned out for the end/climax and don't want to lose them in the dark abyss that is my mind.
Incidentally, I'm kind of busy drawing for my other comic, and would need an artist to collaborate with me for this story.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
A few questions to those of you that have comics already
Lets say you have an idea... You know you can potentially draw it.
How do you start it off? You have your idea, you even have written down a detailed 2 page summary of the first chapter of the saga. I keep finding myself staring at a blank page thinking "Bloody hell, I know the story but not what it should look like!", and doodling of my ideas are doing nothing to help give me the spark I need to get a comic page going (and not helping my school work either... But that's another story).
Secondly. How do you work out how long it takes you to do a page, so you could do regular updates? Or is it better to draw out the whole of the first section of your webcomic, so that for the first section at least you have a regular update schedule?
Thirdly. How the hell do you make guys look different to girls in realistic styles without making all your dudes have beards or mustaches? (Not a question to answer, just a mini rant - I know the various anatomies of these male and female things, so know what I should be doing - just can't get the bloody pen to draw a human with one thing rather than a human with two things....)
__________________ "I'm just going on motive and opportunity here and the fact that if the earth got swallowed by a black hole, I'd look suspiciously in your direction first."
~ Timberwolf
"After the first day we universally agreed that she was banned from fire thereafter. The second day she ended up with the power to create 5 extra copies of herself."
~ Heliomance
"You're like Pinkie Pie powered by a nuclear reactor."
~ Lix Lorn
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
A few questions to those of you that have comics already
Lets say you have an idea... You know you can potentially draw it.
How do you start it off? You have your idea, you even have written down a detailed 2 page summary of the first chapter of the saga. I keep finding myself staring at a blank page thinking "Bloody hell, I know the story but not what it should look like!", and doodling of my ideas are doing nothing to help give me the spark I need to get a comic page going (and not helping my school work either... But that's another story).
Secondly. How do you work out how long it takes you to do a page, so you could do regular updates? Or is it better to draw out the whole of the first section of your webcomic, so that for the first section at least you have a regular update schedule?
Thirdly. How the hell do you make guys look different to girls in realistic styles without making all your dudes have beards or mustaches? (Not a question to answer, just a mini rant - I know the various anatomies of these male and female things, so know what I should be doing - just can't get the bloody pen to draw a human with one thing rather than a human with two things....)
1) Think about it like a movie, picture your story in your head like you're watching it on a screen.
2) With Rebellion Revolution I started with a Buffer, but soon lost it. Some people can work with a Buffer, some cannot, find your pace.
3) Give all your women beards and mustaches. Big ones.
__________________
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dsurion
I don't know if you've noticed, but pretty much everything BRC posts is full of awesome.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chiasaur11
So, Astronaut, War Hero, or hideous Mantis Man, hop to it! The future of humanity is in your capable hands and or terrifying organic scythes.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
1) Try to think of a narrative to the scene, and work around that. Narratives of characters also help you illustrate. To get facial expressions or body language, think of the tone of what the particular character might be thinking or saying. It's a lot easier than it sounds once you get the hang of it.
2) I don't have an update schedule. This varies from artist to artist but me personally I have almost no idea what characters are gonna say or do, let alone how big the comic's gonna be, I just do it. What I do with my comics is I fit, scenes, characters, and dialogue in this one box
over and over again sequentially, where I then arrange them into a comic strip. More often than not forming rows of three, but that's just me.
3) I don't do realistic style, I do OotS, Madness, and 8-bit. But if I were to guess, i'd say that women tend to have more curved bodies and faces outside of the obvious anatomical differences.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
A few questions to those of you that have comics already
Lets say you have an idea... You know you can potentially draw it.
How do you start it off? You have your idea, you even have written down a detailed 2 page summary of the first chapter of the saga. I keep finding myself staring at a blank page thinking "Bloody hell, I know the story but not what it should look like!", and doodling of my ideas are doing nothing to help give me the spark I need to get a comic page going (and not helping my school work either... But that's another story).
I would recommend what BRC said and try to imagine it like a movie, and think about how that would work. Think about introducing your characters and senario in such a way that it has atmosphere, so that it paints the picture you are trying to represent.
Or just steal your favourite movie opening and replace the characters in that movie with the ones in your fancomic.
I also recommend trying to think of the ending when you write the beginning. One very clever writing tool is book-ends. Making the ending relate back to the beginning. Whether it's subtle or it's exactly the same, think of certain details that would be good for that.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
How do you start it off? You have your idea, you even have written down a detailed 2 page summary of the first chapter of the saga. I keep finding myself staring at a blank page thinking "Bloody hell, I know the story but not what it should look like!", and doodling of my ideas are doing nothing to help give me the spark I need to get a comic page going (and not helping my school work either... But that's another story).
Positioning everything on a drawing board works wonders. Instead of drawing the characters first, draw stick figures with an oval head and proper proportions. Roughly lay out the background in a sketchy manner and go back to polish it later. If you work on it layer-by-layer, the comic will usually come to you a lot more quickly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
Secondly. How do you work out how long it takes you to do a page, so you could do regular updates? Or is it better to draw out the whole of the first section of your webcomic, so that for the first section at least you have a regular update schedule?
Only you know how well you draw and how well you want to draw. It's a good idea to get a feel for your expertise with computer coloring and sketching, and from there, figure out what type of update schedule you want to hold given your skill level. If you're bad with CG, for example, and you want a colored comic, a slower or irregular comic update schedule is for you.
The best way to know is to work out a sample comic. Make it a relatively difficult page that you would practically draw, and time yourself. Try seeing how well that fits into your schedule and viola - there's your update time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
Thirdly. How the hell do you make guys look different to girls in realistic styles without making all your dudes have beards or mustaches? (Not a question to answer, just a mini rant - I know the various anatomies of these male and female things, so know what I should be doing - just can't get the bloody pen to draw a human with one thing rather than a human with two things....)
Those of us who love drawing in manga style tends to make female bodies smaller and less toned. Typically, I simplify muscles down to a single bump on both the upper and lower arm, and try to fit somewhat of an hourglass figure into the picture. Males can be identified with rougher corners, broader shoulders, and typically less curvature than a female body (straight line shoulders, for instance).
Otherwise, a lot of what we perceive as male or female depends on hairstyle, facial features, and dress - all of which can be ambiguous. In fact, adding hair can contribute a lot to a character's expression. For example, a man:
Spoiler
And a woman:
Spoiler
Same body shape, except the change of hair (and clothing to a minor extent) made us automatically register the guy as being female. Most comics with short-haired girls tend to use feminine clothing or curved body shapes to indicate that a character is female, while most long-haired males have beards, loose shirts, angular faces, and other tell-tale male character signs.
Body shape, of course, is very important. Here's a picture of a boy:
Spoiler
And here's a picture of a girl. Aside from the hair, her eyes were moved down by a few pixels, and her general body shape was changed (narrower shoulders, more curved instead of angular shapes, hourglass-ish body). Note that our eyes interpret this as signs that the character in question is indeed female:
Spoiler
Last edited by Felyndiira : 06-02-2010 at 10:01 PM.
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
... Thank you so much guys.
*scurries off*
__________________ "I'm just going on motive and opportunity here and the fact that if the earth got swallowed by a black hole, I'd look suspiciously in your direction first."
~ Timberwolf
"After the first day we universally agreed that she was banned from fire thereafter. The second day she ended up with the power to create 5 extra copies of herself."
~ Heliomance
"You're like Pinkie Pie powered by a nuclear reactor."
~ Lix Lorn
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
My belated 2 cents:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
A few questions to those of you that have comics already
Lets say you have an idea... You know you can potentially draw it.
How do you start it off? You have your idea, you even have written down a detailed 2 page summary of the first chapter of the saga. I keep finding myself staring at a blank page thinking "Bloody hell, I know the story but not what it should look like!", and doodling of my ideas are doing nothing to help give me the spark I need to get a comic page going (and not helping my school work either... But that's another story).
Honestly, my first comic was a guy (faceless up until the 5th panel) flipped horizontally between panels, "climbing" a "cliff." My second character was introduced in the second-to-last panel of said comic. It sucked, but it got the story started. Then I just went from there. Hell, I just started getting out of the filler comic thing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
Secondly. How do you work out how long it takes you to do a page, so you could do regular updates? Or is it better to draw out the whole of the first section of your webcomic, so that for the first section at least you have a regular update schedule?
I do the page when it's convenient to do so. Buffers only work when it takes you less than a few hours to draw a page. Draw 2 pages a day, put up 3 pages a week, instant buffer!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Castaras
Thirdly. How the hell do you make guys look different to girls in realistic styles without making all your dudes have beards or mustaches? (Not a question to answer, just a mini rant - I know the various anatomies of these male and female things, so know what I should be doing - just can't get the bloody pen to draw a human with one thing rather than a human with two things....)
Guys are blocky. Girls are curvy. Work with that. Musculature always helps, but don't be Rob Liefeld when it comes to that.
__________________
I keep quoting your posts. But they might not mean what I think they do...
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
hay guys I require assistance. I need to know what to do to make the background look like the characters are moving REALLY fast, and I find Inkscape's blur tool to be unsatisfactory. so any tips?
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
in other news, I have like.....three....no...four......five...about six ideas for a comic here. I tend to come up with a lot of ideas. I can only give short summaries
Idea 1: Age of the Arcane
Takes place in a DnD world 700 years AFTER the Age of Adventurers ended, magitech is commonplace, the world is ruled by wizard empires, there are rebels opposing them and a lone wizard student is caught up in the resulting war.
Idea 2: The Campaign Trilogy
A trilogy of comics that are all deconstructions of DnD, the cliched "adventurers have random adventures" plot and the gratuitous fourth-wall breaking and RPG mechanics world. the three comics would be:
DM: a deconstruction of DnD as it is
NPC: a look at the world of DnD without any PC's or DM
and PC: DnD without a DM, but with NPC's and PC's
Idea 3: First Reality
a deconstruction of Final Fantasy where a ragtag group of adventurers band together to stop a steampunk empire from conquering the world by activating five crystals of magic- only to discover a far worse threat in the process.
Idea 4: The Story of a Dragon
a 10,000 year old dragon mad scientist tells you the story of his life from a first person point of view narrative.
Idea 5: Lightbringer
in a post-apocalyptic world where the gods themselves wiped out 90% of humanity, the only hope against soulless monsters wiping out what remains rests in an army of super-powered warriors called the "Lightbringers"
(I do not actually take credit for the idea of the setting this comic, as the setting was actually thought up by a close friend of mine)
Idea 6: Weblords
In the year 2100, all technology in the world is connected to the internet and people called "Weblords" who have unrivaled control over cyberspace through pure programming and hacking skill, rule supreme. Earth is in a constant of "Web Warfare" and the borders of web empires change everyday.
A lone rebellious hacker fights against the current world regime in a hope to bring back freedom, hope and goodness to everything.
whaddya think? too many ideas? probably, its my greatest strength- and my greatest weakness.
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Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
I love art..
I was in a bit of a hurry. Okay, so I want him to be a necromancer, possibly with an artifact, he has his own party of evil adventurers. When he is confronted with someone more powerful, he usually runs away (but gracefully). He has an archnemesis in an insane melee PC whose entire party died because of him. He like to experiment (read:homebrew) with undead. On a related note, I'm thinking that the story starts off with (or introduces later on) the first arc detailing the aforementioned fighter and his party. It will involve the BBEG winning over his party (all on the Good axis) and then they are replaced by the current party (predominantly neutral)
____
Re: Our Comic Lab in the Playground: An experimentation class
. I don't know what's wrong with me, I guess i'm unwilling to put anything out there unless it's absolutely perfect. I'll delete all my posts now
(Not a question to answer, just a mini rant - I know the various anatomies of these male and female things, so know what I should be doing - just can't get the bloody pen to draw a human with one thing rather than a human with two things....)
