Comic Making Tips

tryinghuman:

So I ended up writing a whole tangent about how I construct, Trying Human, these days.  SORRY.  I hope you can find the answer to your question in these ramblings.

• More
  staging shots.  These are long shots of the characters, where they
  are in their environment, and in relation to each other.  I try to
  have at least one staging shot within a panel or two of a scene
  starting up.  Even if I’ve been to that location a million times
  *cough*Rose’s apartment*cough*, I still want the reader to know
  where everyone is.

• Less
  talking heads.  This is a little unavoidable in comic largely driven
  by dialogue and drama, but I try to not just have yo-yo-ing back and
  forth between headshots of the characters.  There’s a lot of this
  in the old pages so a way I’ve gotten around it is by combining
  panels of characters talking or completely cutting out shots and
  having the ‘missing’ character’s dialogue come from off panel.
  I also add in their names so we know who’s talking to who i.e.,
  “Longus, thanks for letting me come over” as opposed to “Thanks
  for letting me come over.”  It’s a quick and dirty way to let the
  reader know who said what if they’re off panel.

• Show
  all hands, feet, heads, and props (if they’re in the shot at
  all…)  This is kind of related the last point.  I try to move
  everyone’s hands and arms up into the panels.  Or lower their
  heads.  I used to cut off a lot of body parts or just not have them
  moving their limbs at all.  I mean, with the Greys, I still don’t
  move them but that’s a part of their species.  I think it makes
  them seem more creepy as well if all the other characters are talking
  and gesticulating and they’re just standing around.

• Don’t
  completely desaturate your colors.  I don’t know what I was
  thinking but when I originally shaded TH, I did so with grey for
  like… everything.  I feel like I must have seen something somewhere
  and thought it was a good idea, which is weird because a lot of my
  non-TH art from the time didn’t suffer from this. lol  ANYWAY,
  frequently I’m reusing old backgrounds on the redone pages and all
  I’ve done is knock the saturation way up.  They look brand new! :D

• More
  beta-ing/spot blacking.  I’m not sure what this is called in English but Spot blacking; Thanks @randumbdaze!  In manga, the large swathes of flat black both in the background and on
  the characters is called beta.  There’s a lot more of that in TH.
  Waaay more black.  LOVE THE BLACK.  On comic pages that are just
  pencils this is usually marked with an ‘X’.  If you’ve ever
  been to my streams, you’ll see me marking my betas before filling
  them in later.  They just make the comic look more… Finished or fuller or complete.  I can’t really explain it, you just have to take my word for it.  In TH this is most noticeable on the inside of sleeves, collars, under characters chins, in side of mouths and on the bodies’ and in the eyes of the Greys.  I also have black from the comic gutters (the area between frames) encroach into the scenes to help give the pages rhythm and break up the staging.

• Less
  non-western style comic book sound effects.
  In Japanese comics, it’s really common to see sound effects like,
  “Poke!”, “Grab!”, “Smiles!” (つん,
  ざっく,
  うはうは,
  respectively.)
  That’s
  because they have actual onomatopoeia
  for a lot of that stuff.  We don’t and it can come off as
  awkward in English unless
  you’re going for a really particular style to your comic.
  I used to use it as a crutch
  to get around actually drawing stuff out of my comfort zone, I think.
  This was like 10 years ago so bear with me.  I take out SFX that
  aren’t actual sounds and just try to draw my actions better.  Also,
  TH doesn’t really feel like a manga in visual presentation so I
  can’t really get away with those kind of sound effects.  Worse comes to worse, you can always add a piece of dialogue like “Don’t grab me like that!” to help the reader understand what is going on.

• Less
  sexy when sexy doesn’t need to be there.  I’m a piece of shit and draw everyone in too sexy of poses.  Mostly the ladies because I have a prooooblem. ;A;  I’m trying to avoid that these days unless it calls for it.  Weirdly, less is more.  When I try to avoid drawing them sexy, I think they look more attractive.  I’m a fickle boop.

Here are some good comic making resources:

• Comic Book FX (The Comic Book Sound Effect Database) – http://www.comicbookfx.com/ Find some dank sounds.
• Blambot Comic Fonts & Lettering – http://www.blambot.com/  Check out their articles; they’re really helpful for creating a groundwork.
• DesignDoll – http://terawell.net/terawell/  Step aside, PoseManiacs, DesignDoll is here to stay.  The free version doesn’t let you save, but if you just want to throw together some poses for reference, this is a great program for that.
• SketchUp – https://www.sketchup.com/  Awesome for modeling props and sets.
• Sculptris – http://pixologic.com/sculptris/ A free organic modeling tool; great for modeling your character’s heads for reference.