OK, you know what? I don’t have a clever post in me this week. I may be getting a cold, I have a con to go to this weekend, and I feel super-cranky. So instead of yelling at you, I’m just going to point you to some awesome stuff other people did, and hope you come back next week anyway.

Let’s do this.

1. Comic Book Tutorial is a pretty in-depth series about making comics, it geeks out a bit about traditional tools (you know, like ink and stuff) and tells you about how to do this stuff start to finish. Pretty cool for a free web resource.
2. The maker of Inner Space has something a little more specifically about panel layout, leading the eye, and that sort of stuff. Solid info with cute characters to boot. Yes.
3. Matthew M. Lakowski has a series on perspective, composition and that kind of stuff. Breathtaking art provided per illustration and inspiration. For some reason the series is posted on DA (you have a website, why use DA?), link will take you to the first one.
4. But hey, you know something about all that golden rule, eye-path composition stuff? Maybe it’s all more tradition than fact. Fascinating discussion by James Gurney using eyetracking technology and dinosaur paintings. Read Part 1, part 2, part 3.

That’s it from me for this week.

In response to the time post, Hoshii asks: what if I sit down and have nothing to draw?

Ironically, this was a pretty bad pick to draw from. The subject has no legs, and important details on his arm are obscured. The dark shadow also makes it hard to see the right-hand edge of the figure.

Well, that would be a good time (although, really, ANY time is a good time) to draw naked people. Figure drawing is an ancient and very respectable exercise that you’ll probably be doing for the rest of your life if you’re any kind of artist drawing pictures of people (clothed or otherwise).

And if life drawing classes are not currently catered for in your budget (yeah, I know, me too) you can do “poor man’s lifedrawing” by drawing from photographs. Some tips on how to go about this.

Where to get good photographs

There is certainly no shortage of pictures of naked people on the internet. However, most porn isn’t very suitable to use. It’s generally badly framed, the poses are weird and unnatural and there’s not a great variety in body types. Also, the material could be distracting.

You may have more luck looking around on artsy photography sites, like photography.net. Their pictures of nudes more often include the entire body (plus) and they tend to be a little more imaginative when it comes to choosing the poses (plus). On the minus side, they often suffer from overly artistic lighting (making the figure hard to see) or too much airbrushing (making the figure implausibly smooth and hard to learn anything from). They also tend to lean heavily (very heavily) towards the female figure.

You can also browse models’ portfolios, although they have many of the same problems.

The real gold is in stock photography sites. Most of these you need to pay for, but there are some free sites around as well. There is also a small community on Deviantart (link NSFW) of models who donate their skin to art. Again, you need to wade through the cheesecake to get at the good stuff, but there is some good stuff to find.

What to do with them

OK, so you have a little collection of photos with well-lit, complete figures, in a variety of poses, wearing not very much. Now what?

Gesture Sketch

A gesture sketch is a really quick drawing (1 – 5 mts) where you try to capture not so much what the figure looks like, but what it is doing. The movements of the figure; not the limbs exactly, but how they fit together. It’s generally not very detailed, because you have to be very quick and focus on just the main lines of the pose.

Note: this is not a very good explanation of what a gesture sketch is. Maybe I’ll do a full post on the subject later. Or get someone else to.

Second note: the drawings in this post are not meant to be some kind of “this is what you should strive for” or “this is how the teacher does it” standard. My figure drawing is what it is, not especially impressive, not complete beginner either. The illustrations are here to give you an idea of the level of detail you can go into, and the different ways you can use a reference photo.

Detailed Study

A more detailed study is where, essentially, you try to copy the photograph. You pay close attention to the proportions and distances, the various bumps and valleys, the shadows and light, and all that good stuff. It will take longer, and might look something like my drawing on the left (perhaps with more detail, this was still a pretty quick sketch).

A gesture sketch will help you learn how to bring a sense of life, purpose and action to your figures, even when they’re just sitting on a chair. This more exact copying will help you draw something that looks like it might be a real human being in the first place. When people tell you you need to “study anatomy”, they’re probably referring to this kind of thing. Both exercises are useful, they just have a different emphasis.

Expressing an opinion, or, stylise like crazy

If you’re working in a highly stylised style, like superhero comics, or girls’ manga, or, well, most types of comics,  really, you can also use your naked pictures as reference for a much more stylised image. You keep the pose, but do your own thing with it. There’s different ways of going about this. You can pick a well-defined style and put it onto the image in front of you, like drawing a chibi version of the person in the photo.

You can also take the image and exaggerate the parts that are the most interesting, important or exciting about it, and end up with something perhaps a little like this last sketch.

This is great fun, and I recommend it as an exercise for that reason if nothing else. ^_^

Why this is not as good as life drawing

You should still do life drawing. A photo is a two dimensional representation of a three dimensional object. It is easier to copy onto another two dimensional plane (your drawing) than the three dimensional original would be. But by working from photos you’re missing out on an entire dimension: depth, and you’ll want to learn about ways to bring that dimension into your drawings. You can’t do that by copying photographs, or at least, it’s very hard to. You can learn loads about how the human body fits together though, and that’s worth a lot too.

Man, this post was huge, and you had to look at my awful drawings. Dang. Thanks for hanging in there, and, as always, I’d love to hear about your experiences with this subject. Do you draw from photographs? Do you take life drawing classes? Do you draw in a comics style but get horribly stuck when presented with a live model, or a photo? Let me know.

One more for the writers! I’m working on some more drawing-related posts, but they’ll take a little more work. Maybe next week.

Please make sure each scene serves a purpose. Thanks.

This post describes a little technique I use to make sure my scenes don’t end up being Entirely Pointless, because it happens to the best of them, so you have to watch out for these things.

If you’re writing a short story you’re probably trimming everything that could possibly be regarded as fat anyway, and you may not need a formal outline. If you’re writing something longer though, you’re probably working from some kind of summary or notes. I like bullet points.

• Ninja Dave infiltrates Daimyo Satan’s castle
• Ninja Dave meets Princess Peachblossom
• Princess Peachblossom remembers her childhood/mother
• Ninja Dave and Samurai Fred reluctantly agree to work together
• Princess Peachblossom warns Samurai Fred against Ninja Dave
• Daimyo Satan talks to Princess Peachblossom’s agent
• Ninja Dave and Samurai Fred make their attack
• Samurai Fred thinks Ninja Dave has betrayed him, and stabs him up
• Daimyo Satan laughs in Samurai Fred’s face because he’s walked right into the trap

• Ninja Dave wasn’t dead after all, and beheads Daimyo Satan
• Ninja Dave forgives Samurai Fred, but Samurai Fred does not want to believe Princess Peachblossom betrayed them
• Princess Peachblossom is discovered, dead, with a hairpin in her neck
• Princess Peachblossom’s agent reveals the tea Peachblossom was brewing for them was poisonous, and it was he who killed her, because he has the hots for Ninja Dave
• Samurai Fred finally realised Princess Peachblossom is evil, but he’s still sad she’s dead
• Samurai Fred and Ninjas Dave part ways, each with greater respect for the other

Every scene, that is, every time some characters meet up and talk or fight or travel or whatever, gets a line. I then make some notes about each scene: which scenes are action-based or high tension, which scenes introduce new characters, which characters appear where, and that kind of thing. That makes it easy to check for areas in the story where the action flags, or where there’s climax after climax without a bit of come-down to make some sense of it.

Most importantly, I can check each scene and make sure it serves a purpose. I like making little tables like this, but that’s probably because I am a super-nerd who sets up spreadsheets for fun. I’m not saying this is what you should do. I’m just showing you what I do, and you can take from it what’s useful to you.

By writing it all down, I can check that each scene does indeed lead to the next and serve an important purpose. I can make sure there aren’t any important loose ends, I’m not introducing 5 characters in one scene, etc.

Looking at this table, I might decide, for instance, that the flashback to PB’s childhood, although cool and deeply emotional and stuff, is not actually vital to the story, and that it might be better to use that space to introduce Samurai Fred, who currently drops into the story out of nowhere and immediately agrees to storm the castle with Dave. Perhaps a scene with PB and S. Fred would be better, so we know who he is when Ninja Dave meets him. That scene could also foreshadow PB’s betrayal, but in a different way, maybe she gives him a secret evil look, or says something slightly creepy.

I’m big on structure, especially for longer stories. I know there are a lot of writers out there who have a more “make stuff up as you go” approach and if that works for you don’t let me stop you. If you do like structured outlines, or you’re willing to give it a try to see if it works for you, this is a technique you could use. Even if you don’t, it’s always worth checking thoroughly once you have your plan laid out that none of your scenes are Entirely Pointless or even Slightly Pointless. Otherwise, if they ever make a movie out of your story, you’ll fall foul of this guy, and you don’t want that:

Angry critic.

Does this strike you as useful? (I mean, the technique, not the crazy with the toy gun.) Would you be interested in reading about Ninja Dave and company? Do you want me to stop talking already? Use that crazy comments box!

Note: the pictures in this post are screencaps from the Nostalgia Critic, a funny internet video man. Check him out.

Time for something basic. Some thoughts on scripting a comic.

The Format

One of the difficulties of scripting for comics is that, unlike in its sister medium, TV and film, there’s really no agreed format for what a script should look like. It can be, but isn’t necessarily, broken into scenes. It might contain detailed, panel by panel descriptions, or it could be simple the dialogue with minimal stage directions. It really depends on what the writer and artist prefer.

Normally, a script will consist of at least the dialogue, and information on what characters are present, where they are, and what things (characters, props, environment) looks like.

Scene X: Bob and Kate explore the storm drain. Both now wear winter coats. Bob carries a big flashlight, Kate has the map.
Bob and Kate peer into the storm drain opening. It is dark and quiet and threatening (extra double scary please).
Kate: “This is what the map says, right?”
Bob: “Uh… I dunno, it’s your map!”

It is useful for an artist (even if it’s you!) to have information about what the characters’ emotions and motivations are. It’s easy to go overboard with this though; ultimately, if it’s not visible, or an explicit internal monologue, it might not matter. If someone is inwardly seething but outwardly calm, it’s probably OK to say:

Mr Giovanni (calmly): “This… is not acceptable.”

Rather than:

Mr Giovanni looks calm, even though the implied betrayal is making his blood boil. He is a very reserved man, always in control.
Mr Giovanni: “This… is not acceptable.”

The second option is perfectly valid though, especially if the psychology of the characters is important to the story. And, no, that isn’t always the case. There are stories where what happens is more important than how everyone feels about it, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

To Panel or not to Panel

Many American comics include part of the script as an extra when they are printed in graphic novel format. These scripts generally have very detailed instructions regarding the size and position of panels, as exactly what is visible in the panel, too. That is one way of scripting, and it’s generally how I write scripts for myself (though not quite as detailed).

I was surprised to learn that some artists would consider this style of scripting controlling and even a bit insulting. After all, the reasoning goes, working out the page layout and choosing the contents of panels is part of the artist’s job, not the writer’s. They preferred a looser scripting style, with just the dialogue and events detailed, not the precise picture.

I think both these approaches can work very well, if both parties agree, and whoever is making the panelling decisions knows what they’re doing. Panelling is equivalent to directing a film, it’s a big responsibility and it’s an art rather than a science. I have seen both artists and writers get it quite badly wrong.

So, with that in mind, I think it should probably be up to the person who is most experienced at working for comics. Note: not how much experience you have as a writer is what counts, but how much experience writing for comics. Likewise, it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been drawing, but how long you’ve been drawing comics. If you’re of about equal skill, I would say the writer makes suggestions and the artist can do what they want. That’s how I like to work, both as an artist and a writer.

What do you think?

Do you prefer detailed, panel by panel scripts or do you like to work that stuff out for yourself? If you work alone, do you write scripts for yourself (as I do) or do you find that unnecessary?

OK, so recently I told you that drawing a little every day is the best way to improve (and up your output). One of the problems you’ll run into is that it’s hard to carve out an hour or even half an hour for drawing each day. While I’m not sure what your average day looks like, I doubt you sit around picking lint out of your bellybutton thinking: gosh, I wonder what I’ll do with all this time I have lying around.

No, you’re busy. I get that. Still, I believe you could find the time to draw every day if you made it a priority. Because time you have, 24 hours every day.

Where is my time hiding?

You can find time around, outside of and even during whatever normally takes up your time. You can multitask and draw while watching TV (you’d be amazed how little you actually need to look at the screen to follow a TV show or movie, especially comedy). You can draw during lectures or in your lunch break at work. If you can get into doing quick sketches, you can even take a tea break for drawing time, or pause during your walk to work to do a quick architecture study.

This is small-time time though. If you want to get some real time in, it’s better to actually schedule time. An hour straight after work, for instance, or right after dinner. Think about this: if you found out about an interesting, free drawing course that would help you exactly where you need it and is held in the evenings near enough your home, would you go? Would you find the time? I think you would. So time isn’t really the problem, it’s your perspective on it. Think of your drawing time as study time, improvement time. If you want the feel of a course you could get a book that suggests exercises, or set up a programme for yourself. You know what you need to work on, so work on it.

Morning Time

Something I’ve done that has much improved the time I have available for drawing and other important stuff (like posting to this blog, hello! ^_^) is changing the definition of daytime. To most, I think daytime means perhaps “between 7am and 11pm” or “from 7:30 until I feel too tired to play WoW anymore”. My daytime currently runs from 5am to 9pm.

There’s a bit of hype around getting up earlier; some people sell it as a “have more time” solution. I think that’s dumb: unless you can make do with much less sleep than you’re currently getting, which is unlikely, you’ll just end up having to go to bed earlier. So getting up early doesn’t get you more time, it just gets you time in a different place. But that can make all the difference. Morning is for me an excellent time to work in. I’m fresh and awake, and there’s no distractions because my house mates all sleep until 10 if they can. Evenings I’m not so good, I get tired and distracted easily and generally end up aimlessly wandering the net or watching my boyfriend play games (we’re too poor for TV).

Once I figured that out, I realised that if I had more morning before work time and less after work, I’d get more stuff done, and I wouldn’t miss the evening time: I never used it for anything much anyway. So I started getting up at half past 6, and that worked, so I started getting up at 6am, and that was even better, and so on. So now I get up at 5am and have 2 full hours to put into things that are important to me before I even have to think about getting ready to go to work. There’s no way I could work for 2 full hours after getting back from a day in the office. But being tired and unfocussed towards 5 o’clock in work is normal, and doesn’t generally get me into trouble.

Now, I’m not saying you should do this. Obviously, there are downsides. I tend to fall asleep at parties, for instance, and don’t go out much in the evenings. But it’s been worth it for me.

Where is your best time?

Maybe it’s not a good solution for you. Maybe you do your best work in the evenings. If so, it would be good to know that and think about what you can do about it. Yes, school, college or work will set annoying constraints on when you can do the work that’s most important to you, but even then you can probably find creative ways to re-purpose your time, open time up, and find time in places you hadn’t looked. Are you really too tired to do anything but watch Friends reruns? Are you sure? Do you really want to play games for an hour every evening? Could you bring a drawing pad to the pub or when you visit friends?

Think about it. Time is here for you. Every day.

A nice free e-book on how to find more time by Dave Navarro is here: More Time Now. It’s a bit on the rah rah motivational side, but Mr Navarro knows his stuff and makes some very good points in this. Check it out. If you like it, you might get on with his hardcore I will bring you time programme, which he calls 30 hour day. It is: motivational, hard work, quality. It is not: mathematically accurate, a magic wand. If you’re interested, get it here: 30 Hours a Day: Time Management Skills.

Next week in DIY Manga: Scripting for comics (yes, I’m not just planning ahead, I’m actually writing something relevant. I know, right?)
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I got an e-mail a while ago from someone saying, in brief:

I’ve been drawing for a long time, I want to start a comic, but I’m not sure if I’m good enough yet. What do you think?

Good question, and I was certainly flattered to think she sought my opinion on this (what, I’m the one who decides if you’re allowed to draw comics yet? O.o). We mailed back and forth a couple of times, and while she didn’t want to be put up on the blog as “an example” (fair enough) she did agree with me putting some of the stuff I wrote to her up here for the rest of you. Because you might be thinking the same thing. And the answer is pretty simple.

Yes, get started already.

When are you good enough to start drawing comics?

I think the question you’re really asking might not be “am I good enough?” but “will my comic be good enough?” Of course, that depends on what you want to be good enough for. Good enough to gain a bit of an audience on Smackjeeves? Good enough to self-publish? Good enough to publish with ITCH? Good enough to sell to Tokyopop? What?

Whatever your standard is, you have to keep in mind this is the first time you’re drawing a comic. There’s a lot to learn, including good drawing skills, but much besides. Was your first drawing “good enough”? Was the first time you walked “good enough”?

Probably not. Oh, I’m sure that the first time you walked people stood around cheering and clapping like it was some kind of bloody marvel, but listen, they were lying to you. You sucked at walking. You were useless. You could probably manage a few steps before falling over. I mean, really!

Of course, no one expected you to be good, because it was the first time you were doing it. And you probably didn’t sit on your hands and knees, wobbling back and forth thinking “am I good enough to stand up yet? Or should I do some more of this crawling thing first?” Right? Probably not. You just tried, and fell over. Yet, you’re walking now.

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is, you’re over-thinking this. Are you good enough to start a comic? Sure you are! You can clearly draw some, so go for it! Yes, you’re still developing your style, and you’re not sure how to do tones (you can use plain grays, that works too) but you don’t have to be at some predetermined level of skill before you start drawing comics. Also, whether it’s about drawing pretty girls or drawing gritty comics, there’s really no such thing as “good enough”. You will never run out of room to improve. You may reach a point where you feel confident, or where other people are willing to accept you as “pro level”, but there will always be more to learn.

So don’t wait too long. You’ll have to learn how to draw comics by drawing comics, just as you learned how to draw characters by drawing characters. You can probably work on both these things in parallel, and arrive at a point where your comic is “good enough” faster than if you’d tried to learn one before the other. Probably.

There is no amount of crawling that will teach you how to walk. There is no amount of walking that will teach you how to swim. If you want to learn to draw comics, draw comics. Start now!

Of course, also read comics. Study comics. Get Making Comics by McCloud, and scour the net for those rare tutorials that tell you how to do this stuff (you know why there aren’t any tutorials on panelling and such? It’s because it’s bloody hard to make them! >_< ). But please, learn by doing, and don’t expect to be “good enough” according to some artificial standard on your first try. If you actually do it, you’ll have one up on a lot of folks sitting around wondering if they’re good enough yet. If you actually draw a comic, you already are good enough, if you see what I mean.

Really guys, get started already, there’s no need to wait. Don’t stop drawing figures and designing characters and working on your drawing skills, because that’s important too, but you can work on both. And should.

And seriously, stop expecting every single thing you do to be “good enough” by some ridiculous artificial standard your perfectionist side sets for you. It is harming your progress. For pete’s sake, allow yourself to suck!

But maybe that’s a rant for another time.

So, it’s Wednesday, time for a little how-to. If we can all drag our eyes away from the trainwreck that is the last post, we can talk about…

Printers

Finding the right printer for your home-grown comic or manga is a bit like finding true love. Well, OK, it’s nothing like that, really. It’s more of an art than a science, but I have some thoughts on it so I’ll ramble for a bit if that’s OK.

Price

Of course you care about how much the whole thing is going to cost. There’s two options for printing books: digital or litho. If you’re looking for less than 1000 books, digital is probably the way to go. I print my books digitally, so that’s what I’ll mostly be talking about.

Digital book printing is sometimes called print-on-demand or POD, and there’s a couple of internet companies specialising in this kind of thing, including Lulu, and, in the US there’s Comixpress and Kablam, who specialise even further into POD specifically for comics. For a while, it made some sense for us in the UK to use Comixpress or Kablam, but the way the dollar/pound relationship’s been going, I don’t think that’s currently a good idea. Lulu are quite user-friendly and allow you to do it all yourself online. However, if you’re looking for more than say, 20 copies, you can probably get a better price elsewhere.

But where? I hear you ask. I don’t know of any other POD printers. That’s because, secretly, a lot of POD printers don’t advertise to you as such. They just think of themselves as commercial printers. If you Google “book printers” or “brochure printing” or some such, however, you will find lots of places that can do what you need, including local(ish) ones. You’ll probably have to ask them for a quote, and it’s worth asking a couple of them. I have found a great variety in how much printers charge for the same set of books.

The other way is to look in your local area for printing and copying places, or print and design places. Most cities have several. Again, they can vary wildly in how much they’ll charge, so go in beforehand, and ask them how much it will be. Generally, local places are good for floppies (10 – 30 pages) and for small quantities (20 – 50).

Speed and delivery

When you’re going around asking for quotes, you may also ask how long it would take them to deliver the books. When I need something printed right-now-this-week I generally go to my local print shop. They’re pricey, but they can deliver in a day or so. By contrast, some printers can take weeks and weeks, especially if it’s a bigger book they’re printing.

If you’re planning to sell the books at a particular event, or you want them before Christmas or your friend’s birthday, talk to your printer about your deadline, and mention it every time you have any contact with them. If you’re like me, you might think well, they said they’d deliver by this week, so it would be annoying if I bring it up again, but it seems you really need to err on the side of annoying if you want to see your books on time. That has certainly been my experience, and I hear the same from others.

Get them to agree to your deadline, and keep checking they’re on track. Those sad looking guys at the convention who had a table but no books? They’re not stupid. They just took their printer at their word. Try not to let it happen to you.

Service and hassle

You can’t really get the scoop on this beforehand, but it makes a huge difference to have a printer that actually cares about customer service. Sometimes, things don’t go quite right, or you have to make changes at the last minute, or you want more or fewer books than you thought. I’ve worked with one printer who treated me like a pain in the backside rather than a paying customer. Even though they delivered me really shiny, pretty books at a very good price, I stopped working with them because it just wasn’t worth the headache.

I’m not going to call them out on the blog, but you can e-mail me if you insist on finding out who they are. This is one of the reasons you should be making friends with other people doing the small press thing: so you can ask them about their experiences with printers. The service level is really important, and they won’t state that on their websites. Do keep in mind that any business makes mistakes, and it’s probably unfair to blacklist a printer because they didn’t do this that or the other. But the way they handled the mistake once it was pointed out to them is something you can judge them on.

Think of how you like to be treated in restaurants. Did they apologise for getting the order wrong and give you extra garlic bread on the house? Good people. Did they shrug and ask what it was you wanted again while looking distracted? Go eat somewhere else next time. It really matters, and if they mess up once, they’ll mess up again.

Quality and proofs

The quality of the prints is a big deal too, of course. Probably the most important thing. And again there’s great variety and many variables. What’s the quality of their paper, how black is their black, how do they handle colour, what’s the binding like, etc.

A printer should give you a proof: a single copy of the book for you to check it’s all going to be the way you want it. Many printers will also send you samples: a different book, similar to yours, so you can see what the paper, colour, binding, etc is like. Samples are good, they can help you make the right decision, so get them if the printers you’re looking at offer them.

A recommendation

Wow, that was a much longer post than I was planning. Well done for reading all this way. As a reward, I will now tell you who my secret dealers are.

For my latest couple of books, Leek and Sushi and Codename: Pepsi I went to Fallen Angel Media. Don’t be too surprised if you’ve never heard of them. They’re local and fairly new, but they do a good job at a good price. More importantly, their service is spotless. On time, completely unfazed by last minute changes or sudden rush orders, and friendly too.

So I feel perfectly confident in recommending them. That said, you should probably still do your own research and check all the things I talked about above. But if that seems too daunting for you, and you’re in the UK, you could just go with these guys. It’ll probably be OK.

I came across some advice on the Sweatdrop Forum on how to improve your drawing. It went like this:

lock yourself in your bedroom and draw till 4am XD
believe me, it takes a HUGE toll on your health for a while until your body gets used to routine.
(but srsly, only do this:
- on weekends
- if you REALLY want to improve your drawing
- when you’re allowed to (this can vary depending on levels of rebelliousness)
- when you start to feel sleepy, then SLEEP. it’s not good to test your mental endurance – i have before, it;s not fun.

I would like to propose an alternative, which might serve you better (body and mind).

Full disclosure: I am freakishly sensitive to disturbances to my sleep/wake rhythm. Staying up ’till 4 AM drawing would have the kind of repercussions on me as running a marathon. Running a marathon without training. Because I’m being chased by rabid dogs.

So perhaps I am somewhat biased against the staying up to draw late into the night method. I think binge-drawing does have its place, however, I think we’re all likely to overestimate its importance.

Say you start your drawing binge at 9, and work until 4 in the morning. That’s seven hours of drawing. Really good going. But what if, instead, you drew an hour each night? You can do that on weekdays, so that’s 7 hours if you do it for a week. It doesn’t drain your health, you don’t have to sacrifice the next morning to the gods of sleep, and you don’t need to hide what you’re doing from your parents (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

The most important benefit however, is that drawing every day means it’s normal. If you can build a habit like that (and maybe it’s good to start with half an hour) drawing becomes just a thing you do, like having breakfast or checking facebook. You don’t have to remind yourself, or decide whether you’d rather do drawing all night or do something else. You just sit down and draw, like you always do.

And those hours or practice time will start to add up fast. Much faster, I think, than the occasional weekend binge.

People (meaning everyone, meaning including me) have a tendency to overestimate the impact of a one-time heroic effort over the every day, normal level practice. But in the end, it’s the diligent, every day exercises that make a master.

Yes, it will still take a huge investment of time and effort. We had established that you really wanted to improve your drawing though, right?

Upcoming related posts:

• Where do I find a whole hour of time every day?
• What do I practice?
• I can’t stick to my habit! Halp!

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If you’re an artist, or writer, or project setter-upper of any kind, and you put your stuff out there somehow, you will get criticised sooner or later. Sometimes, it will be unasked-for, and sometimes it will be rude or mean. Sometimes it will be in response to your request for feedback, and it will still sting nonetheless.

I don’t really want to go into the “how do I put my shattered ego back together again” aspect of it, today. I may go into that later, but now I just want to talk about what you can do. How you handle the situation, what you say to this rude person who just stomped on all of your dreams and reminded you of just how much you secretly think you suck.

First: don’t react in anger.

None of us are very articulate when we’ve just been virtually kicked in the stomach. If you notice that this comment is giving you the Out Rage, now is not the time to write a response. If you must write something now to make clear you’ve seen the comment, keep it really, really short.

Wow, that’s quite a lot to think about, X. Thank you for your comments.

No more. Don’t promise you’ll write a longer response later if you’re not very sure you’ll feel up to that later. Later you may decide that the best thing to do is ignore this person, and then if you promised you’d give an in depth answer later, you’re kind of screwed.

Think: do you even need to respond?

Criticism can feel like an attack, and sometimes it is even meant as such. It is natural to feel defensive and feel the need to explain why this person is wrong, and how, actually, you don’t suck at all.

But think about this: just because someone dumps a pile of poop at your feet doesn’t mean you have pick up the poop and deal with it. It’s not your poop, it’s theirs. You can just leave it and walk away.

I’m loosely channelling Gandhi there, but you don’t have to be a saint to walk away from an internet fight. Arguments get messy online, especially if you’re dealing with a rude person. Ask yourself if it’s really worth tangling with them, or if it will just make you look as bad as them. Maybe all you need to say is “Thanks for your comments, I’ll think about what you said,” and ignore it.

If you want to explain yourself

Sometimes critics just don’t understand what you’re trying to do. They point something out as a flaw when it was perfectly intentional. This is annoying, and maybe they’d withdraw their criticism if they would understand, so, you feel compelled to explain. That’s fine, but don’t do this:

Ugh, you’re totally missing the point! The [thingy] is [blahdiblah] on purpose, because I’m doing [this amazingly clever thing]. What’s with you people!

Remember when you felt attacked by your critic, and wanted to get all defensive and in their face? Yeah. You just attacked your critic by calling them stupid. Guess what? They’re going to get all defensive and in your face. Uh-huh. Not productive. Try this:

Huh, I guess that didn’t come across very clearly. I actually made the [thingy] [blahdiblah] on purpose, but you read it as a mistake. That’s very interesting, thanks for telling me. I’ll have to think about how I can make [this amazingly clever thing I'm doing] work better. Do you see what I was trying for now? Have you got any ideas on how I can make it work?

Now, that’s not going to work if your critic is just a poophead who likes to make fun of people and watch them cry. But if it’s a reasonable person who recognises that people can get better at what they do, and that that’s the purpose of criticism, they may have something useful to say at this point. Or not, you don’t know. But if nothing else, you’ve just demonstrated that you can handle criticism in a mature way, and you’re eager to get suggestions on how to improve. That will make an impression not just on your critic, but on anyone who is reading without commenting.

Also, if they are a poophead who just wanted to make you cry, you just robbed them of their fun by not having a fit. Ha ha, who’s laughing now, troll?

If they make good points in a rude way

Maybe, when you re-read their post again in the cold light of day, you realise their points are actually valid. Yeah, you know your anatomy is kinda shaky, and the font on the first few pages are hard to read. But did they have to be such an asshat about it? Geez. In cases like that, it’s OK to say “thanks, but…” Saying “thanks, but…” is tricky, because you can often end up sounding like you’re not thanking them at all. Try to make it sound like you mean it.

Hey X, thanks for your comments. I’m aware of the issues with the lettering and the anatomy, and I will be working on improving those. If I can get all meta and critique your critique for a moment, I do think you were being kind of rude. I’m grateful you’re taking the time to comment on these forums, but I think it would be easier for people to take your comments into account if you were a bit more supportive and didn’t make fun like that.

Or something like that. Obviously you shouldn’t copy and paste that, you should say it in your own voice and make it fit the situation. Find some way to acknowledge that they granted you their time and opinion, and that’s kind of nice of them. Then you can make some suggestion on how they can not wrap their gift in poop-paper next time. Maybe they’ll take the point, maybe they’ll continue to be asshats. They will probably continue to be asshats, because asshats are like that.

But again, if you manage not to pitch a fit, and yet stand your ground, you win.

Good luck, and feel free to use the comments to talk about ways you deal with criticism, or share horror stories about the ass-people of the internet. Yes, you can vent here (that can be helpful too).

]]> http://www.itchpublishing.com/news/2009/07/how-to-deal-with-criticism/feed/ 3 http://www.itchpublishing.com/news/2009/07/focal-point/ http://www.itchpublishing.com/news/2009/07/focal-point/#comments Wed, 15 Jul 2009 06:08:26 +0000 Willie http://www.itchpublishing.com/news/?p=819

I’m giving you a bit of theory today. It’s about composition, because many of you want to read about panel layouts, which is really a question about composition. Composition is such a huge subject that I despair of covering it though, even in broad strokes. This is a part of it. Bear with me while I figure this out.

Focal Points

Good visual compositions have a focal point or centre of interest, something that draws the attention. There are many different things that can make something a focal point:

• It is the largest element
• It is brightly coloured
• It’s in the centre of the image
• Lines of the composition or perspective point towards it
• Several characters are looking at one point
• It contrasts strongly with the background
• It is the only human figure or face or eye in the composition

The eye is naturally drawn to faces, figures, and the centre of images. One image can use several of these techniques at the same time to create a powerful focal point.

To get the hang of this, look at professionally produced posters, adverts, shop displays, etc. as you go about your daily life, and think about it in terms of focal point. Where is it? How does it draw the attention? What else is going on in the picture? Having a focal point is not just important when you’re drafting a poster, cover or ad. The question “where is my focal point?” is useful when creating comic page layouts and panels, too. Ask yourself questions like these:

• Which panel on this page or spread is the main panel?
• Where in my establishing shot do I want the eye to linger?
• How can I draw the attention to my main characters in a crowd scene?

I also have some suggested reading for you this week:  Basic Thoughts about Visual Composition The navigation is a bit weird, but there’s some good tips there, and it doesn’t take long to explore. See you next week with more How To stuff.