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Doodled my guys while at a furmeet yesterday. Been a while since I doodled these two like this :)

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Liam’s grey now btw. I feel like his reddish-orange eyes would pop more if Liam is grey instead of light brown. It also adds more diversity. I don’t really have a grey Rose Fall character that isn’t Fergus. I already have a character with brown colors, Bridey. And Bridey and Liam will interact, so I feel it’d be more visually interesting if Liam is grey :)

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Confused Ashton

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‘nother Ashton. It’s been a while since I’ve last drawn him more properly until yesterday so I drew him again lol. It’s him. It’s my grumpy guy.

I noticed I draw him crossing his arms a lot and while that just makes him look even more grumpy, it’s actually cuz he doesn’t know what else to do with his hands when he’s standing so he practically always has his arms crossed if he’s not really doing anything, even when he’s comfortable around those he trusts.

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Trust issues + having a natural resting glare has him looking like he’d beat you up if you so much as acknowledge him smh

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How I save time on backgrounds as a full-time webcomic artist

Hi! I make webcomics for a living, and I have to be able to draw a panel extremely fast to keep up with my deadlines. I draw about 50 panels a week, which gives me about 45 minutes per panel if I want any semblance of a healthy work-life balance.

Most webtoon artists save time on backgrounds by using 3d models, which works for them and is great! but personally I hate working in 3d... I went to school for it for a year and hated it so much I completely changed career paths and vowed never to do it again! So, this is how I save time without using any 3d, for those of you out there who don't like it either!

This tactic has also saved me money (3d models are expensive) and it has helped me converting my comic from scroll format into page format for print, because I have much more art to work with than what's actually in the panels. (I'll touch on this later)

So, first, I make my backgrounds huge. my default starting size is 10,000 x 10,000 pixels. My panels are 2,500 pixels wide, so my backgrounds are 4x that, minimum. Because of this, I make them less detailed than I could or that you might expect so it doesn't look weird against my character art when I shrink portions of it down.

I personally find it much easier to add in detail than to make "removing" details look natural at smaller sizes, but you might have different preferences than I do.

I also make sure to keep all of my elements on separate layers so that I can easily remove or replace them, I can move them to simulate different camera angles more easily, and it's simple to adjust the lighting to imply different times of day.

Then I can go ahead and copy/paste them into my episodes. I move the background around until it feels like it's properly fitting how I want.

Once I've done that in every panel, I'll go back through the episode and clean up anything that looks weird, and add in solid blacks (for my art style) Here's a quick before and after of what that looks like!

This makes 90% of my backgrounds take me just a few hours. This is my tactic when I'm working in an environment that an entire scene, or multiple scenes, will take place.

But many panels will inevitably have a location that's used exactly once, and it would waste time and effort to draw a massive background for those. So in 10% of cases, I just draw the single panel background in the episode. I save all of these, just in case I can re-use it later (this happens more often with outdoor locations, but I save them all nonetheless!)

I generally have to draw about 2 big backgrounds per episode, and 3-5 single-panel backgrounds per episode! At the beginning of an arc/book the number is higher, but as the series is continuing and I'm building up an asset library of indoor and outdoor elements to re-use for the book, the number generally goes down and I save more time.

My series involves time travel and mysteries, so there's a lot of new locations in it and we're constantly moving around. If I were working on a series that was more consistent in this aspect, this process would save me even more time!

Like I said earlier, this also saves me a lot of pain and gives me a lot more options as I'm converting from scroll format to print format!

panels that look like this in scroll format...

can look like this in print!

because I drew the background like this, so I didn't need to go through the additional effort to add in the extra detail to expand it outwards at all.

Anyways, I hope this helps someone! As always if it doesn't help, just go ahead and disregard. This is what I do and what works for me, and I feel like I only ever see time-saving tips for comics that involve 3d models and workflows, which don't work for me at all! I know there's more people like me out there, so this is for you!

Enjoy!

Also obligatory "my webcomic" if you want to see this in action or check it out!

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Sketch of Seth I did while at a convention :)

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Lately I’ve been really thinking about just. the most mundane scenarios and interactions ever. If I draw some things soon they may reflect this. Imagining my characters going about their daily lives or things like that is so fun for some reason? Like. Yay the least exciting thing is happening and it’s so fun for my brain! Lol

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My friend wanted to draw, in her words, low effort doodles of The Gang (+ Scarlet). Absolutely wonderful :)

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Mike and Ashton sketchessss :]

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I have been working so hard designing Aroma’s house. It’s a two story building so I’m struggling even more with it but I think I’m getting there.

The reason I’m planning the layouts of any buildings in the story (ones that will be seen on the inside at least) is so I can use them as reference and keep things consistent. So even if I struggle so much with it, it’s still something I’m wanting to do.

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I want to redo the maps of the characters’ houses but I get so caught up in making everything to scale (in relation to each other) and constantly resizing things and I end up never finishing and then time passes and I feel the need to try again starting from scratch. It keeps happening. I need to not worry so much about the sizes of sinks and chairs and counters and just. get them done. I can worry about all that for the actual environment art. Layout planning is already hard enough smh

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I’ve started posting on other socials as well, which includes my more recent Rose Fall art. This is still my main base tho, the others I’ve just been cross-posting on. Art will still be posted here first but here’s the links anyway.

SheezyArt - Bluesky - Pillowfort (still feeling this one out tho)

I don’t think I’ll actually post the comic on any of those, just art related to it. Maybe update announcements on Bluesky. None of them are Rose Fall specific, so I don’t just post Rose Fall art. But they show up a lot since I draw my own characters more than anything else. I don’t plan on anything special with these tbh but thought I’d share regardless.

(I actually made my Pillowfort account some years ago so there’s a few old (non-Rose Fall) art in there but. it still feels new to me cuz tbf I didn’t post much initially lol)

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hi everyone! the developer of the website I host Explorerz on is having a hard time covering his monthly costs. i think Comicfury is such a wonderful space for comics and one of the few remaining websites that values art over predatory profiteering. Kyo makes it a point to keep the game level - ads are opt-in, custom css for comics is available to everyone, etc. if you can spare a couple bucks each month (the lowest tier is $3 which shakes up to 36 dollars a year), you’d be preserving one of bastions of creator-centered webcomic culture and helping it continue its growth!

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Tired.

Sketched this back in March. So nearly a year ago. I could’ve sworn I already posted this but. I guess not?

(Character uses he/they pronouns)

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Colored sketch of a very minor character

(Character uses she/her pronouns)

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hopefully this makes sense and helps someone! this is just how i do it tho, somebody asked me so i made it