#I might redraw this digitally to get the eye effect i wanted to actually work

[karimelthefloof]

We had a power outage due to somebody cutting the powerline with a chainsaw (Fun!) BUUTT it allowed me to practice inking and coloring instead of scrolling through tumblr and youtube-

Although i did spend the whole outage drawing this one art and listening to spooky stories on youtube cause i had anough phone battery to last me a day >->

[cyanidefilledcandy]

Soooo....I've decided to repick up a project I started a couple years ago...or at the very least I have the desire to.

It's a parody comic and my goal is to have the first chapter done by October 31, which I doubt will happen since it's just over a month away, and as I mentioned, I haven't touched it in just about two years (or hell....may be over two years now...)

But I will admit, I have been procrastinating all afternoon in even starting to work on it because frankly, I am absolutely terrified to...

This isn't anything new because I always get terrified to draw anything unless it's digital and that's only because I know if I make a mistake, it can be permanently removed whereas with traditional drawing, my mistakes can be seen clearly, even if I try to erase them.

Another thing is that when I decided I might try a crack at it again a few months ago, I opened my sketchbook to find the pages completely ruined... Part of it is my fault because I stupidly chose to do the pages front and back in an effort to be cost effective and I work with graphite....

So needless to say, a lot of the pages got smeared. But the real issue is that some weird stains got on the pages which I truly don't understand as it's been in storage in a bag for basically a year and a half...

I found a hack for redrawing art, but it won't work because of my idiot decision to make them front and back... And also the idea of trying to redraw them TRULY terrifies me because I've never been able to redraw any of my drawings properly....even if I'd just did them, even back when I was drawing regularly. I can't imagine how bad it will be now that I haven't drawn in over a year and a half and my skill has been steadily getting worse over the years regardless. :/ (I once read someone here on Tumblr that said if you think your art is suddenly getting worse, it's not. It's just that you've tuned your eye and are just now noticing flaws that you didn't realize before because you've learned more. I thought that might've been the case, but no....my drawing has just gotten worse...)

It really pisses me off, though. I hate my fear and perfectionism because it holds me back from doing so much I want to do... Like even in school, I'd rather not take a test and receive a flat 0 than to try and fail...

And yes, I know that realistically, I can't get better if I don't try, if I don't use it, I'll lose it, and perfection doesn't exist....especially in art. (In fact, I LOVE that fact about art. I know a lot of artists I follow say they prefer digital because they can make the work look cleaner....and frankly, I love a messy, sketchy piece of art.)

But, it's so unbelievably hard to break this mindset. I can tell myself until my mind is blue in the face that it doesn't matter if it's not perfect and to just try and practice to get better. But, I can't get over that mental block of trying and failing. Of not being able to get what I see in my head on the page...

And it's even more frustrating because looking back...I am actually shocked and impressed with what I have...

I have seven pages drafted...Messy, and not nearly done, but still, SEVEN pages! And they don't look half bad. And I know I can refine them make them at least passable...

But it's just the idea of completely starting from scratch...when I'm so out of practice...

I have nothing really to say with this post. Just venting my frustrations with myself to myself. (And whoever chooses to read this...)

IDK...

I'm thinking of getting a new drawing pad and maybe some tracing paper to trace the pages and restart them that way.... But we'll see. (I'm getting a new book regardless. I had completely forgot the pages were kerfuckled until just now...)

[byutak]

Senpai, how do I draw as you? (Puts on a cute, innocent face) Please teach me your ways.

I never thought that someone would ask me for this…but okay

My ways consist of:

Practicing for 7 years and counting

Getting inspired by people

and nothing else

Let me write a proper explanation:

Practicing:

I think that everybody already knows this step, but what is really practicing?

I’ve come to see a lot of people to who I’ve told them to ‘’practice everyday’’, and almost all of them replied ‘’I draw everyday but I’m not getting better’’… and that’s really sad, because you’re doing it wrong.

Practicing everyday and drawing everyday are not the same. Practice has the objective to improve your skills while learning your mistakes, you either get better at drawing or at observation. Drawing is just testing your skills, as if it was a self-exam.

How can you practice? Draw some specific thing a bunch of times on the same canvas, try to draw that thing that you can’t draw. It doesn’t matter how it turns out, you are learning and improving. ‘’But it looks worse the more I keep trying’’ Yes, exactly. Your observation skill is improving, your drawing skill doesn’t necessarily improve everytime you practice.

When your observation improves, then that means that you can recognize what is wrong in your drawing and what is decent good, and when this happens, this is the real time to try improving your drawing skill. You don’t like how the hair looks? Try new random ways to draw it! The face looks too pointy? Try doing more curvy lines!

References are all over the internet too, so I’m sure that it won’t be hard to find the right pose or camera angle that you need! This is also a great way to learn how things work! The more you look at it and study it, the more you learn.

(Also extra tip: If you are from the kind of people who draws hands hiding behind the character let that bad habit go. Yes, I called it bad habit. It means that you’re using the pose as an excuse to not draw hands because you hate drawing/can’t draw them, and that’s exactly where my point in practice is. If you don’t try, of course you won’t get better, so go ahead and draw amalgamates as hands! They will look nice eventually! )

And now, the other point:

Inspiration:

Getting inspired by others mostly goes along with your drawing skill improvement. (fyi by ‘’inspired by others’’ I mean the people that you admire or that story that attracted you so much).

When you admire someone, you have 2 ways to use them as an inspirational source: Motivation and learning.

As a motivation, there’s not much to explain. You just feel like if you keep practicing you’ll get to be as good as them, which is good! but here’s the trick: When you are drawing,you have to accept something: You’ll never be as good as the people that you admire so much, but you’ll get to be as good as yourself! (Umm…does this make any sense at all?…anyway I hope that you get the point). You can’t be like someone else, but neither can others be like you!

Why do I mention this? because lots of people say ‘’I’m not as good as this artist’’ ‘’I can’t do this as great as this person does’’… and that’s the wrong way of motivation usage. You have to compare yourself to nobody else but yourself!

‘’But how can I then be as good as them while not doing that?’’ While I have to mention again the practice stuff, this is also when the ‘’learning’’ comes in!

I bet that a lot of you doesn’t have just one inspiration source, and that’s great and helpful! First, take some of that people as an example right now and take a few of their drawings together, and while you are comparing them (both, the same artist’s drawings and different artists’ ones), analyze and study some of these facts:

What is it that attracts you to their drawings specifically? Is it the lineart? The coloring? Usage of lighting and shading? Special effects? The art style? It doesn’t matter, anything works!

How do they do that thing that attracts you so much? Can you implement it on your art? Go wild theorizing! and while you’re doing it, you might either get the theory right,or you may even discover something new that you can implement in your art!

Can you combine all the different things? You might like the way that Artist A and Artist B do the eyes, but they are different. Why not trying to make an hybrid between both of their styles, added to yours? (Please DON’T try to do their style exactly).

(there might be some more but I think that these are enough).

In resume, go crazy while improving in art thanks to your inspiration sources! learn and level up!

Let me prove my point:

That one drawing that you once were SO proud of, and you feel kinda attached to it?

BAM! DIFFERENCE! I tried changing angles, details and stuff from that drawing…and it turned out even better than what I once did! And I felt super proud of myself when I did it

Look, you don’t even have to redraw a super-cool drawing to compare your old art! Just take any drawing and draw it again in the course of the years…

Like this!!

This also applies to digital art as well! the lineart, the usage of color and blending can be compared too! (okay maybe that stuff can be also compared on traditional art but still).

See? I didn’t even need to finish this drawing to see how much I’ve improved in less than 2 years! (spoilers: actually I do have to finish it).

Do you want to know how I’ve improved in all this time? Because I’ve practiced everyday both, things that I could draw and things that I couldn’t! because they help me to improve and practice! what I could already do? I’m doing it better, and what I couldn’t? now I can, and it’s all thanks to being inspired by awesome people on a daily basis and practicing no matter what!

Nobody can teach you how to surpass yourself but you, because you are the only one who understands their own art and what you want to achieve

[subparatbestcomics]

Artist’s Commentary

As the end of this project inexorably approaches, I can only wonder what project will be next in line. Ideally, it would be something smaller and more streamlined than RFO, so that errors in both art and writing can be more easily corrected. It's been a learning process so far, anyway.

RFO 61 Occasionally, you may notice a character's eyes go from solid black pupils to empty white. This is usually not on purpose. What happens more often, is imperfections in the circle that I cannot ignore lead me to fill in the eye, even increasing its diameter to cover up irregularities. On an unrelated note, the angel's wings are still a challenge; rendering a complex and textured form with pen is far beyond what I feel capable of at this time. If RFO is ever to move from draft to a finalized version, this will be a major stumbling block.

RFO 62 The Angel smacking the pie out of the Devil's hands was originally intended to be much stronger, but I was unable to think of a way to use a dynamic angle while still having all three characters visibly emoting. On a characterization note - in previous altercations, the Angel used a disguise or a tool to interact with someone else, but as he gets frustrated with the Devil's antics and confusion with Jude, he becomes personally invested in the conflict, and uses his hands directly.

RFO 63 It is on this page that experimentation with markers is phased out for the foreseeable future, leaving only dollar-store pens to ink with. Where before the Angel used a sword, and fought only as a means to an end, he now acts with anger and revulsion. For a moment, his duty to inform Jude of the choice he must make, is forgotten. Side note - I notice on review that I cannot seem to keep the shape of the Devil's skull the same. It goes to show the importance of having a character sheet to reference on a project like this.

RFO 64 I am very proud of this page. I felt more eager and energized to work then was normal, and that energy went into the backgrounds, which had been blank and bare for the last few pages. Throughout the comic, there have been a number of supernatural acts, both divine and infernal, and I felt it important for these to look and feel different. Divine acts in RFO might include flashes of light, smokeless flames, and the healing or restoration of a target. Infernal acts have physicality to them; being of a lower spiritual nature means they have stronger effects in the material world, and they leave evidence behind (ashes, smoke, cracked walls).

RFO 65 As I go over previous pages, I notice the Angel gets the short end of the stick much more often. Seeing him tossed around is funny, I suppose, because his pain is clearly temporary and his injuries clearly mend-able. But it also gives the impression that he - and his side of the argument - are not to be taken seriously, which was not the intent at all. The point of RFO is that Jude is given a choice between his guaranteed survival in the short-term, and the long-term potential survival of mankind. The Devil's option is immediately tainted by virtue of being given by the Devil, while the Angel's option was presumable handed down by God himself. This creates an unbalance that we tried to correct, by having the Devil be older and more experienced persuader of mortals, while the Angel was made younger and less able to understand humans. Maybe we over-corrected? In any case, It absolutely needs re-examination before RFO goes beyond the draft stage.

RFO 66 I'm never quite sure how realistic or cartoonish I want to have the characters be. I haven't had the energy to devote to proper realism in many years, and I enjoy the exaggerated features of cartoons; but I also want to improve in my skill at rendering realistic figures and environments for future projects. Side note - The smoke in the first panel is made to look like faces in anguish, which only makes sense, since the smoke is a product of hellfire.

RFO 67 More practice with pen techniques in the background on this page. I am especially pleased with the middle left panel transition from striations to fading dots. Side note - I really do not know how to render the Devil's arm-hair. Finding reference material for a method that actually fits the style and doesn't look out of place is hard. I can't just draw a zigzag down the arm and call it a day.

RFO 68 With the Angel gone, the Devil tries to buddy up Jude and sway him over, but gets a little lost in his own issues. Throughout RFO, it was important to show the Devil doesn't really care for Jude. He briefly notes similarities in their situations, but no real sympathy is felt. He only able to care for others performatively.

RFO 69 This was the page where we realized the Angel's treatment is unfair, and while later versions of RFO will work to correct this, it will have to be what it is for now, until the draft is finished. You may also be asking why the Angel fell in from the roof, when he left through the floor. Originally, the Angel was to bust back in via Jude's basement door across from the fridge. But I felt it would raise questions, since the Angel came up through the floor in the living room, which had demon hands and flames inside, which were all turned to salt. The basement stairwell would have connected to the salt under the living room, and if the Angel could return through there, why couldn't demons use the unsalted stairwell? I decided instead to have him come through the roof, and serendipitously, the bathroom window, which had demons and angels fighting outside, is directly above the kitchen window in the layout of Jude's house. Instead of a fiery entrance from below, a watery fall from above.

RFO 70 I'm pretty pleased with the page, excepting the last panel, wherein I both lost energy, and was unable to get the Angel standing up to look quite right. As I've said before, I can only sketch so much out before the marks on the paper are simply uneraseable, and I refuse to completely redraw pages. My wrist can only take so much, and my resources only stretch so far. If and when I can work on projects digitally without severe technical issues, then errors can be more easily corrected, and revisions made.

Jacob Birmingham

[annaxkeating]

Making Market Forces Work for You: A Q&A With Product Positioning Pro April Dunford

There are only a few instances when I wish I could travel back in time. One is when I’m reading the kid’s menu. One is when I stumble upon Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure on TBS. And one is after I’ve launched a new product or campaign.

You and I may share that last one.

Though we typically know the T’s are crossed and I’s are dotted, it’s the pesky unknowns us marketers wrestle with before a new product launch that keep us up at night. Things like: Is the product’s name right? Is the copy clear, but boring? Clever, but convoluted? Is the value as obvious as it should be?

Beyond messaging, most often, it comes down to whether your product’s positioning is right from the start; whether you set the product up in the right conditions and market category in the first place.

We all know the market is more saturated than ever. But what if, instead of fighting it, we used that momentum to our advantage?

April Dunford is the Founder of Rocket Launch Marketing, the former VP of Marketing for a series of high-growth startups and previous executive at big-wig companies like IBM and Nortel. She’s also a speaker, author and in-demand consultant specializing in product positioning. Advising companies on go-to-market strategy and messaging, she ensures they’re going after the right category and communicating their offering in a way that grabs prospects’ attention and makes its value crystal clear.

Basically, April knows her stuff. And she’ll be bringing her smarts to the CTAConf stage in August! But we have the patience of a toddler waiting for an iPad to charge, so we peppered her with some burning questions in anticipation of her talk. She was the top-rated speaker at last year’s conference, so we know this year’s gonna be good. You can enjoy a little time traveling to 2017 via the clip below:

Check out our Q&A with April below and keep your eyes peeled for the exclusive-to-everyone-who-reads-this-post discount code to see her in person.

First thing’s first: What exactly is product positioning and how does it differ from brand positioning?

April: You might say “Positioning” has its own positioning problem! It’s such a misunderstood concept. For some folks it’s mainly a messaging exercise, while others associate it very closely with branding. But positioning is much, much broader than either of those things.

Product positioning describes the specific market you intend to win and why you are uniquely qualified to win it. It’s the underpinning of your go-to-market strategy and impacts everything from marketing to sales, to customer success and the product itself.

What’s the first thing a client asks when you sit down with them?

April: Most CEOs don’t know it’s a product positioning problem they have. They know their customers have a hard time understanding what their product is all about and why they should care. That confusion results in long sales cycles, low close rates and poor marketing campaign performance.

A lot of the work I do is centered around teaching folks how to create context for their products by focusing on making value obvious to customers. Positioning as a concept isn’t new but, until now, we’ve all been pretty terrible at actually doing the work it requires. I teach companies a process for finding and delivering the best position for their products.

What’s the most common mistake you’ve seen businesses make with their go-to-market strategy?

April: Hands down, the most common mistake I see is companies trying to market to a set of customers that is much too broad. The reasoning is that, by going after a massive market, it will be easier to claim a small piece of it.

In reality, the opposite is true. Broad targeting puts your offering in direct competition with established market leaders that can both out-market and out-sell you. Beyond that, it leads to diluted messaging that waters down your best features and differentiators.

The easier—and far more effective thing to do—is target a smaller slice of customers who are highly suited to your product’s key features and the distinct value they can deliver.

Customers who most acutely feel the pain you address will be the most excited about your solution to that pain. They’ll pay you more, close faster and love your product so much they’ll end up marketing it for you. (Editor’s note: AKA the Holy Grail of marketing.)

Once you’ve established yourself with these highly suitable customers, you can build on your strengths and start to expand your targets to larger markets.

Can you tell us about the most challenging product positioning case you’ve worked on?

April: At IBM, I led the launch of a family of products that demanded an entirely new market category built from scratch. We had to convince customers, experts and analysts that certain market forces existed and would inevitably redraw the lines around existing market categories. On top of that, I had to convince them that IBM was the only company capable of drawing those lines.

There was also a catch: The products we had in that family weren’t particularly innovative on their own, at least not at the beginning. So the story itself hinged on convincing people that all of this revolutionary change was going to be sparked by the innovative combination of some pretty ho-hum products.

We managed to pull it off through sheer guts, a sprinkling of good luck and the deep marketing talent of my team at the time. But mainly, guts.

Your upcoming talk at CTAConf is about how to turn “marketing headwinds into tailwinds.” What do you mean by that?

April: In any market category, you’ll encounter extremely powerful forces that can either work for you or against you.

We often position our products in markets with strong competitors who are already perceived as leaders. Like swimming upstream, or fighting headwinds, we have to work extra hard to win in that environment.

Luckily, most products can be positioned in many different markets that offer greater chances of success. We just have to find ones where that inherent force is pushing us forward, like a tailwind, instead of pushing back on us.

In my talk, I’m going to outline exactly how you can use existing market forces to your advantage and grow revenue faster.

Want to hear this talk at CTAConf 2018? Get 10% off all Early Bird tickets ($80 off for General Attendees) by using the code “AprilCTAConf2018” at checkout.

What should marketers consider, before anything else, when launching a new product?

April: The success of a launch depends on how well you understand three things:

The problem your product solves and the competition it faces.

The true value your product delivers for customers.

Which types of customers care the most about that value and, most importantly, why?

If you’ve got these down, you’ll know exactly who you need to reach, the channels you need to use to reach those people and the value proposition you need to communicate.

What should marketers be doing differently now in terms of product positioning vs. five years ago?

April: We should start doing it! Most companies don’t deliberately position their product. They assume a default positioning based on how they first thought about it.

For example, say you’ve built a new email client. But after you got it into the market, you got some feedback, added or removed features and continued to iterate on it. Now you may have a solution that’s best positioned as a “group chat” or “social network” or “team collaboration tool” instead of focusing on email capabilities.

The market frame of reference you choose will completely change the way customers perceive your product and their expectations around pricing, features, support and your competitors.

Because the markets are more crowded, more competitive and shifting faster than they ever have before, we can’t get away with ignoring product positioning if we want our products to be successful.

Get every actionable detail of April’s positioning framework and go-to-market guide in her upcoming talk at Call to Action Conference, this August 27-29. Use the code “AprilCTAConf2018” at checkout for 10% off single, group and customer rates (that’s on top of the Early Bird discount, ending May 31st)! Want more reasons to go? Click here for a bunch of ‘em.

from Digital https://unbounce.com/call-to-action/product-positioning-expert-april-dunford/ via http://www.rssmix.com/