#also no worries art is on the way i'm a little slow artist anyways lol

[doodly-monk]

I don't understand how many months can pr0nbots be away but then they appear out of nowhere following/DMing you ugh

[rutobuka2]

Hi! :) I just wanted to say that I absolutely adore your art, especially your comics (your style is to die for, it always gives me this heartwarming feeling) I'm particulary impressed with how you compose the comic page, with the panels and the angles. If it's not too much to ask, could you share some advice?

aw gosh thank you ;~; that honestly makes me so happy!!!

click for an entire paper geeking out about comic-making because I have no self-control ⬇️

I’ve never really done a deep research on the study of panel-making, but I have read at least one Scott McCloud book on making comics in general (I’m sure you can find his books online for reference) for my art university thesis. Two things he proposed on his book that have stuck with me are:

1- You need to give people “reason” to turn the page. So I interpreted that as a small cliffhanger on each page, so people are at least curious to know how the story ends, (even if my stories are pretty obvious, I don’t go for high drama too often, or violence, so most people already know everything will end well lol) at least the viewer will want to look at what the characters will feel with the development of the story. So I focus on the quality of the art, humor/feeling, and those small cliffhangers!

2- One of the things I think he mentions (omg it’s been a while) is that western comics have bigger jumps in time between every panel, while japanese manga have smaller jumps. Like, you don’t usually see the progression between [a cup on the table] -> [a hand reaching over] -> [the cup being brought to the character’s lips] on a western comic like you see often in manga. I like both styles, so my temporal jumps vary a lot between them, depending on what kind of message I’m trying to convey! Use that to your advantage to jump ahead on time, or to slow down a lot and really make drama with a small action!

About the general panel layout of my comics, though, I try to stick to a general rule of having few focus spots on each page. Of course it depends on your style, but having too many “explosions” and clutter in EVERY panel will be really hard to understand, right? Try to focus each page for one inciting incident, and I bet it’ll help out with decluttering your story. It helps out a lot if you thumbnail the entire story before starting to work on the lineart of each page. So if you feel as if a page is too chaotic/too many things happening, you can divide it into many pages.

I do angular panels usually when I want the story to read less organized, faster, since anything outside of 90° angles look like arrows! So it’s a bit of a resource to help out on making the page more dynamic? I don’t know if that’s just me creating my weird theories, or if it’s a legit method, though! 

The way I make certain elements jump out of panels is totally instinctual, however, lol! I do that based on manga (if you couldn’t already tell, I’m a big weeb), so don’t be afraid to take inspiration from your favorite stories/comics! Sometimes I want a certain scene to happen in a panel, and the limbs don’t fit, or I want the entire head to be a major focus, so I just have the characters leaking out of the panel! Like if it’s jjjjjjusssstttt a little bit that’s being cut by the panel border, just nudge the entire character out, let it breathe, especially if that panel is one of the major plot points! (But of course, for one thing to look scrumptious and jump out, the rest should look subdued/normal! So try to act according to your aesthetic sense!)

One thing that I admit is probably really unorthodox and bad is the way I draw speech bubbles, lol. I depend 100% on digital software to write/draw the bubbles on top of the entire page... That’s one thing that you HAVE to exercise while drawing the thumbnails of your pages! You HAAAAVE to write the entire dialogue on the sketch or you’ll end up with zero space to write on your bubbles! I know manga artists draw the speech bubbles “with” the characters, even if they have to correct the lines later, it’s easier to know what will be covered up by a huge speech bubble/what you can just skip on drawing! Honestly like 99% of my comic pages are fully drawn behind the speech bubbles, but I have to shed a tear and cover that pretty hand or ass I drew with dialogue because... sadly, words matter a lot! AND USE A LEGIBLE FONT!!! Ask your friends if your handwriting is good, or go to dafont and pick a nice comic font, don’t go for crazy spooky halloween bone fonts for speech!!! The worst thing in the world is a comic you can’t even read!

Also, don’t be afraid of empty spaces in your comic. It needs to look good, most and foremost, so don’t worry about the story being longer if it means you got the message across.

A last advice is: design matters a lot! If your page isn’t working, try rearranging everything in the thumbnail phase, and shout out to your designer friends for their hard work! It’s so essential, but us artists tend to think it’s unnecessary... :P

anyway, sorry for the huge text!!! hope this helps!!!!!!! ^^