#comics are bad and i hate them

[deoidesign]

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!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Laios's three Boy Best Friends. And yes, they hate him.

[zocchini37]

They're everything to me

[myuminji]

9 days, 12 dead.

[onejellyfishplease]

I get this urge whenever I eat cherries. I have acted upon this urge.

[welcometogrouchland]

[ID in ALT] Steph and Damian doodle! This taps a bit into their pre-52 dynamic so that's what I was thinking design wise at first but I wanted to draw it w their more recent designs as well to stay hashtag current and topical, so you get both/a fusion, lol

[lil-gingerbread-queen]

Harley joining the batfam be like.

(More shenanigans under the cut)

Harley: Bats! I have a gift for ya! Batman: ... What is this? Harley: A club's membership's card! Batman: ... Harley: And I've some for the commie, his daughter and your big red riding hood.

The cards in question:

(yes, she drew the pictures. Jason is Bat Brat for reasons)

[benbamboozled]

Oh hey not me going through the Jason Todd-centric Batman Annual #25 and getting stabbed in the heart again by the little details.

[soleminisanction]

Okay this misconception keeps coming across my dash and it drives me nuts because it means people are lumping two very different versions of the DC universe under one disparaging banner. So let me just say this to get it off my chest because I'm this close to shaking somebody:

The New 52 ended seven years ago in 2016.

That started a section of DC's history called "Rebirth" in which they started bringing elements of the pre-Flashpoint continuity back into the timeline. The first changes came in a big burst called Convergence -- which is how Jon Kent effectively manifested fully formed at 10 years old -- while other reintroductions like Kon-El, Bart Allen, Cass Cain, etc. were more gradual.

The original plan, being forced through by King of Bad Decisions Dan Didio, was that after ~4-5 Rebirth would give way to another full reboot known as 5G. I could go into detail about the plans but they're honestly not important to this post because Didio was (thankfully, finally) ousted from his role as publisher early in 2020, along with something like 80% of the higher-level editorial staff. DC had a complete creative turn-over at the start of the pandemic and completely changed directions as a result. The material being developed for 5G was retooled into the hypothetical future event "Future State" to buy the new staff time to pull together their new direction.

That new direction is called INFINITE FRONTIER. It started in 2021 and THAT is the era of DC comics we're in now. Infinite Frontier is an active push to bring back the pre-Flashpoint characters, as well as some pre-Crisis ideas and characters, while also keeping the few elements of the New 52 that people actually liked (like Jason Todd's more heroic characterization) and actively pursuing diversity initiatives both in creative staff and in creations. And outside of the big events, they're making a real effort to keep these comics short and self contained in the hopes that that'll make them more accessible. So it's actually really easy, if you read comics pre-Flashpoint and dropped off, to just pick up a series and go with the flow. Anything confusing is just a Google away.

Please, please don't make the mistake of thinking modern comics are as bad as the New 52 just because some people are butthurt their ship isn't getting canonized. There have been some really good comics made in the last few years that you should totally try! Spirit World, Monkey Prince and the entire We Are Legends line has been genuinely fantastic. The new Birds of Prey is shaping up to be a ton of fun. Dark Knights of Steel is an entertaining Elseworld. Urban Legends and Brave & the Bold have done some really fun things with shorter anthology books. One Minute War was a really fun Flash family event and everything Stargirl's done recently is liable to make you cry.

I'm begging people to give these comics a chance. It's just really sad to see them being dismissed out of hand.

[shapelytimber]

not sure if you've answered this before but for the sapphic au... how did leia and luke get made if their parents are both cis ? are they force babies, created by anakin meddling with the force just as sidious did and thereby killing padme? or maybe they just went to star wars sperm bank idk. desperately curious to see if you have an explanation in mind or if they just kind of popped into existence (sorry I just get wrapped up in silly details with everything)

Oh am I glad you asked !

Only hole in my flawless explanation..... There is no way in hell Anakin in topping regularly in this relationship. So gotta assume the moment they tried to switch it up a bit they got magic stap babies.

[littlefankingdom]

Reading From the DC Vault: Death in the Family: Robin Lives! makes me want to say something, and it's that I'm fucking tired of reading that Bruce ruined Jason's life by making him Robin.

Firstly, Jason didn't die because he was Robin, but because Joker is a murderer who do not care about who he harms and kills. There is no way Joker wouldn't have also tortured and killed Jason Todd, son of Sheila and adopted son of Bruce Wayne, just for the fun of it. Imagine, torturing a young boy who wanted to call the cops on him to save his mother, only for her to betray him, making him cry in pain and look up for her but she never comes to help, it would be right in his alley. He does that all the time, the fact that Jason was Robin is just the cherry on top.

Secondly, Jason was ready to throw hands with Ma Gunn BEFORE he became Robin. When he realized what was going on and she was training them to be her gang members, he found a way to contact Batman and told him. When he thought Batman didn't believe him, he decided to deal with it on his own. HE WAS A VERY SMALL STARVING 12 YEARS OLD, READY TO FIGHT A GANG FOR JUSTICE. Don't fucking tell me Bruce ruined this kid, Jason was going to fight in these streets for justice with or without Batman. He probably would have died without Batman, because he was a homeless kid and in no shape or form could rivalize with harmed gang members. Let's fucking stop lying about Jason, he is a born fighter, Bruce didn't make him this way.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Turtles and Tribulations

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[stealingyourbones]

Gotta love when folks write Superman incredibly anti-clone even though he had good reason in the beginning to Not Like Superboy (HES A WINDOW INTO WHAT CLARK WOULD HAVE BEEN WITHOUT THE KENTS) and decide that forever on he’ll be spiteful towards clones even though he literally Does Not Care if you’re a clone unless you’re Superboy.

[mainalias]

thinking about compiling screenshots of golden/silver age batman exclusively calling dick his ward to combat the allegations that it was “initially a father-child relationship”

[stormikitty]

Cosmic Love prompt:

Danny and Damian have been engaged since they were babies. The Fentons wanted access to Lazarus water, and they made a deal with the league of assassins to get it. Danny is trans. Danny and Damian haven't seen each other since Damian was 10 (I imagine Danny is anywhere from a few months to a year younger, so Danny was either 9 or 10 at the time). They had been seeing each other twice a year the last time they saw each other. They used to have more time scheduled to spend together before Damian started training to be an assassin. They weren't getting along when they last saw each other. Danny was upset/angry that his life had been planned out for him and that he was going to be in an arranged marriage. Damian was kind of a jerk at the time (because of trauma but he was still a jerk), and he thought Danny was being a jerk too because having his whole life planned for him was all Damian knew and it didn't make sense to him to get upset about it because that's his reality that he just had to accept. Damian does care about Danny, and cares about what he wants too. But they were kids. They were upset about their situation and frustrated and angry with each other and their families. They haven't had contact with each other at all since Damian came to Gotham.

Skip forward a few years and Damian has fallen in love with his best friend, Jon. He tells his family and Jon about the arranged marriage even though it's likely not going to be a thing anymore since he has cut ties with the league.

Damian and Jon start dating.

Danny is 16 and on the run from his parents and the GIW. He only managed to escape after he had already been captured and vivisected. He goes to Gotham because it'll be harder for his parents and the GIW to find him there. He runs into Damian and Jon at a park while he's at a point in his life where he's got nothing left an he's just sad, scared, angry, lonely, and he'd just about sell what's left of his life for a hug.

[sisaloofafump]

Clark & Lois helping out with connections