#my brain is just that one comic

[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!

[cangrellesteponme]

wife

[sandeewithtwoe]

Avatar The Last Airbender moment

Dream and Nightmare belongs to Jokublog

Ink belongs to comyet/myebi

Transcript:

Dream: Listen, Ink, I know my brother is still in there somewhere! Maybe he just wants to talk!

Dream: Brother, stop! Why are you doing this?!

Nightmare: What, isn’t it obvious?

Nightmare: IM ABOUT TO CELEBRATE BECOMING AN ONLY CHILD!

Dream: Okay, maybe he doesn’t want to talk

Ink: Non, really??

Nightmare: (laughing in the background)

[paimt]

just realized i never posted this out loud

[avocadoraisin]

A vampire and a werewolf walk onto a crime scene...

[luckyjorabbit]

Soooo... I started reading One Piece again teehee *twirls hair* ( 6w6)

[kitamars]

oh no! more ginhiji

[spearxwind]

SHUT 🤏 UP

[b4kuch1n]

same teacher, different lessons

transcript

[ganondoodle]

(wip)

some doodles that took me way too much effort; an updated design for Raal (aka demise when he was a mortal, he still uses that name when in disguise and modeled those forms after how he imagined he would look if he ever grew up as one) and a clunky doodle of both his blade spirits just after forging them

[deoidesign]

Happy pride from Adam and Steve, my t4t gay vampire and werewolf!!!

They're from my webcomic. It's good. I'm not biased. It's funny and gentle and they time travel to a new location every full moon, where there's a new little mystery to solve!

[welcometogrouchland]

I understand that literature nerd Jason Todd is kind of overblown in fanon compared to it's actual presence in canon (a few issues during his pre (and post?)crisis Robin tenure that highlight it) BUT consider that I think it's hilarious if the unhinged gun toting criminal has strong opinions on poetry

[factual-fantasy]

I just finished watching Avatar: The Last Airbender. I thought it was fantastic, though I have one☝️ complaint...

It is CRIMINAL that the Gaang never addressed/discovered Appas fear of fire. 😤

Poor Appa was sold to a fire nation circus where he was abused and whipped with fire and forced to preform which made him scared of fire. Azula even ADDRESSES THIS FEAR. "Ah, afraid of fire now, are we?" SO ITS A LEGIT FORMED FEAR. BUT ITS NEVER BROUGHT UP OR DISCOVERED BY THE GAANG?? EVEN THOUGH SUKI WAS THERE AND WOULD KNOW ABOUT HIS FEAR TOO???

How a sky bison gonna fight the fire nation IF HE'S SCARED OF FIRE? They TOTALLY should have addressed that. it could have been a bonding moment between Toph, Aang and Appa and everything!😭😭😭😭

HOW SWEET WOULD IT HAVE BEEN IF THE GAANG FIGURED OUT WHAT HE'S BEEN THROUGH BY THE BURN SCARS ON HIS PAWS, THE HOLES IN HIS BACK/SHOULDERS/HEAD/FACE, THE WEIGHT HE LOST AND THE STRAINED MUSCLES AND HAD A WHOLE EPISODE PAMPERING APPA AND TENDING TO HIS INGURIES?? 😭😭

Especially since at this point he'd been missing for like 4 weeks by this point?? Making an episode where everyone has a special reunion moment with Appa and showing the Gaang helping Appa physically and mentally recover from EVERYTHING he's been through would have been the best. 😔😔😔 Would have been my favorite episode by FAR.

I would LOVE to draw a comic about this myself but that would be a TON of work and research to make sure I write everyone's characters correctly and have the timeline of events all line upppp... and I could write it but the truth is I'm a lousy fic writer and I don't think it would come out the way I wanttttt 😩😩😩

Hopefully I can find a fix-it fic for this particular issue or the post war comics will surprise me with its Appa content 👀👀👀

[sysig]

Two skeletons in a trench lab coat (Patreon)

Bonus:

He’s very careful! Everything was fine before you interrupted!

[achillean-knight]

Part 2

[turtleblogatlast]

Things I make for myself when insomnia kicks in

Just a chart about what I wanna change up and keep consistent in my art - I mainly wanna draw Raph with a tail because he deserves one, it fits too well. Donnie gets a long tail too because I didn’t realize how dino-like he looks until I gave him one, and now it’s a must for me haha.