#<- other girlie!!!

[inkystaarart]

listened to sir chloe and got a little too insane about my ocs. it will happen again

[r08s]

[mistybunny]

"if hell is a teenage girl then heaven is a woman"

[kirby-the-gorb]

[pyunyrage]

[elodieunderglass]

The first Slay. Of the Day.

[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!

[ironinkpen]

just had the funniest thought in the world which is what if the reason Kipperlilly Clerickiller first started hating Riz was bc she wanted Kristen as her cleric. like wanted her SO fucking bad. her type A ass 100% scoped out her classmates before the first day of freshman year so she could build the optimal party, and imagine her excitement when she found out! that they had a real live Chosen One in their grade!! she probably practiced the snobby little speech she was gonna give Kristen for HOURS, already mentally mapping out her path to valedictorian. meanwhile Riz walks in with a briefcase and a newsie hat and a missing babysitter to find and stumbles into Kipperlilly's Number One Draft Pick by accident in detention. how much do you think she lost her little fucking mind

[ladyhawke]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE 2.08 “And That’s the End of It. There’s Nothing Else” – The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, José Saramago

[yshtal]

obsessed with how the other backgrounds are like “you had a little oopsie moment with your faction so you’re temporarily benched” and then mourn watch is like “what if this LITTLE ORPHANED BABY!!!! was left IN A TOMB!!!!! to be DISCOVERED BY UNDEAD???? and then RAISED (collectively??) BY NECROMANCERS!!!!!!, only to be taken down by THE NECROPOLIS’ SCARIEST DANGER: BUREAUCRACY”

normalest protagonist in all of thedas tbh

[thegreatidk]

My biggest beef with the way Annabeth was written in the show is that I think Rick fell into his own trap. Like his whole thing with Annabeth is that just because someone doesn’t look smart doesn’t mean they aren’t. And while it’s about their literal looks for both the show and the book, book Annabeth also sometimes acted in ways that people wouldn’t stereotypically associate with “smart” because I think we’ve all be condition to think bbc sherlock no emotions genius is the only way to be smart. Book Annabeth acts super flustered around Luke because she's a kid and she has a crush on him, she's afraid of spiders, and wanted to see the arch just because she thought it was cool. In general book Annabeth is allowed to be sillier and have a wider range of emotions than show Annabeth without it detracting from the fact that Annabeth is smart. I find this whole "stoic genius" idea is often used to put down teenage girls for being dumb and superficial just because they show emotions and the only way to beat it is to be cold, calculating, and emotionless and most people just aren't like that.

[valledeliria]

[itissadbutitsmy-artblog]

girls i have loved

[swedenis-h]

When did it happen?

[loves2spwge]

they just want to be one...

commissions @jolyonvane did for me where i asked if he could please please please make stan look as desperate and exhausted as he usually does but is being kept together by all his love for his sbf kyle

[digitalmyyth]

Bashes them all with a comically large hammer