#WHAT A LIFESAVER

[rosecoloredknight]

this is how much my mom loves me: "get out of here cause I'm going to fart".

[faerygardenparty]

Idk it just annoys me as someone who was heavily affected by a mass shooting and had to suffer through a media parade of “he was just a poor bullied mentally ill kid who sat alone at lunch 😢” nonstop right after not knowing if I’ll ever see my friends again, only for THIS to be the fucking case where all of a sudden everyone grows a conscious and decides we’re not allowed to sympathize with the killer, like fuck right off, I spent the latter half of high school wondering if I was going to be next, there are still days where I can barely stand to be out in public places, I don’t actually give a shit that billionaire CEOs with their private security teams are crying about how scary it is and they don’t know if they’re going to be next and how we should all feel so so bad for them, that same sympathy was never extended to me or my loved ones so why should I give it to 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!

[kimeoshi]

I love you spy churin, I'd let you play hot wheels on me

[wyvernity]

grayscale practice (i colored it, there is no more grayscale)

[cairafea]

was on a plane for 13 hours. have phone doodle Ghost Squad

[the-final-sif]

As someone who is on adhd meds and who it was lifechanging for, I'm really glad Dream was able to give them another shot and find meds that actually worked for him. When adhd meds suck, they can suck hardcore, even more so if you're a kid with adults that just want you to be quiet. Giving meds another shot later in life and finding a medication that does work for you takes a fuckton of courage and it's really cool he was able to do that.

[anetherealpoetess]

thinking of lucy maclean desperately slurping irradiated puddle water while lassoed by a sexy gunslinging ghoul like why wasn't that me?

[boleynqueenes]

""That can't be true, Londoners hate her," Jane insists, recalling the last letter of the Marchioness of Exeter (they are ready to rise up, for the Bishop and the Cardinal, for the scholar and the martyr, for the monks and the Maid of Kent, for the Princess and the Queen, they will esteem them their friends who are hers, and hers…)" — Chapter 23 of Nowe Thus

[deepspaceboytoy]

I think at this point you can safely disregard anything any person on here says about GLP-1s (stuff like ozempic) because I have seen the worst fucking fearmongering bullshit about it. You people are going to get diabetics killed.

[faestelle]

everyone look at the three majestic men i made at 1 in the morning yesterday. i literally gained the ability to make good-looking male sims. idk how

[keeps-ache]

spillage.

[ + other things :D ]

[hyunpic]

❣️

[shellsweet]

How do you do turtle anatomy? Do you have reference sheets that help?

This is kind of a hard question to answer! There are multiple ways to answer this, but to start here’s just a speed video of one of my recent sketches and a rough draft of how I usually begin a gesture drawing for a figure. I know I’m a visual learner, myself.

But there are a few tools I highly suggest! Some you guys have probably heard a million times!

Use references! Take a bunch of photos (of yourself or online searches), or check out professional anatomy drawings and trace over them to learn the shape language. What looks like tubes, circles, triangles, ect. The more you do this, the more you’ll start learning to break down each part of the anatomy into simple shapes to build upon.

There are also tons and tons of great anatomy drawing tutorials on YouTube!

Be messy, it helps for more expressive lines because you can always erase the excess.

Believe it or not, I also recommend just watching people draw and just studying people in real life too, build up that visual library in your head. Absorb that as much as possible to see how other people are tackling drawings, you’ll pick up all kinds of techniques.

For turtles in general, I take lots of inspiration from super hero comics/shows, the plastron (chest plate) plays a huge part for me in forming the entire figure, everything else pretty much follows after and I’m not afraid to make a ton of awkward mistakes to get where I want the figure to go.

Practice lots and don’t forget to have fun. Lord knows I’m still learning and still got a long way to go too. :)

[ziigee]

Wet Misha, Open mouth Misha is my weakness.. On my knees 🥵🫠and i don't pray help i can't stop staring at his mouth! Feral need to blog this

So many thoughts on the last one.. Instant combustion.

Mipples. Chest Hair. Unruly Hair. So Wet. Mouth. Auugh!. Cuties. Brooding.

Also, Misha in full white!! 👀

#personal note.

Monsoon was really getting to me, such a hassle with non stop rain for 12+ hours, flooding everywhere, dengue endemic, power cuts, lugging extra pair of dry clothes and rain accessories , bleh

After watching him i went and got drenched in rain!!! absolutely did nothing for the fiery unholy desire for HIM but it felt really good. Monsoon still sucks but willingly getting soaked in rain has a different feel to it..

This with the cockles panel video should keep me functioning for the next few months 💙💚

[blizzardfluffykpop]

it's starting to hit me that i'm going to have a career soon and like... that is like a wild thing to try to comprehend?? like yes i've studied my ass off for the past twoish months- to pass a test. but that test means i have job where i can sit and do my job? it's still a very radical concept to me.