#and that's just helping my brain a lot!

[thewanderingmask]

obligatory scott and scar posting

[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!

[isjasz]

The Promised Neverland manga spoilers!

[Day 201]

Everyone blame cherrysherin2 (go check out this art that made me absolutely lose it) I take no responsibility

[arcanegifs]

[obsob]

one small step for. kitties

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Remember: The burning sensation is part of the process.

[660percent]

Campfire fest day 3: Brittle Hollow / warp

I hope Tumblr doesn’t destroy the quality

Edit: it destroyed the quality 😔

@outerwilds-events

[lexumpysfunland]

because I was thinking about it I did make new things for the Insane variants! initially, it was just making colors but I went a little farther lol-

as for what Insane!Stanley can do:

yes, this Stanley uses strings! but I explained that under... TW: some blood and slight self-harm

to detail a little, the weird little bug that infected Stanley and that Walter wasn't able to find, allowed Stanley to see more than he should, meaning also the strings that were used to "control" him. the little bug is now part of this Stanley and if you were to destroy it, you would also destroy Stanley...

have a little bonus because I did that too

there you have it :) now I shall go back to other stuff I have planned heheheheh

[floralcrematorium]

I'm not your friend or anything, damn

Belarus | Belgium | Czechia | Hungary | Liechtenstein | Monaco | Seychelles | Taiwan | Ukraine | Vietnam

[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.

[fatedroses]

More than just the Demon.

[artsy-1diot]

firesetter art dump i got a bit silly guys oughhfghdfgjnnjjdghj

[luuxxart]

evil win! the ones plotting for your mysterious death are uncle and nephew!

[doomdoomofdoom]

Apparently there's currently discussion in science (humanities in particular) about whether video essays could be accepted as academic writing on par with the academic papers we currently have

I think that's awesome as fuck tbh

[lylahammar]

does anyone else feel like they become neurotypical while they're in the shower

[oneroomjestershow]

''He really should be the one being called 'angel' instead of me''