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!
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The Au is Ra has been using the Lazarus pits for so long that causes him to see Danny like a human or his normal Phantom form Ra the only one that sees Danny like that
I love the idea of Deadly Decision getting together but Ra has no idea that Danny is no human he just thinks that Danny has his own Lazarus pit hidden somewhere away from him
Like Danny is full blown glowing white hair, green eyes, Sharp Fangs, an electrical being
Ra point at tall being of Life And Death it looks like he's about to rip you apart: This Is My Wife Danny.
Like sometimes people just ask him if he sees anything unhumanly about Danny and
Ra is like: What Are You Talking About ?
Danny's in the background forming Stars into his hand I'm trying to make himself a new sword
Talia and Dusan we're raised by Danny and Ra they just gotten used to also considering getting to be a normal human they find it hilarious to play along with their other two siblings Dan and Danielle that Mom is human
Slade: I've been meaning to ask what about that monster Ra has locked up back there
Talia: You Mean Mother
Slade: that's your mother I didn't know Ra al Ghul was attracted to on human beings
Dusan: what do you mean unhumanly our mother is perfectly normal he's not even assassin
Danielle walking out of his shadow: Maybe Your Mother Was The Weird One
Dan floating near Talia: Get the hell out how dare you disrespect our Mama
All of them are girlboss, gatekeep, and gaslight people into believe Danny is normal
Damien will give warning that his grandmother does not look like a Human they were all expecting meta not electric being
Danny got so used to Ra al Ghul no his Husban treating him like a normal person when he's like this that he forgot that everyone might not that treat him like that
Honestly? I love this.
And you know what? Danny might need someone like that, who even as his humanity slips away still treats him as human, as not an eldritch creature of Space, of everything Between. Someone who treats him as well, him.
Is his and Ras relationship healthy? Well maybe not in human terms, but do either of them count as such anymore?
The idea of the kids playing along is also amazing lol. Especially that Jordan and Ellie? Definitely same hat as Danny. Sure their forms still look sort of human, but that just makes it very uncanny valley.
So others and siblings who treat them the same?
They need it just as much- if nothing else than to not become so arrogant and uncaring of humanity that they could watch the world end without a blink.
Which, Damian! I bet Danny absolutely adores the grandbaby. I bet he crafts little ice bats and miniature planets to swirl above his crib. I bet he has a literal strip of space and stars on his ceiling.
And Damian isn't the only grandbaby too- Dusan has a daughter in some timelines too. Not to mention Ras' adoptive daughter Nyssa, who he gave one of the Lazarus Pits to.
But speaking of Damian, I have to know what that would mean for Jason. Who was practically completely braindead before being thrown into the Pit. Who would have probably met Danny while there because I can't see Danny not also gently doting on another grandson.
Gosh I honestly am just really enjoying this whole thing lol.
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Sangcheng week Day 5 - Collaboration
sorry all that i can offer for today is a silly doodle because i ran out of time lol
the collaboration is JL JC and NHS commitment to the bit.
(i dont know if its readable so im putting transcription under cut)
wwx: you know a-ling, we should find your jiujiu a nice madame…maybe that’ll finally help his temper (lol) (shame that he is blacklisted everywhere haha)
jl: what are you talking about. jiujiu and Nie-zongzhu have been together for years
wwx: (a-ling are you /srs or /j)
jl: [acting casual but cackling inside] [gave sangcheng his blessing with the condition that he’ll get to break it to wwx]
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wwx: -and you didnt tell me?!??
jc: says the one who secretly eloped?
wwx: but! but! Nie Huaisang?? did you not listen to what i told you?
jc: yeah i did. So we talked it out like adults. we disagreed on things but its ok now.
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the “talking out”:
jc: -ARE YOU INSANE???!-
nhs: lower your voice wanyin.
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the thing is tho
here's the thing. we already knew lestat was there at the trial to save louis. that was a given. i had just been going on the assumption that he'd arranged a deal with armand to make sure louis got out alive. that they were going to mostly stick to the book narrative about that. but what we got... god. rolin really was not playing when he said he wanted to reshape the entire story to be about louis and lestat and their love was he...
this change also makes the trial soooo much more fucked up tho. because it wasn't about using louis and lestat's love as a weapon to isolate louis from lestat as i'd originally thought. they were literally just trying to torture them. and framing it this way also makes it feel like armand specifically wanted to torture lestat as much as he could before burning louis alive in front of him on stage. it was never about armand really wanting louis for himself. he didn't give a shit about having a companion. he already had his coven. he was just still hung up on lestat not wanting him over a century earlier and wanted to make him hurt...
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