#but i mean who doesnt with their oc's

[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!

[crystallizsch]

i love twst ships based on a certain disney (or not disney) characters because i can put them together like this it’s so funny

even funnier if some of them are based on objects 😭😭😭

(anyways sneak peek of new ships/ocs i’m planning on hdbsjkscbks)

[itslilacokay]

do you ever

[bunnieswithknives]

What if I made FOP ocs what then. Meet Wolf, the most well meaning Anti-Fairy you will ever meet and Flowers, its violently playful fairy counterpart who had to be banished from Fairyworld for repeatedly almost killing people :3

[mblue-art]

the moon is beautiful, isn't it?

alt art under the cut

[wu-wakfu-undertale]

he'd have the strangest convos with the trans eliatropes guys (yes based off of that one mp100 post)

bonus of the eliatrope on the left, her name is amura! :]

[janesjuicebox]

Me because I get a new special interest every month

I have a habit of drawing my favorite characters in penis costumes

Also the link cuz its underrated I think

Gore warning tho,,

[geniemillies]

something something sheep in wolf's clothing or how you say it

oh my gaaa king of hybern makes appearance i will have to draw again properly, him and his cheekbones 🧎🏻‍♀️

today i present niamh art. tomorrow. who knows.... (it will happen again) also i yap abt lore in the tags...

[medi-bee]

These are the guys who have total martial control over the center of the galaxy? are you sure?

[bawmbo]

WOW, THANK YOU FOR 100+ NOTES AND ALMOST 40 (38) FOLLOWERS!

I'm really glad you guys like him a lot!! here's a for-fun piece I did today of them!! Thank you so much!! It brings me so much joy to bring an enjoyed creature to the table, and make pieces that i like that other people also like :)) !! you guys are the coolest!! handing you all little gold stars, jellyfish charms, and glowsticks of your choosing

[deoidesign]

I need to know if I'm delusional and projecting onto random characters or if Adam and/or Steve are neurodivergent

You can project whatever you want on them, and I don't know that it's "canon" so to speak but I write them with neurodivergent intent in mind just based on my own life experiences!

so I'm projecting on them too, but it's up for debate whether that's coming across in the text.

Adam is autistic and Steve has ADHD. To Me.

[fishnchip3011]

the bfs..... i saw a cute outfit in a store a while ago and felt like drawing rowan in it. then the 2nd pic happened

+ some character info! i initially made rowan without intending to ship him with anyone specifically but i realized he & seb would be really good for each other (seb helps rowan become more assertive, rowan helps seb be more empathetic). them BAM gay people 💥

[analoghorrorisyummy]

uhhhhh... computer art so harddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddddd.

[moeblob]

OCs today because I really missed them. Since I wanted details still but with less effort (aka no shading) I opted for their DND AU versions.

Not pictured: Paul (a Pauladin if you will) messing up and probably nearly dying for the fifth time.

[twisted-wonderland-but-gayer]

Heya guys I greatly appreciate the requests but please remember this is a male/masc/Gn Leaning blog. I don't write explicitly female readers/yuus. Sorry

[agent-atlas]

!NOTE THE ONLY OC OF MINEI S ATLAS! !ROCKET - DA green one ROXIE - da biting one AND ACE - Da being bitten one BELONG TO @lilmissrandom4607! There is a reason Atlas will never have children. Too emotional. I mean look at them. Crying because snuggles. (tho its more they were chosen to snuggle by Rocket so.. Yeah.)