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newttxt · 4 months ago

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hi quip! i really like your one piece comics and i am curious how you do them! i'm not good at comics and want to be better at drawing them! how do you learn how to make comics?

thank you!

uh oh... im afraid u have caught me at the perfect crossroad of "bored at work" and "unrelated task ive been meaning to do but keep putting off."

this is long. i hope you like reading (and grayscale progress pics). and of course!!! disclaimer before we begin that this is just how I, personally draw comics. there is no "right way."

quip's comic-making process!

Switching my typing to make this more legible...

My process can kinda be broken down into 6 steps:

Brainstorming

Thumbnailing

Sketching

Panels & Text

Lines

Tones/Colors

1. Brainstorming

My brain is a leaky sieve on a good day, so I sloppily jot down ideas in my phone notes the moment I have them. This helps me when it's time to draw too, because if I feel art blocked, I can look through old concepts and see what catches my interest.

Otherwise, I love drawing for other people's writing. :) And if worst comes to worst, doing manga/comic page redraws in my style teaches me new things every time.

Once I have my idea, I'll usually make a bulletpoint list of "plot points" or "story beats" I want. Then I plan the comic with this format that I've adapted from a tutorial I read once. I'm going to use my most recent comic (original comic post) as an example.

I start in the third column, writing notes of what I'd want to see in each panel. I also include the dialogue (in this case, I didn't have to write the dialogue! it's from the fanfic linked in the original comic post!). I usually write the whole name like [Luffy:], but at this point I've drawn so much of these guys, just the first letter works.

I like to handwrite these notes to get an idea for how much text I'm putting in a single panel.

After I describe all the panels, I go back and separate them into pages. I can't tell you how to know how many panels to a page. It's whatever works for you. I just kinda know about how big each panel will be, and so I can feel when I'm probably running out of space. (Also. You can change things later. I don't in this example, but I add/drop pages/panels all the time.)

2. Thumbnailing

Thumbnailing—as the name suggests—should be done tiny. Too tiny to accidentally get sucked into details.

This is about marking down blobs where items/characters go, and figuring out the paneling. I'll draw and redraw these a bunch of times too.

This is also the most time-consuming/brain-working part for me. If I were in a zine that did progress percentage, I'd try to finish thumbnailing around the 50% mark (but I'm also a moderately fast artist, so your mileage may vary).

I think the terrible quality makes them charming, actually. I really like how silly they look. :')))

I will add, when you draw your "page" rectangle, make sure it's the same proportions as your actual canvas for the final image. You want an accurate idea of how much space each panel will take up, especially if you have a lot of text.

3. Sketching

This is my most recent change to my usual workflow, and it's saving me a lot of time. I make my thumbnails a bit bigger (each one about half the size of the final canvas), and I sketch these basic body forms right over them.

It just helps give me placement for my actual lines!

I usually draw these in a paleish color so I can lower the opacity and not get distracted by them while lining. The random darker parts are to either help keep two forms separate (like when two characters have their limbs all over) or to better define sections that were too sloppy/poorly proportioned.

I also think this helps my poses stay looser, because I have more dramatic/wriggly shapes that aren't too bogged down by proportions yet.

Sidenote: I CANNOT show this here, but sometimes this is when I take videos. Of myself. I prop my phone camera up and shoot a video of me acting each panel. :/// It looks really dumb, but it also shows me fun body language ideas like hand gestures, expressions, weight distribution, etc. Just pretend you're an overdramatic cartoon character, and try not to worry about your roommates or mother walking in on you doing odd things. (You can also use the video for anatomy reference later, but I usually just capture the vibe and don't try to copy the actual video frame.)

4. Panels & Text

Oh, boy. So, the panels are usually just straight lines (though it's fun to make creative exceptions, like a round panel to mimic looking through a spyglass), but there are some fancy rules that I don't strictly adhere to.

I believe (I have no technical training in this. Take everything I say with a grain of salt) the vertical gaps (between two side-by-side panels) should all be a consistent width and the horizontal gaps (between two panels on top of each other) should be another. The vertical ones? Should be thinner? Because you want the eye to easily glide between them, whereas the horizontal gaps should be a visual barrier to keep you from jumping ahead. Just something I've vaguely noticed.

There are lots of fun "default layouts" you can look up. Or keep it a consistent grid. I think it's fun to sometimes have characters/objects sticking out of panels and overlapping others. This is just a matter of taste, creativity, and inspiration. (Read Witch Hat Atelier... It has some of my favorite paneling...)

You may also notice I have already done the speech bubbles. This is, to me, a crucial step. This helps me catch early if I don't have enough room for all the words. It also lets me plan the art in each panel with the speech bubbles in mind. There's nothing worse than working really hard on a panel, and then you realize there's no room for the bubbles.

I also try to lay them out in a way that guides the eye! Even without art, can people tell where to go next? Better yet, if I want people to look at panels out of order (aka not left to right, in my case), can I use the speech bubble path to make them? Here's just a vague example of what I mean.

As an added bonus, doing speech bubbles early also allows me to be lazy! :) Ignore the comic; I'm not supposed to post it yet oops,, There's a whole lot of drawing to do on each comic page, and I am not wasting my time on stuff that will be covered up. So yes, if I hide my bubbles, there are a lot of unfinished lines trailing off into nothing. (As a bonus, if there's a part of a character you're struggling with—and it won't look weird to do so—you can move speech bubbles to just hide the problem area yayyy)

Making the actual bubbles could be their own whole tutorial, tbh, but there are some general guidelines I use.

Zoom out when you choose your font size. You want to know how it will look to the average reader, so it isn't super teeny tiny or way too big. You generally want to keep the same text size for all your pages/bubbles.

When I draw bubbles, I try to size them about one vertical letter height (and some change) around the words [left side]. This isn't always the case though, because humorously large or funny shaped text bubbles can convey different feelings [right side].

On Procreate, I set my bubble lines to Reference and just drag-and-drop the white fill on a separate layer below the lines. (Remember to turn Reference back off again when you're done, or your fill bucket won't work right when you're drawing.)

To get the white outlines I use to keep the bubbles from cluttering up the art, I literally just Gaussian blur an all-white copy of the lines + fills... and then I copy and merge it 5 times until it's opaque enough. This is a terrible way to do it, but it works for me. :')

5. Lines

This is the part that I can't tell you how to do. I literally just. Draw right over my wacky sketched body forms. Boom. Comic drawn.

I'll make three suggestions:

Don't focus on making every panel perfect. Give a little extra love to big ones or ones you want people to linger on. Otherwise, know that people are typically speeding through the art. It's way more important to focus on storytelling than art technique. In my opinion, a good story that's told well will always be better than a beautiful one told poorly. (Some comics are beautiful AND well-written... Alas, I am just a hobbyist who needs to get the ideas out of my head at top speed.)

Put your background lines on a different layer. Put your foreground lines on a different layer too, if you have those. Basically, I try to keep the main part of each panel (usually a character or object) on my lines layer so I can erase background/foreground/etc lines to ensure clarity/focus.

You can make background lines lighter colors too. I have too many numbers sorry. (1) Background. The stuff that's farthest away. Lightest lines. Few details; more focused on shapes and the suggestion of a background (I'm not good at backgrounds). (2) Midground. Same distance away as the characters are. Lines can be black. (3) Also midground, and also the same distance away. But they're very detailed, so I lighten them so they aren't so distracting. (4) The characters. Black lines for focus. For people who haven't seen the comic, I swear they are just hugging. This is SFW. D:

6. Tones/Colors

Do not. Do NOT ask me. I don't understand colors. I hate working with them, but I try because I want to improve. I hate doing anything beyond the simplest grayscale shading. Please go elsewhere for your coloring/tone advice. This is how my color picker looks 95% of the time. I have pre-set "percentages" of black that I got by lowering the opacity of a black layer and just color picking it. I don't even know the exact percentages I used. Good luck out there. Be better than me.

7. Sharing

This is a bonus step that I didn't mention earlier, but it's actually the most important of all of them.

You need a friend. Or maybe a groupchat or discord. A family member or coworker if you're really close like that. I don't know.

Find SOMEWHERE you can spam wips and be cheered on. Drawing comics takes a while, especially if you're trying to tell longer stories than I'd dare to attempt. If I don't force someone to praise me for every line I draw, I shrivel up and die.

Also if and when you post online, add alt text. I'll admit I'm the first person to complain and drag my feet on this, and I literally use a screenreader myself when my eyes hurt (strong prescription glasses wearer). Comics should be accessible, because stories are fun and everyone should be able to enjoy them.

***

Learning???

And I guess lastly, how do you learn to make comics? Two steps: 1) read them and 2) make them. This is the tragedy of creating things.

1) Reading them: I grew up reading comic strips, western serialized comics, and webcomics. I've always loved graphic novels too. Then in late middle school, I started reading manga (Death Note and Haikyuu were my first two), and now I'm trying to read more webtoons (sorry im so slow bree)!

I also... mass-consume doujinshi, thanks to proxy mailing services and bilingual friends/Google Translate/knowing some Korean. (I have an entire bookshelf of doujin, actually,,)

The thing is, it's not usually enough to just read comics. You also need to be thinking. :/ I notice paneling, comic devices, clever comedic timing, etc. as I go. It's just a lot of studying/learning while also enjoying the story.

2) Making them: You just have to start. :( Even if you think they're "bad." My first comics were actually just drawings placed randomly all over the page, connected by speech bubbles (yay... I was already practicing how to place bubbles to lead the eye around the page...). I was going to post a pic here, but I'm a coward. Backscroll my account and you can find some older ones though.

I also know my art in general improved dramatically when I did ten comics in ten weeks for my friend's fic. Don't do this. It hurt my hands/wrists. But do practice in moderation.

***

If you actually read all that... I hope it made even a modicum of sense. And maybe it was even helpful? Just know at the end of the day, there is literally no right way to draw a comic.

And if you aren't ready to go for it yet, you can start by just adding a couple speech bubbles to your illustrations or doodles! It's a way to add storytelling and dialogue writing to things you may already be making.

Yay. I love comics. :))))

#art tips #ask #THANK YOU FOR ASKING THIS #PLEASE TALK TO ME ABOUT STORYTELLING AND ART AND COMICS #i have so much more i can say but i will not because this post is already way too dense #ive been meaning to finish/post this for so long im sorry #making comics is this fun blend of THINKING REALLY HARD AND WITH PURPOSE and doing things innately and you rly dont know why #reference #art reference #i dont remember my tutorial tag #oh. was it #tutorial #I DONT REMEMBER

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stwinsgstdrop · 2 months ago

Text

You Ruined Yourself

Chapter 2.

The things he knows

Stan wasn’t angry. To say that would've been an understatement. Ford had seen Stan angry, but never to this degree, and specially not at him. Ford had hardly ever felt fear when he had his twin present; but at that moment, when he'd heen screaming obscenities and picking apart at every word Ford managed to say, he felt it. He shouldn’t be so shaken by it. He'd spent the whole week in fear, hearing his brother's anger shouldn’t have been his breaking point.

And yet, breaking he did indeed.

"I don't KNOW!" He's screamed back, shamefully, at his brother's question of what the hell he'd been thinking. At the bashing for meddling with ancient spells and beings of other dimensions. At his horror and anger and disgust. "I don't KNOW! I didn't know! I didn't, I swear!"

Stan had stared at him, undecipherable, but very clearly not sympathetic.

"I thought he was my friend- I swear, I didn’t mean-" Ford had fallen to his knees, trembling like a leaf, undoubtedly the strain of the past weeks catching up to him. He looked at Stan's eyes again, those judgemental, disappointed eyes, pleading. Stan had always been on his side, it was fitting he'd be his judge. The one to point the finger at his mistakes, his foolishness, his hubris. Like Icarus, Ford was falling for daring to meddle with gods. "He tricked me, Stanley. He told me he was a muse, and I- I never- It was supernatural! We've always wanted to see this sort of thing, that was my passion! He promised to help, and I- I couldn’t-"

Beyond that, Ford's memory was blurry at best. He'd cried harder, he thinks. Stan had held him, maybe. Telling him to stay calm, to stay awake. And he'd obeyed. He'd done his best. He remembered pleading with Stanley, and – as if he hadn’t embarassed himself enough – begged for him not to be mad at him, not to abandon him. Which went against the whole point of calling him there.

Ford cringed at the memory, and turned off the faucet. He needed to put on his clothes and go back to Stanley. Who was doing only God know what downstairs. He touched the fabric of the clothes and basked in the softness. It had been a while since he'd worn anything other than his coat and outing clothes. He hadn’t had the time to change.

Stan had scoured his cabin in hopes for clean clothes, only to come empty handed. He had complained and grumbled the whole time, but stopped when Ford apologized. Just told him to shut it and go get himself cleaned. These were Stanley's clothes. He'd brought clothes. He'd had expected to stay. Only now did Ford realize how things must've looked like from Stan's perspective.

He'd come hoping for reconciliation. Probably.

Ford didn’t know how he felt about that. Frankly, he didn’t know how he felt about anything. He felt empty, but strangely calm, like the shower had fogged up his feelings enough for his mind to clear up.

Stanley's clothes were soft against his skin. They were larger, too. His brother had always been larger than him. Probably because he ate like there was no tomorrow, but also because he had a lot of energy and was constantly moving. He'd focused a lot in getting bigger as a teenager too, to be strong and beat up whoever tried to mess with Ford.

It had always been like that. Even now, it seemed. Stanley had looked softly at him when he was crying. He refused to think about the moment further though, as he cringed at the slightest memory of how pathetic he must've looked.

When he finally got out of the bathroom, steam followed him to the living room. The house was warmer, and it smelled good. Stanley was cooking, surrounded with cans and packs Ford knew weren't his own. He'd also turned on the thermostat, somehow.

As he made his way to sit at the newly clean table of his kitchen with deliberate slow steps and fidgety hands, Ford felt like a child again. Like how he'd behave when he'd been a child and made a mess, trying his best not to be a nuisance to his father again. That or one of them would get the belt.

But Stanley wouldn’t hurt him physically, he thought. Would he? Maybe he would, if Ford pushed enough. They'd roughoused as kids, and sometimes fought too. That wouldn’t be a problem. But it also wasn’t the reason Ford was so shaken, and he knew it.

His twin turned off the stove, and served him some kind of stew that smelled amazing due to Ford's hunger, but that he could recognize wouldn’t have seemed nearly as good if he weren't so famined. He tried it and yep, the saltiness ended in a sweet-sour taste only canned food could provide. He remembered from his college days as a broke student.

Stanley sat down and deliberately threw Ford's journal on the table, staring directly at him. Ford flinched at the sound, and kept his eyes on the stew.

"Do ya have your marbles back?" He asked, letting his Jersey show so much Ford felt like no time had passed at all. He nodded. Stan hummed in response. "Good. Now tell me again what's goin' on with less snot and tears so I can actually understand."

Ford winced at the tone. Harsh, even for Stanley, but not unkind.

"I'm sorry about that. The lack of sleep has severely damaged my emotional faculties." Stanley raised an eyebrow and nodded for Ford to continue. "The demon I told you about... He tricked me, and... And I trusted him. Really trusted him. He told me our project would be finished quicker if we didn’t have to waste time during the night. I- He said he could take care of it."

"So you let him possess ya." Stan finished.

"Yes, basically." Ford said, and went back to his stew. He finished it in a few bites. "Whenever I sleep."

Stan didn’t look as mad as before. He stood up, served Ford more stew, and leaned on the counter, looking at his shoes. He had his thinking face. The one he often used whenever they were having tests and he couldn’t cheat his way out of it, or when they were playing riddles and codes.

"You don't know how long you've been awake, do ya?" He asked.

Ford thought for a few moments. He had been keeping score through cups of coffee, but then he fumbled it by drinking the whole kettle at one point when the exhaustion was almost winning over.

"...I stopped counting at day 3." He said and looked away, embarassed. He was feeling it. The pressure in his eyes, his slowing thoughts. Yes, he remembered. Staying dirty and in outing clothes had been a tactic to stay uncomfortable enough not to fall asleep in them, and hungry because being tired but hungry could keep him equally awake. But now he was wearing his brother's soft, soft clothes, and eating his second serving of stew, and it was catching up to him.

"Shit," mumbled Stan. "Is there anything else you can tell me about this... triangular dude?"

"His name is Bill."

"Oh, great. The entity's name is fucking William. Well, that's underwhelming." Ford almost laughed. Stan could still turn any situation into a funny one, that much hadn’t changed. Stan looked him with undecipherable eyes, and pulled out a small notebook from his pocket. It was blue, with a flower logo, but it looked professional.

Stan flickered through some pages and made a tsc sound with his mouth.

"Do you have chalk around here? Maybe a candle or somethin'?" He asked. Ford furrowed his brows, but got him what he asked. He had many candles, as Bill was prone to messing with the power in his house, and chalk for... well. He was still a scientist. He needed chalk to make equations in big boards. Stan didn’t ask any of it, and didn’t explain what he was going to do.

Ford obeyed when Stan told him to sit on the floor, because his twin seemed focused. He wondered what his brother was doing as Stan drew a circle around him, placing four candles opposite each other on the line of the circle. Something in his mind told him he should move. Lock himself in his lab and stay there forever. But that was probably the sleep talking.

"What... what're you doing?" He said, words slurring slightly due to the exhaustion. Stan didn’t stop whatever he was doing as he spoke.

"You said he gets ya when you sleep, right?" He asked, without waiting for an answer. "That's when he's got space. There ain't any space when you're awake in that big brain of yours."

"...What are you talking about?" Stan held his hand gently, and then swiftly made a cut on his index finger. Ford yelped. "What was that for?!"

"He can't ocupy that space if ya get a roomate. Means the empty's got somethin' to ward him off." Stan continued as if nothing weird was happening, as if he wasn’t writing symbols in blood on the floor. He cut his own hand and pressed against the symbol, letting the blood seep in. Ford felt the hairs of his neck rise in dread. What was Stan doing? "Luckily for us, I've got a few favors to call in. They're not too dangerous, and can't break a contract, so it's gonna be fine."

"Stan, what the hell are you doing? Why does this look like some kind of ritual?!" Ford asked, raising to his feet and immediatly swaying. Stan steadied him and smiled, relaxed, as if this was nothing out of the ordinary.

"Relax Sixer, 's nothin' I haven't done before. You'll survive. I'd advise you to shut your ears and hold your breath, the smell's weird if you're not used to it. Now, open your mouth." He didn’t wait for compliance before pushing some sort of seed into Ford's mouth, judging by the taste, and guiding Ford's hands to shut his ears. He took a few steps back, looked back at the notebook and nodded to himself. "Yeah, that'll do it."

Stan put a seed in his own mouth and bit on it, motioning for Ford to mimick him. Which he did, despite his raising fear. Was he hallucinating? Had he fallen asleep already and this was just a dream? Maybe Bill had already possessed him. It was the only explanation.

Only, Stan spit out the seed and suddently the power went out. The candles were wiped off, and the temperature dropped. Ford gasped and accidentally swallowed the seed, the bitter taste making him gag and cough.

He felt something rise from underneath, a huge, dark figure. Shapeless, but perfectly formed. He could feel it talking, but not understand its words – not with his hands on his ears. Stanley, in the middle of it, looked unfazed, even pleased with himself. He said something, and by the shape of his lips as he spoke, it seemed spanish. Why was Stanley speaking Spanish to an entity? A putrid stench filled the room, and he struggled to keep himself from heaving or gagging.

He felt the cut in his hand burn, and yelled, pulling his hands away from his ears to check. It was sealing itself back, but burning in the process. He screamed. In the back of his mind, he heard a name. He couldn't pronounce it, couldn’t comprehend it, but he could recognize it. It was his now, for however long it stayed.

" Gracias por dejarme quedarme, amigo. Mantendré las pesadillas alejadas. "

What the fuck?

And then it all went back. The lights came back on, the candles lit up again, and the sound silenced. Only the stench of dead plants and rust remained, slowly fading with the rest of that experience.

Ford looked at Stanley, who was examining him like he'd grown a seventh finger.

"What the hell did you just do?" He asked, half yelling, half rasping. He stepped out of the circle and fell, his body heavy and weak all of a sudden.

"Woah, there, Six. 'S alright, they're just feeding on your tiredness." Stan said.

"Who are 'They', Stanley? What did you DO?!"

"Just a temporary solution to our problem. You gotta sleep, I gotta do some stuff, they gotta rest somewhere. Everybody wins." He said, shrugging, and dragged Ford towards the couch. "I mean, you were dealing with a dream demon. A sleep eater is hardly the worst of your options."

"A Sleep- WhAT?" Ford was spiralling. How was this possible? Was he dreaming? This didn’t feel real. He could feel something in his mind. Something adjusting, moving, taking things, adding others "How did you know how to do that- why- why is it MOVING?" He screamed.

"Yeah, it does that. You're gonna be disoriented for a few hours." Stan replied, unbothered, batting Ford's hands away and tucking him into the couch. "Which won't be a problem, as you'll be sleeping."

"No, I- I can't-" Ford was about to say something, but started seeing doubles. Everything was heavy, even his tongue, his mouth, his eyelids. "W-wha's... goin' on..."

"Shh, just sleep, Sixer. Imma take care of things now." Stan soothed, soft, gentle. A contrast to his earlier outrage. "You can trust me."

"Trust... you..." Ford couldn’t keep hold of his counsciousness anymore.

Ahí lo tienes, listo. Descansa, te tengo cubierto.

And dark engulfed him.

<Prev. Chp. 2; Next.>

#gravity falls au #gravity falls #stan pines #ford pines #you ruined yourself au #stanley pines #bill cipher #stanford pines #fidds only mentioned in passi g #i think #i dont remember #an entity just took my body and wrote this thing

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