#i should reread TPOH now

[thenamesblurrito]

How did you draft SNAP? I've just gotten to the drafting stage of my comic with my brother but idk if theres some certain way to do it.

it’s taken a bit for me to organize my thoughts on this but I have an answer now, and you might not like it: there IS no some certain way to do it! I’ve been working with comics (and poking into the professional field, too O.O) for a few years now, so I do have some general advice for you-

read comics. really. can’t make a comic if you don’t know what a comic is, and since comics are a very specific medium of sequential visual storytelling, all the elements that make it a comic aren’t easily learned through other mediums. page layout, art style communicating tone, character design, story beats, etc. Scott McCloud has some wonderful books on comics, the Hellboy series is genuinely masterful, and honestly you could reread IDW and call it research. i go back and study my favorite webcomics to try and absorb their excellence: TPOH by @modmad is stunning, @avasdemon is gorgeous, and there’s endless more to browse over at @webcomiclibrary

know your story. this is covered by a Whole Heckin Lot of different places, resources, and writers, so I’ll encourage you to go look at comprehensive help if you need plot assistance. keep in mind that everyone drafts differently! you might need everything plotted out, or you could fly by the seat of your pants. physical writing, digital notetaking, verbal processing, all of it is fine as long as it works for you

THUMBNAIL for goodness sake thumbnail before you dedicate to a page. in fact, make practice versions of everything important. mess with character designs until you’re Absolutely Sure you will be alright with drawing them a bajillion times over and over. but specifically, thumbnails are tiny, rough page layouts. tiny so that you don’t get into any details and you can see how easily the page reads even when small, and rough so you aren’t committing and can keep fiddling. even with pages you’ve had in your head forever, a quick simple thumbnail can help smooth the transition from head to page

there’s other, post-drafting things to consider, like formatting and file size and update schedule and getting it out there, but that’s a whole seminar and I’d like to keep this relatively simple

for me, drafting SNAP was an adventure in taking the puzzle pieces my brain seemed to automatically generate (thank you, MADD) and fitting them together in something resembling order. almost all of the plot and twists presented themselves to me with very little work! arranging them however was a hassle. my episode-by-episode breakdown is uh. a mess. because my drafting process is a stream of consciousness solid block of text. here:

01- Welcome to the Academy! An Upgrade to Primes Orion oh no im late trope, monologue about situation, bumps into megs at front gate as creators are saying goodbye, drags orion inside as excuse to ditch them, cut to trine being weirdos at landing pad, screamers making plans to be awesome but whomp whos that chick its windblade and she can fly in root mode, grr immediate one sided rivalry [... this goes on for awhile]

no punctuation, no capitalization, just wordvomit. not every episode has such specific notes, some just say a general plot hook and some character reactions! this first episode however was daydreamed out until I had a pretty solid series of events

I’m early in thumbnailing right now. wish I was further along, actually I wish I simply had SNAP finished so I could read it myself *sob* BUT. it’s chugging along. my thumbnailing setup is a simple grid I scribble over with new layers for every six pages:

last one is blank because I’m in the habit of arranging pages by side-by-side pairs for printing, since that’s been the usual consideration for the comics I worked on before. you can see how messy these are! and they’re by no means final, either, I think I’m going to have to cut down on some pages once I finish thumbnailing this episode. one thing I have kept in mind for SNAP specifically is anime tropes that I can rip off, hence that fifth page being mostly taken up by Orion running to school with toast in his mouth lol

anyway this got long and I am hardly an expert, still workin on my own comic, but I hope this helps! anyone with more resources, tips and tricks, or advice feel free to chime in too, I’m hardly the entirety of comic knowledge

[askatriangleandastar]

¡AAAAAAAAA!

VOLUME 2

VOLUME 2

BUSHPIG BUSINESS BOSS

MORSE C O D E!!!

OH N O THE RADIO WASN'T TRUSTWORTHY SHOULD HAVE FIGURED!!!

AAA **ASSOK** I GET THE MERCH AND LOVE NOW!!!

Ok so yelling aside ALSO so many!! Things to thing about and the confirmation!!! About TOby being a previous Hero!!

I am a Concern that Hero has sweater flippers to hide what was traded, those needle spheres looked suspiciously skin tone. I also love Cell??? And Tailor. And Tinker. And just- this WORLD MY GOSH! 8D

I always wondered what you meant when you mentioned a Market! It's even cooler than I imagined, bittersweet too. It makes sense that so many would go to that one place, why there's so few customers for Madras topside in a place where Fear and Doubt are underfoot.

I have so many questions and I'm so excited to reread what's here over and over- to even go to your website and finally click on tpoh's link!!

I can't wait to have a day to set aside and just go all the way back to the first posts about this story on your blog and read all the way to the present. Uncover a sun for myself inside when the cold weather turns dreary and grumpy.

It feels like there's so much to find, to question, to see- I'm so excited to feel like I'm exploring again when I read this, like I used to with stories. Before the world got so loud and overwhelming and I got too tired to keep focused.

Your work has given me some joy back to my life with a passion I was worried I couldn't rekindle (pun included) anymore. I don't have all the words to express how grateful I am for that, how happy everything on these pages makes me, how many feelings your art caused me- from wanting to hug and cheer a character on to hurtling a boot to their head at speeds of garlic bread plummeting from the edge of the atmosphere.

I hope this isn't annoyingjust, so many thoughts I had to get down and things I wanted to say, and there's so much more but this is what's most coherent currently. I hope you're having a stellar day Mod, you rock! @modmad

[happyk44]

Okay so I’m revamping an old story because I suddenly got motivated to play around with it again. The new plot line is working it’s way through my head and the characters are shifting into the way I wanted to do them up initially, which is fantastic. All I’m missing are the big chunks of middle and a toothy ending I can live with but this likely won’t be a story I’ll be doing any time recently (save for fun character works and happy-angsty drabbles) so I have time to keep playing around.

I lost motivation shortly after realizing I derived too much influence on it from TPoH (which is beautiful, everyone should go look at those shiny pretty comic pages) and couldn’t discern a proper plotline from it nor keep the characters acting how I desired but I’ve always really liked how the opening played out. After a brief reread for fun, I thought, “Post it.” And then I thought, “Fuck no, this is old.” And then I had an internal dialogue for 20+ seconds before deciding, fuck it. So here it is, the pretty pretty opening~

“Would you like to disappear?”

Had the morning begun differently perhaps the answer to this question would have been “No.”

But the morning began in a negative light after a night and day of boredom and overwhelming depression so perhaps in the end the answer would always have been “Yes.”

Still, had the morning begun with breakfast available, parents who smiled instead of frowned and talked pleasantly instead of yelled and a sister who wished a good morning in response rather than keep her eyes glued to the TV and the tablet placed in front of her, perhaps the answer would have been “No.”

Perhaps if the morning had not continued with the bedroom door slamming open with his father singing loudly a song that made no sense or his head banging against his pillow and mattress so hard the pain stung past several minutes and a shower that felt nice instead of drowning, the answer would have been “No.”

Maybe if he had not waited five minutes for a mother who insisted she was already ready with a destiny of a fifteen minute drive to a place where work started in ten, perhaps the answer would have been “No.”

Perhaps the question would never have been able to be asked.

But that was not how the morning began and so, as the boy who was biologically girl that felt more often than not a boy and sometimes felt like nothing stared at the smarmy grin on the strange figure that had appeared out of nowhere, whose face was unseen behind inky bangs, whose body was faded and shifting, whose odd voice asked an intriguing question, the answer was “Yes.”

“Would you like to disappear?”

The boy glanced over at the open door and counted to three. No one stepped out. He stared at the figure, no doubt a hallucination of paranoid ideation inside of a mind that never took the time to rest.

He nodded slow.

“Yeah. I would.”

The figure brandished out an arm. “Then let us be off!” it crowed, waving around a small key on it’s index finger.

“Where to?” he asked and in the back of his mind, a rational part of his brain muttered, “It’s not logical to indulge in hallucinations.”

He ignored that voice though. It never let him have fun. Besides indulging in things that didn’t exist was a good thing. Oddly enough it was the only thing that made him feel a little more sane.

The figure grinned and shoved its key into the air, determinedly flicking it with a strangely loud and very audible click.

Now, the boy was used to the voices in his head, echoing around so loud they could be real. He’s used to the hidden whispers of his name coming the dark spots in bushes or under his bed in the dark. He’s used to the screams outside his door he pretends are coming from the television because even though it’s three in the morning and all the lights are off, his father falls asleep with the television on and it’s much easier to pretend the screams are a horror movie and not a hallucinated monster ready to filet him with its claws and devour him with its teeth.

Even so, the audibility of the click was unnerving. Sounds that weren’t real had never been that loud before. He jerked and glanced back at the door. No one stepped out and the car doors were not unlocked and the neighbors who were not at church were not opening their cars and there was now a golden door in front of him, the figure smiling widely as it tapped the door knob.

The boy narrowed his eyes. “Are you real?”

The figure snapped its fingers. “As real as this plane of existence will allow!”

The boy frowned and slid his thumb over his palm. The figure pulled open the golden door. Infinite blackness sat in the doorway. With a wide grin, the figure tapped the edge of the door. The boy stared at the darkness. The figured leaned down.

“Would you like to disappear?” it asked again, and the boy considered his options, glancing once at the open door with no one stepping outside and thought of his friends who weren’t his friends as they didn’t take the time to even ask him how he was when they saw him and thought of his family and their negativity and how his cat was literally the only thing stopping him from stepping in front of a bus at seven in the morning and how the morning had begun terribly and therefore the day was going to be worse and he looked at the figure who he didn’t know and the door with no visible other side and thought of the question that hung in the air with an answer that had been spoken many times before into the quiet of the dark and the private confines of a pillow.

The boy nodded. “Yes. I would.”

The figure grinned even wider, mouth stretching far past normal proportions. “Well then, step on in, young one!”

So the boy did, heaving one leg into the airy lightness of the infinite black. He glanced at the porch with its dirty white paint, the black car waiting for a journey to a place it would not stay at for very long and the blue house splattered with white that he’d lived in forever. He looked at his home for a long long time before turning away.

And stepped through the doorway without another look back.

[bookshelfpassageway]

5-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TPOH TELLYTHON!

Well, more of a blog-a-thon, but the pun could not be resisted. But anyhow! The fact of the matter is, we’re about a month away from the day in 2012 that a certain TV and Hero first set on a journey to faraway lands!

You (yes, you!) are invited to participate, this February 26th, in celebrating 5 years of the very excellent webcomic known as The Property of Hate!

How are we celebrating, you may ask? Well, just about any way that you’d like to! Do you like to draw fan art? Do you like to write stories? Make videos? Fanmixes? Voice act? Cosplay? All such creative works (plus some I’ve inevitably forgotten) are absolutely welcome!

Not the creative type? (or, even if you are!) Tell us about how and when you joined the fandom! Your experiences with it and the comic! Reminisce about the good old days, like when we got that Light Entertainment comic, or that time we were all scared senseless of Assok.

Have you had your eye on some stickers over on Redbubble or a mug on Society6? Or perhaps that lovely signed physical book? Access to exclusive Patreon art? Here’s your excuse to go for it!

Lastly, I’d like to suggest a reread of the comic, over on Tapastic. Why Tapastic? There are two reasons. 1: I would feel very bad if we crashed Mod’s personal site again, and 2: Getting the comic to trend would be an excellent addition to these festivities! And, might get some more people to join in, too!

Now, how are we keeping track of all this mayhem? Use the tag “#TPoH Tellython” and/or “#TPoHTellython”! If there’s enough interest, I’ll even make a sideblog to pull together everything out of said tags, at which point giving it a quick @ in that direction will do just fine as well.

So, the rundown?

WHEN: Sunday, February 26th WHAT: Fanworks! Reminiscing! Buying things! A reread on Tapastic! WHO: You, if you’d like to!

As a last note, while posts and fanworks should post ON the 26th, or the week following, you can totally buy any merch ahead of time if you want to have them on hand day-of. And, come bug me if you’ve got any questions about this!