#i’m so happy to put stuff on the baltic tag again

[upmala]

jāņi (midsummer night), 2024

[kyuhu]

AAA NEW LIETPOL COMIC! And it made me so happy, giggling and kicking my feet! No matter how many Lithuania, Poland, Baltics or Lietpol or anything within whatever this category is, I WILL NEVER GET TIRED OF IT! the hit of dopamine I get when I see a new art from you just makes me feel overjoyed. As an (not professional teen) artist I love the way you color your characters, I’m always mesmerized by it and I don’t think I’ll get tired of your art anytime soon at all. As soon as I saw it I was like “OMG! OMG!” And the energy I felt, I feel like your depiction of them always is so interesting to me however you depict them and the latest art is so so so cute, I love cute stuff too. I now got the motivation to draw but oh god I wish I could draw comics cause I’m still at the level where I’m not sure how to…

Wow thank you!! What a nice thing to say. It makes me very happy you like the characterization tbh, because everytime I draw them I have like 6 moments where I'm like is that OOC? Are they too silly? So that's reassuring to hear haha. It's so cool you found motivation to draw after seeing the comic?! Like I'm inspired by so many artists and a piece I drew beeing partly an inspiration to somebody else is the specialest thing to me ;v; thanks for that! I really hope you'll have the best time with whatever you decide to draw.

Comics are as so many other things a matter of practice imo. There was a time where I went I can never do that, like my comic tag is still called comic attempts which is kinda telling about how much faith I had in my work back then.

Very much unasked for, but I'm going to ramble a bit a lot about what I think is helpful when starting a comic (imo) under the cut haha.

The essential part to get started can be broken down to three things, which are, at least to me, Idea, panel set up and then obviously drawing the action.

Writing a comic just for the sake of writing a comic never works for me. I need to have at least a rough idea to get going. This can vary from a specific punchline, to just a single image or action I consider fun to draw. It's helpful to write/sketch your ideas down, which is probably the most art teacher advice ever, but what can I say, it works imo. Be it a piece of dialogue that you came up with or just a single expression, just safe it somewhere and you have a base to work with! It doesn't even have to look fancy at all.

See that little Lud (like you can't even recognize it as Lud) stick figure on the bottom left there? This was my starting point for the lipstick comic together with some random bits of dialogue which are barely readable I guess so I typed them in the image description :D

As soon as you notice one image isn't enough to show what you want to show it's time to consider making a comic (like even two panels can be a comic for starters I think).

One of the essential parts is that usually a comic manages to show the passage of time and therefor depicts an action. So before you plan any further it's good to figure out which action(s) you want your comic to show, based the ideas you wrote/sketched down. Try to put it into words if that helps, like 'Character A reacts positively to Characters B's new hairslyle', or 'Character A hugs Character B and they are flustered about it' (maybe start with something simple even if it seems uneventful at first :D)

After you roughly know what your comic is about you can go on to the panel set up. For me it's always best to figure out how the comic starts and how it ends at very first because I tend to get lost otherwise. If you've got a panel or expression you desperately want to incorporate keep it in mind so it adds up with your start and end point. As the author you decide what the comic emphasizes on and where you want to direct the readers vision, which is the fun part imo :D

sketch down a few panels and try to adjust them. You can always change and discard them again, no need to make it pretty, just do stick figures if you like. Here is an example from the Liet and Lat dad comic. This particular sketch emphasizes on expressions, because their expressions where the most important silly part about it to me. Try to keep in mind what you'd like to show or what type of joke you want to make while doing your panel set up drafts.

Even with everything in mind this can be difficult though. So what always helps me is to imagine some type of grid to keep the pages balanced. Like if I do a comic with several panels on a canvas, I go by the rule of only deviding the canvas (say A4) into three parts at maximum horizontally as well as vertically. (Of course how you do it is completely up to you, there are great examples with more panels and crazier panel set ups, but especially at first I figured one tends to enthusiastically throw in panel after panel and then ends up with something hard to work with.)

I hope the idea comes across a little, like you can adjust the sizes or shapes of the panels (square, rectanglular, trapezoid etc.) as you wish, do only one or two panels in a row but try to keep it at 3 at maximum if you want something easy and clear to start with c:

It's also completely fine to not do the set up from scratch and maybe use a guide or references if that makes it easier for you! Here are some free to use examples. Looking at other comic pages and focusing on the panel set up of those can also help to come up with your own variations imo :D

The shape and size of the panels should at best be directed by the action. Like I said you guide the readers vision and present what's important. You could for example choose a big canvas to get an overview over the room the action takes place in, or devide movement into several panels to focus on what a character does. To get the hang of this is once again a matter of practice though. The more often you do it and the more examples you look at, the easier it gets imo :) start with something you deem super easy (maybe two or three panels or a single reaction to something only) and go a little more crazy with each comic idea.

keep in mind that the reader should at best get what's going on though (I struggled with that several times already and nothing is as sad than to post something and get a bunch of confused comments/tags afterwards no offense though, that's not the readers fault 99% of the time 😅). To prevent this it sometimes helps to look at your comic while hiding the dialogue imo. Like dialogue (if you choose to have it) of course is a set part of your comic as well, but if you only even roughly get what happens, or are able to set a specific mood without it you're on a safe side. You can also show your comic to a friend and let them explain it to you afterwards to see if your point came across. :D Kudos to my sister here.

Don't forget to put down the rough dialogue at the panel set up part already though! It's frustrating if you have to puzzle the speechbubbles in at the end and block half of your comic composition :c Plus speechbubbles also help to adjust the reading flow a little and can hide parts that are hard to draw but shhh.

Incorporate things you're looking foward to draw to keep you motivated. (That's a very me problem tbh) and take breaks and reread the thing to see if the pacing is too fast or slow.

Haha yep, that's it.

[dreamlikeapsycho]

I saw the max facts (pun intended 😂) you did for that question a while ago. So I was wondering if maybe you could tell us some more facts about Max it doesn’t have to be anything too detailed but anything you know would be nice to know, pretty please 😊

Okay... RANDOM FACTS ABOUT MAX - PART 2

I went on deep analysis mode this time to try and say all of Max's little nice and cute moments I know of.. Pls take notice, tho!! I'm not trying to flex or anything, I'm just a simple peasant girl on Maximilian's kingdom for a long time and it happens I have FBI blood in my veins 😭 so It's all gather on my brain and hard drive lol SO! I'm just answering this ask with a lot of thought and care so you can know more about Max and how he is even more awesome than you think!!! (And just in text form, cause Max doesn't need to be tagged on more personal stuff on IG (there’s too much illegal fishing at my tumblr pond already! 👏). It’s probably weird to know certain things, yes, but at least I'm respectful, I'll never bother him with this kind of stuff). Well, enjoy the bible below to end up knowing very little about him, still haha.. Just some more small facts.

- Max was at a barbecue just yesterday. It was someones birthday from the set of his new movie. He drank his beer, like usual, idk about the meat.. there was wurst and chicken.. I'm not sure if he's trying to be a vegetarian or not (after that thoughtful video he posted) 🤔.. maybe he didn't eat it, I don't know!!

- a little while before the start of this shooting, he was at the Baltic Sea filming for the series he's gonna be in (just one episode again! Don't get your hopes too high lol he's gonna be a security guard who disappears mysteriously, so....)

- He helped his friend renovate his house a few weeks ago!! How could I forget that on the first post.. Then, he had to go to Hesse for the movie shooting, and his friend had to call another friend to come help him lmao damn

I think I could describe some videos I have then... at least there's some cool and funny stuff. (Friends himself tagged in the past and cast friends)

- Max's dad went to the same uni as him. Also, he voiced a police officer on the phone in a short film Max wrote and directed all by himself (he didn't act on it, but he was also another police officer over the phone haha). Another thing, his dad made the official music for one of his plays.

- The falafel day.. his friend was taking a piss filming Max at the shop from afar and zooming in, saying "omg, guys! I found Noah from Dark! He's right there buying falafel" lmao, then, Max is just standing there looking all wonderful with his perfect hair and such, moving his hands, scratching his chin, ordering his food, and his friend talks some more, doing like a rough Max voice "yeah yeah, I'll have that one. Good, yeah". 😂

- the day he went to take a walk in nature. His friend asks him for a cigarette, he is denied, he goes to take it anyway, Max slams his cup of tea on the table and tries to take his cigarette back and it's all black and they're just laughing lmao (I love his laugh btw, so giggly!)

There was storys posted by Max himself.. so, maybe you saw it, but it's from before dark s3 came out.

- The pigeon storys. He filmed two pigeons chasing each other at the station, one always running from the other and he captioned "me trying to flirt" haha

- He screen recorded an ad for an app that deletes people from pictures and made some joke too, I can't remember exactly what he wrote, smt like "when you break up, but still wants to keep the picture" lol also, he unfollowed like 5 people that week after posting that... hm 👀

- he posted a video of him walking in the dark with really cold wind.. you can only see his hair flying around. Also, with a mask on, another chasing a cat in a big field, and that one drinking his coffee and eating his yogurt (you most likely saw it already)

- Ohh.. His friend was playing Max's drums the other day!!! Made a lot of jokes, it was obvious he was messing around in Max's room (maybe they live together, maybe he just waters the plants lol idk). Some of the jokes were "I've been playing this drums since 1921" and "the drums and me are a perfect pair, don't ever believe otherwise". I wonder what Max said to him.. he can't do anything about it, he's not in Berlin hahah. He has a little giraffe in his room, and other home decors (you can see it on his drumming video on his own IG)

- he likes to read on longer train rides.

- there's a video of him screaming inside a wardrobe after being jumped by a friend and one of him putting lipstick on with the song "I'm a sexy motherfucker" playing in the background hehe we was tagged, it was easy to find when there wasn't much tagged post.

- There's moments of ppl filming something/themselves and he just comes and photobombs it lol he is just like thiss 👏 showing his tongue and doing a funny face and such. One of those I saw it on the IG of a Das Boot cast member I actually already followed before.

- this group was such a blast. There's a few pictures, one of them he's in a dress, he has white stockings on til his thighs, heels and all haha lovely

- His improv-group.. he was almost in tears singing "I believe I can fly" with the group on their last day.. But he was happy! A mix of emotions. He loves everyone, he expresses his love a lot to people in general, he says it and adds heart emojis to make sure haha you can see his comments going on IG of his cast friends, especially from Das Boot (I followed a lot of the guys). So, about always commenting something funny on people's posts.. I didn't saved those, so I forgot most of it, but one I remember was that someone posted a video of a hailstorm and he was like "what are u doing, free ice!! Go grab them" hahaha

- Max has that Noah picture where he's peaking by a wall (you know that one Baran posted) printed and framed! 👏

- Things he’s pretty much always with: his backpack and his big headphones (it's always on his neck. At almost every picture, from every year, with different people etc. I was confused when he had normal headphones at his farm storys. Maybe he forgot them in Berlin 😭. Besides those, his rings, necklaces and bracelets (always, for years and years! Same ones, even). He uses frequently on premieres, as I saw it. Sometimes they also show up on his characters in his one-episode works!! Hahah is so nice when that happens. You can notice this on my screencaps.

- that pic of him that is everywhere now (with glasses, holding a bottle of champagne), I posted that months ago.. There's 2 more pics and 1 video. One pic, he is pretending the automatic lighter that's on the table is a Harry Potter wand (but I think I cropped the table, right.. I can't remember). This was actually posted by Max himself and he tagged his friend who took it. I went to see if they posted smt and there was a picture where he is literally biting the cork of that bottle off with his teeth Lmaoo, and one video.. he is talking on the phone trying to block the view with his feet.. this man!!

- he really doesn't care about buying too much unnecessary clothes and shoes and stuff. He is mindful of his things and the environment!! 

- there's a video of him on the set of Der Zauberlehrling, I need to recall where I got that from (maybe I could share this one. I'm not sure), he is messing with the broom and someone asks him "hey Max, what's that animal?" and points to the fluffy microphone. He says "it's a fucked up coala bear" (in english) 😂

Again.. I can't say names or anything, cause ppl are not mindful! Like.. I know I'm probably weird, but only for myself and my FBI office LOL I don't go over there and follow/reply to all these people’s posts and storys or take their videos and tag Max on them, this is just not.... nah. I'll always be respectful (yeah, some older stuff has gifs, cause he had like 10k followers, and 5 fans on tumblr lol But i never sent/tag him in anything personal directly.. that’s why i only posted on tumblr for the past year, in fact! I never thought things would be the way they are now a year later.. so, newer stuff it's not posted/gif nor ever will). I don't want him to be weirded out and like, disappear from IG!! I think about these things.. when people are being weird and stuff towards him. I don’t know how ppl don’t think about this when tagging him recklessly in random pictures and videos!!!

I wish he had more interviews, so we could know more proper stuff about him. (The few interviews he has are translated on my IG highlight. There's still an 8min interview missing there, cause I'm contemplating about being more of a bother to german speaking people, since I only have basic german..