#me when i hate my ocs..

[porcelainvino]

don’t tell me cause it HURTSSSSSSSSSSS

[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!

[charmac]

Mac and Dennis not having sex.

[someiicecube]

messing around; Solstars outfits !

—feat. Barbatos, the no. 1 Solomon hater

[noisyghost]

a little follow up to my previous post because i was thinking about how his werewolf form would also change over time. also he gets a dog and that's fun :)

[anemonet]

pro tip: you can always put the bugs in little outfits :thumbsup:

[rottengurlz]

try to be gentle when you are ripping me apart 🔪

w/ @kashisun

[puppyeared]

my stardew farmer ^_^ he doesnt have a green thumb for shit so he keeps animals and does mining

some tidbits i came up with while playing hehe

reclusive and doesnt really go out of his way to talk or visit people unless its an errand. but he also doesnt try to befriend others to get something out of it, so he has a very easygoing approach to making friends. on good terms with linus and sebastian since he runs into them most often.

if he respects or takes a liking to someone, he'll greet them with miss/mister (name). if you get close to him he starts using first name basis. if he doesn't like you, he'll refer to you by your title without using your name. only a few people have caught on to this.

the farm he inherited, Milky Way Farm, was the site of a meteorite crash and sometimes you can find shards of meteor debris littered around the farm (i picked the hilltop farm bc of this lol)

lost his sweater and pants a long ass time ago and doesnt have the time to look for them, so hes been working in his sleep clothes ever since

isnt actually grandpa's real heir to the farm... ;)

[doostyaudi]

//flashing, eyestrain\\

So do I look like him?

You can watch it on yt if u wanna

[oneluckydragon]

"Suddenly the world was gray and dull and my heart was so heavy I felt like I couldn’t move, let alone make it back to Treasure Town. But because of Echo’s last wish… I was able to keep living.”

--- --- --- --- ---

SORA : (Partner)

Abilities: Justified / Inner Focus

Nature: Gentle / Hardy

Moveset: Aura Sphere / Metal Claw / Poison Jab / Dragon Pulse

[oozeandgoo-art]

made a weird dog

[muckyschmuck]

colors them

[sketchy-tour]

While I scream into the void of not finishing any art, have this silly oc interaction of Dandy and Will cause Will's hands are huge and I couldn't stop thinking about how tiny he'd make Dandy's hands look in comparison.

Will Wayward belongs to the lovely @kandavers

[emilyartstudio-s]

Style (Stan x Kyle) please?

Here's a doodle I will finish for patreon :,)

[kulai]

was looking up my drafts and found this little thing! pls don't mind the grammatical errors and just look at the pretty drawings !!!!!!

im actually really happy i have this. my phone got stolen last year so i dont have the drawing file for this design anymore ^_^ now i have this little reference for when step 3 releases yipee

if u wanna know more ill be dumping some info just cus! after the line break lol

A little context: I'm Filipino. so the oc lore is very much filipino-based culturally.

Ayu calls her mom "Nay", short for nanay.

She can understand her mother tongue. She can speak a little, but she can hear it has an accent and is frustrated about it.

They came from the city, where nobody really cared about anyone else's business. As long as you kept to yourself, you'd fit right in. Which is why Ayu is reserved at first, and very people-pleasing.

Although nay is open-minded and loving, Ayu still struggles to connect to her mother in the same intimate way she did when she was younger.

Her journey of identity is a struggle, and all signs lead to: Lesbian.

Unfortunately, she thinks its cause she wants to know her birth father.

A very caring person, mirroring her mother. She's confident in how to show her love, but not on how to receive it from others.

She's comfortable in masc clothing and still does make-up (just the occasional kohl under her eyes for her first year.)

Qiu and Ayu bond in their identity crises

Tamarack and Ayu bond over teasing and physical touch

etc... if i think of more

[izuizzy]

I’m always drawing him in pain so have an AU where he’s actually good and his smile is actually PRECIOUS