#i was SO SCARED to put the watercolor over the colored pencil I swear | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jocosejoni · 2 years

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HI ok I love ur stuff and ur stories and ur style of making comics and im looking to start making comics in the near future, do you have any advice or tips???? I hope u have a good day :] !!

!!! Ooo!! Get ready this is gonna be a lot! Maybe I'll put in random art???? to separate it????

So for advice:

Before you draw any pages or anything, have the story written! It doesn't have to be a book it can even just be a word doc w/ bullet points of what you want to happen. For CoD I have a general 5 point story thing (beginning, rising action, climax, falling action, and ending) with big things I want to happen under them that I end up building the chapters around.

Have your characters fully fleshed out too. Maybe your story doesn't have anyone get ice cream, but we all need to know what their favorite flavor is and why.

Find a style you like that's fast and easy and ideally doesn't do too much damage to your hands/wrists cause with comics you're gonna be drawing A LOT. Remember to take breaks to stretch your wrists/fingers/shoulders and to not look at a screen for a bit. And mental health breaks, they say "Comics will Break your Heart" and they mean it.

Lots of people say to start with short projects first and I think that's a good idea!!! you can always build on short stories if your heart desires, but also if you have a giant magnum opus idea that you think is perfect, just start it now! ALSO, also, if something happens and you gotta end it early its okay too, you can always reboot it! IF CARTOONS CAN HAVE A BILLION REBOOTS so can your comics.

Vintage 2013 Conner (technically CoD is a reboot of a comic I started in hs/early college that I had to end because a character I had based on a real person died in the comic and a few weeks after that page went up the real person died irl and I got SCARED.)

For Tips:

I love using all mediums. Sometimes its fun to experiment and use mediums specific to your story. Maybe you wanna do a mermaid comic, maybe try it in a watercolor style??? I normally use like a heavy ink style, but with CoD I wanted something sharper so I've been trying that.

Usually the flow with comics is Script, Thumbnails, Pencils at page size, inks, colors, and finally lettering. But after Scripting and Thumbnailing It can go in whatever order.

For lettering font choice is important! You want it to be legible and fit well with the tone of the story/dialogue. There's lots of good lettering info and free fonts for personal/self publishing use here: https://blambot.com/ They also have a scripting guide but there's been a newer guide floating around too that's trying to standardize scripts (cause if you start working with writers you'll find that EVERYONE is so different when they send you a script) https://www.oheysteenz.com/scs-template

I am inhumanly fast at comics usually, and that's because I like to cheat. I don't always do pencils. on digitally drawn comics I'll take a photo of the thumbnail and draw over it cause its just a general idea of where things need to go. On traditionally inked ones I do the same thing but I end up printing the thumbnail onto the Bristol paper.

Following sample is from apoppy chapter 2 and features traditional penciling which allows you to make fun notes like "less dick shapes" very accurate inks and to flesh out any drawing problems you might have.

For Drawing Print Comics:

In Clip Studio/photoshop/procreate, You want a canvas that's 300 DPI or higher sized appropriately for what size book you want to make. Regular size comics I make at 11x17 inches and size down for books to like 10 something by 6 something. Different printers have slightly different requirements and they all should have templates available. If you're coloring it export your image in CMYK, its gonna look weird on the webpage but don't worry.

For traditional drawing: 11x17 Bristol Board and ink. Some people swear by certain brands, I'm cheap and use a giant bottle of Speedball Ink and a brush or a set of fine tip pens like Faber Castell Pitt Pens or Microns. I like those because they're waterproof and I like to paint at random. Scanning should be done in full color at 300+ DPI but, that size is a challenge, I've had to scan in sections and piece it together digitally. It Sucks, but large flatbed scanners are hard to find. I haven't tried one of those kind that feeds the paper through tho.

I don't know much about the mobile format comics as far as pacing goes. I'm in the grandpa zone and think mobile format is making you do more work for nothin cause if a "normal" episode has like 60 panels you could equate that to print comics and say that it's 10, 6 panel pages or 6, 10 panel pages (which is a lot of panels you sorta don't wanna go over 10 if you don't have to but that's all up to you) and over the course of history webcomics have only ever posted like 1 page a week or more. anyone posting a page every day is wildin.

Oh oh oh also! Coloring!! everyone colors differently but i swear by making your own color palette. CoD started with a limited color palette and has been building over the years, and Apoppytheosis has a very very limited color palette and a rule for that comic was to not use any other colors. (any other colors seen were from another palette color doing something weird over the top of that layer) (This is the apoppytheosis color palette. Apoppy 2 is similar but more vibrant.)

Anyway I'm going rambly!! feel free to reach out if you got specific questions on pages or approaches to stuff!! I went to college for comics and I could talk about this all night.

#origamiyoda #ask response #my art #webcomic #how to webcomic

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rachclgreen · 7 years

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buy you a rose - (jily drabble) i actually don’t know what this is, i was listening to buy you a rose by AJR and suddenly i was writing. there was no plot in mind, literally no direction. just two little idiots and some background music. could be described as firsts and lasts w/ colors. hope you don’t hate it--if you do that’s cool too though. also, listen to AJR bc their music is rad af.

james swears on his mother’s favorite blue sweater that he’s never seen eyes such a bright shade of green--like the color of the frogspawn in his father’s potions kits, or the stems of the roses he carefully grows for his mum in the back gardens. really, james hasn’t seen eyes that weren’t blue or brown and had assumed that it wasn’t possible for people to have eyes any other color--but he’s eleven and naive, cut him some slack. he wants to ask her if they’re her real eye color, (you can’t actually have eyes the color of clovers, and moss, and caterpillars) but he and his mum had discussed inside thoughts and outside thoughts for three hours yesterday and he really thinks she’d be disappointed if he couldn’t last a week without mixing the two up.

but really, her eyes can’t possibly be real.

james shifts in his seat, his fingers twitching at his sides. he’s pretty sure he could draw her eyes, if he mixed his two favorite green pencils with a bit of yellow and blue. he tilts his head sideways, glasses falling down the bridge of his nose. he’d need brown as well, if he wanted to get the edges right (which he did). he’d have to owl his mum when he got to the castle, he’d only brought half his pencils from home (a clear mistake, he’d told his dad he’d need the whole set). maybe he’d be able to catch her within the first week of classes and have her sit for a portrait--it’d be the only way to get the exact color perfect, and even then he’d have to watch the lighting.

lily’s pretty sure she’s never met a boy who stared so blatantly at a girl whilst she cried without once offering condolences, a handkerchief, or something at the very least aside from two wide eyes that won’t move from her own. she rubs her sleeve over her cheeks, brushing the tears away from her eyes, and shoots her best glare at the stupid git who can’t seem to take a hint. pulling her knees to her chest, she shuffles her body towards the wall and glares some more.

“would you quit staring?” lily finally snaps, her lips in a pronounced pout.

“sorry,” james mutters, not moving his eyes from hers--and it dawns on him in that moment, he knows that color, its not grass or clover or peppers or any other ridiculous shade of green (how could he be so stupid, its so obvious). “it’s just--your eyes are almost the exact same color as algae.”

her eyes narrow, and james knows immediately that that should’ve been an inside thought as her shoe hits his head.

all of the students, and professors, and books, and literally every reputable source describe the lake on the hogwarts grounds as the black lake, but james is prepared to fight half of those people because he’s certain that theres shades of purple and red swirling in the depths that have nothing to do with the squid or merfolk that swim within its depths. sirius claims it to be a trick of the light, every time he brings it up. he doesn’t need sirius’ recognition to know he’s right though. all the proof he needs comes in the shaking form of evans, who stands before him in a near transparent school blouse that once was white but is now stained purple.

he’s pretty certain she’s glaring at him (he didn’t even do anything, he hadn’t realized what sirius was doing until he’d heard the splash and by then, well he couldn’t exactly do more than pull her out of the water could he?) but all he can do is stare at her shirt as it drips with lilac and violet and a dark grey that when mixed together looks like the universe and definitely could be mistaken for black by anyone without an artists eye.

in the end he trades lily his cloak for her blouse--he swears on his dad’s amaryllis that he’s only trying to be a gentleman, and he’ll return her shirt to her promptly, really. she’s hesitant, because they’re sixteen and sirius is standing at his side, but he really didn’t do anything and she thinks she might be half in love with him anyway.

“oh brilliant evans, you won’t regret this i swear.” he’s draping his cloak around her shoulders, shielding his body in front of hers as she unbuttons the soaking shirt and ties the cloak tightly against her chest. “i’ve been trying to determine the color of the lake for ages, but i’ve never thought to put it on fabric while looking at it--this is going to be perfect.”

“you know you’re the only redhead i’ve ever met.” james states matter of factly, as though he hadn’t just been discussing quidditch scores with the gideon who’s hair is even more shocking than her own. lily scoffs, pursing her lips and eyeing the two prewett boys (now standing together with benjy and sirius) and wondering when her boyfriend lost his mind. “you do realize you were just speaking with gid a moment ago, right sweetheart?”

he winces at her tone, but shakes his head assuredly. he taps his index finger against the back of her hand, and twirls a bit of her hair around his other.

james wants to tell her that the prewett boys are made up of oranges--bright shades that could rival fruit and fire. it’s a brilliant color, one that he’s drawn with on several occasions over the years. it’s the color of his dad’s favorite mug, and the collars his mum got for the dogs in fourth year before they (he) left them in the woods.

but her hair. he’d tried to draw it over and over but couldn’t ever get it quite right--not with pencils, oils, or watercolors. she was a shade between the roses he’d taken to buying her for holidays and the scarlet ties they’d worn for seven years in the castle. (he thinks that its closest to the color running through his veins, but that might just be because both shades are close to his heart.) the two aren’t comparable, really no color he’s ever seen could rival the color that falls from her head in waves.

“they’re gingers lil, it’s different.” and lily just nods because she doesn’t understand, but somehow she hopes that she does.

lily nudges his knee with her foot and holds out one of two steaming mugs filled to the brim with tea and sugar. james grunts in response, two colored pencils clutched tightly in his fingers. she wants to tell him that the two colors are exactly the same--even more than the last two colors were when she DID tell him exactly that. but figures she can’t escape to the kitchen twice in ten minutes because of her inability to hold her own tongue.

he scratches against the parchment with one pencil, his brows crinkling together tightly as he stares at the color it leaves behind. he stares for several moments that feel like an eternity as she stands there holding two burning mugs--before doing exactly the same with the other pencil.

“james,” she sighs, placing his mug atop a torn bit of parchment, whilst cradling her own. “they’re nearly the same color, just choose one and be done with it.” but james shakes his head with vehemence.

“they’re not the same lil,” his voice is low, and he’s pulling the parchment towards his face squinting between the two blues. “merlin, i don’t think either of these is right.”

james’ head falls backwards as he swears loudly. his fingers are gripping the edges of the parchment so tightly he thinks it’ll probably tear but it doesn’t matter because the baby’s bedroom is meant to look like the color of the sea, and the blues he’s looking between match more closely to the sky of cokeworth. both colors have strong memories attached to them--but cokeworth has petunia and snape and smoggy clouds that make him sick just thinking about them. he wants his baby to be surrounded only by his and lily’s happiest memories; crashing waves and stones skipping across their crests. “i just want it to be perfect.”

lily nods, her fingers grazing over her stomach where a slight bump has begun to rise. they’re nineteen and totally not cut out for this--at least, she doesn’t feel cut out for this. just scared and nervous and slightly motion sick. but james is scrubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands, and she can’t imagine anyone she’d rather have as the father of her child than some idiot artist who’s so worried about one shade of a single color that will go into a mix of several other colors (all of which) he’s painstakingly chosen just to capture a single emotion for their baby’s nursery.

but james drapes his fingers over her hand, and smiles crookedly at her, his other hand toying with two new pencil colors. she rolls her eyes (because they’ll never sleep at this rate), but he’s babbling about memories and scribbling with colors, and maybe she’ll never understand why he’s so specific but she loves him for it anyway.

#hp fanfiction #jily fanfiction #jily fanfic #jily #harry potter fanfic #fanfic #its 3am idk how this is or what it is #but here have it bc i haven't written in a while and this felt good

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