I Am Not Joking We Need To Force Teach Cooking In Schools. Like. It Is An Essential Thing For Survival.

tips for getting people to like your ocs

*disclaimer: this is based on what’s worked for me, aka an artist that likes to make comics/storyboards. so this advice is directed at people who do that

you can do things like this:

Which is fun! Character sheets like this are great, especially for personal reference! But frankly, I don’t think most people engage with this (at least I personally don’t). You could have the coolest character in the world, but it will be harder for most people to feel invested when they’re presented so neutrally like this.

My main piece of advice is: get better at writing.

That might sound harsh when said like that, but let me explain what I mean! (Not trying to imply you’re bad at writing either!)

What I tend to do is just throw characters into situations with as little handholding as I can. Give enough context that readers can follow along, but don’t feel like they’re being explained to.

what can you learn about the characters through their designs alone? (age, personality, economic status, occupation, etc)

what can you learn about the characters’ relationship though their interactions alone? (are they close? familial? romantic? is there hostility? are they tense/relaxed?)

what are the characters currently doing? what were they doing previously (how long have they been talking)? what are they going to do next? can you convey this without dialogue?

how do they feel about what they are doing? are they content? focused? over/understimulated? would they rather be doing something else?

where are they? does it matter? would establishing a setting in at least one panel clarify the scene? is there anything in the enviroment that could tell some of the story?

what time of day is it? what time of year is it? what is the weather like?

Now, with all this in mind, I'm going to give you another example. I'm going to use completely brand new characters for the sake of the experiment, so you won't have any bias (aka I can’t use Protagonist from above, since you already know all about him).

Did this get more of an emotional response from you than the first example? Why do you think so? Who are these characters? How do they know each other? What else can you infer about them? What happened? Who is "she"?

Now, you don't have to actually answer all those questions. But think about them! You can tell people a whole lot about your characters without ever showing them a list of their likes and dislikes.

Obviously, comics aren't the only way to get people invested in your original characters! But regardless, easily digestible formats will grab people's attention faster than huge blocks of text, and comics are a lot less work than doing wholeass storyboards.

Now go and share your ocs with the world!!!

time to HALT!

(i learned this in a caregiving class but it's useful in most situations i've been in, like not to be neurodivergent on main but sometimes you feel Bad and can't work out why)

Hungry? eat something*.

Angry? count to ten, take a deep breath, and walk away from it if you can.

Lonely? interact with another person that you aren't responsible for.

Tired? take five minutes to sit with your eyes closed.

also i bet your drink is going cold.

( ˘ ³˘)♥

*(if you're not allergic, a spoonful of nut butter and a glass of liquid will keep you going, but the only bad calorie is the one you don't have when you need it.)

i love love love when artists put a bunch of effort into like human anatomy and facial features and light rendering and drawing fabric folds and shadows and texture and then when they draw a gun they do this

They're done: the Forbidden Halftone Brush Pack of your dreams.

Nine free halftone brushes for Clip Studio Paint. I will not be making another set of these so grab 'em now or never. Upload instructions are included in the folder! Thanks for your support! 😭

Past Freebie Brushes | Subscriber Brushes | And My Brush Tag

all the communication panels over a transparent background

the way they get colored is they simply get overlaid over a solid color

potentially eyestraining gif of the underlying color shifting below read more

ignore some artifacts that may appear

Support me on PATREON or Ko-fi 💕

5 min tutorial for trcelyne, hope it helps! 

Next up is my bigger tutorial on character expressions! Bit of a pain to make it Tumblr friendly oop.

If it's hard to view on here, you can also get it on my Kofi for free!

__

Basics:

Squash n Stretch:

Extra tips:

if you’re white and wanna write a poc character and feel awkward about it i implore you to ignore any twitblr stuff treating it as a massive ethical burden and instead come in more with the same mindset you’d have if you wanted to write about idk firefighters but didn’t know anything about firefighters so you do... research. Like fuck off with the weird kinda creepy calls for spiritual introspection you’re not writing about god damn space aliens you’re writing about humans and if you think you need more perspective of different life experiences just read?

The Creator's Guide to Comics Devices is OPEN!!! comicsdevices.com

An online library of visual-narrative devices that are used in the medium of comics and other sequential art.

Happy Halloween! I'm really excited to be finally launching* what is maybe one of my most ambitious, largest work yet. This online library is the next phase of a research project that began in May 2020, when I first mused on how comics as a field doesn't have a resource that catalogues devices used in the medium. Like, theatre has devices, so does literature, and film! So why shouldn't comics? I always had an interest in comics studies and analysis. I love reading, making and thinking comics. However most of my knowledge was intuitive - I learned comics from osmosis and experience. This is true for many of my peers. Speaking about comics as a creator is hard, because we don't have a robust system of language. When we had to speak, many of us tend to reach for the language developed for film by film practitioners. If there is language specific to comics, it's either scattered in multiple blogs or hidden away in academic journals. The Comics Devices library is meant to aggregate everything and everybody into a single hub! After exploring some multiple resources, alongside some original, independent research, here is the first edition! * The Comics Devices project is still a work-in-progress! It's not final, nor will it ever be. This is why I am seeking contributors to help build this library. Translations, comics examples, etc. There is a lot of work to do! If you are interested, reply to this post or submit an expression of interest on this page.  Have fun everyone!! (Now time for me to melt x_x)