My Profile Picture. I Made It For A Challenge About A Year Ago, And I Really Think It Represents Me.

God, do I have a cool friend.

A very fancy lady!

Character desgin process. Right is the newer drawing. I'm still not happy with the design yet.

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!

CREATE A CHARACTER (FANTASY):

(Feel free to use as many or as few of the prompts to create your character!)

Name: the first letter of your character's name using the day you were born (1-31)

1A, 2B, 3C, 4D, 5E, 6F, 7G, 8H, 9I, 10J, 11K, 12L, 13M, 14N, 15O, 16P, 17Q, 18R, 19S, 20T, 21U, 22V, 23W, 24X, 25Y, 26Z, 27Á, 28Ë, 29Í, 30Ö, 31Û

Hair Colour: your character's hair colour using the month you were born (1-12)

1 red, 2 orange, 3 yellow, 4 green, 5 blue, 6 purple, 7 black, 8 white, 9 blond, 10 brown, 11 grey, 12 multicoloured

Species: your character's species using the month you were born (1-12)

1 sorcerer, 2 witch/wizard, 3 fairy, 4 pixy, 5 merperson, 6 dwarf, 7 angel, 8 demon, 9 jinn, 10 werewolf, 11 elf, 12 spirit

Features: one of your character's main physical features using the the last digit of the year you were born (0-9)

0 scars, 1 tattoos, 2 piercings, 3 freckles, 4 glasses, 5 birthmark/beauty marks, 6 different coloured eyes, 7 curly hair, 8 jewlery, 9 you chose

Weapon: your character's weapon of choice using the last digit of your age (0-9)

0 dagger, 1 batons, 2 staff, 3 war hammer, 4 spear, 5 mace, 6 shield, 7 axe, 8 bow and arrow, 9 sword

Supernatural Ability: your character's supernatural ability using the month you were born (1-12)

1 telepathy, 2 invisibility, 3 shapeshifting 4, mind control, 5 telekinesis, 6 illusionist, 7 teleportation, 8 flight, 9 hypnosis, 10 prophecy, 11 invisibility, 12 time travel

Role: your character's role using the last digit of the year you were born (0-9)

1 protagonist, 2 antagonist, 3 deuteragonist, 4  romantic interest, 5 confidant, 6 foil, 7 the caregiver, 8 the joker, 9 confidant

Occupation: your character's occupation using the day you were born (1-31)

1 smuggler, 2 knight, 3 animal handler, 4 barmaid, 5 pirate, 6 dancer, 7 painter, 8 musician/bard, 9 assassin, 10 gladiator, 11 farmer, 12 hunter, 13 prince/princess, 14 ranger, 15 thief, 16 explorer, 17 alchemist, 18 healer, 19 highwayman, 20 herbalist, 21 sailor, 22 swordsman, 23 writer/playwright, 24 actor, 25 executioner, 26 emperor/empress, 27 astrologer, 28 diviner, 29 guardsman, 30 historian, 31 messenger

(Inspired by: @creativepromptsforwriting)

Happy Halloween!

They also have an animal one that I linked a whole back on the same site !

Inspired by the song Ladylike by Kira

Not my best drawing, but eh......

Shitty Madoka doodles made while waiting for a college project to render.

I doubt anyone is going to use it, but I opened up asks in case anyone is dying to ask a virtual nobody on the internet about their hot takes.

HII my character & shape design tips PDF is now available! ^_^ hope you enjoy !!

BUY HERE or HERE

Got a drawing and my Invader Zim art book signed by the voice actress for Gaz! Very happy right now!