Advice for drawing panels faster?

[vworksart]

Hey everyone!
I come to you today with a personal dilemma.

Recently while working on my comic, I've turned my detail dile up a bit to make better looking panels and it's been working. The panels have been coming out nicely in my opinion. My issue is that this has significantly reduced my speed greatly, almost to a crawl. This has become a problem because I've found myself encroaching more and more on the limit of my buffer. Due to my page release volume, I'll have caught up to my WIP pages in a matter of weeks.

I'm freaking out because I want to keep my weekly release schedule but I have no idea how to optimize my drawing and coloring speed while still giving my readers detailed scenes.

Do any of you lovely people have any advice to drawing detailed panels quickly or faster rather?

Thanks In advance!

[unknown_user]

CTRL + C, CTRL + V ?

[vworksart]

It's so obvious ! Lol

[SleepingPoppy]

Working in batches if you're not already? That's helped me a bit with speed. Essentially do several pages of planning, then go through all the sketching, then all the line art, then all the coloring. I usually do 3-4 pages at a time, personally.

[KoreanTacos]

What part in particular is the hold up?

[lotusware]

What does your workflow look like, and the time spent on each step?

Thumbnail ?
Sketch ?
Ink/Lining ?
Coloring ?
Text ?

For ERAFLUX, I knew from my own experience that it was faster to traditionally sketch then ink my pages, and I liked the look better. Based on what I'm seeing from your work on POWERNOTE, it looks like you're doing digital lining.

Are you creating thumbs? This will speed up your sketch/lining phase.

For ERAFLUX (https://tapas.io/series/ERAFLUX), my work flow looks like

• Monday - Thumb (half hour to an hour, I'll do as many pages as I can here until I get bored)
• Tues/Wed - Sketch (3 hours over those two days)
• Thurs/Friday - Ink (2 hours, plus I fix up anything I wasn't happy with after sleeping on the sketch)
• Saturday - Coloring (3 hours--I do my flats, then shading, then detailing)
• Sunday - Throw in a few lighting, do up the layout, and text (2 hours)

So that's about 10 hours per page/week and I feel like I have a pretty good level of detail.

If you outline YOUR process, I might be able to offer suggestions on how to streamline it!

[GesuGesu]

*Fill bucket
*Clip studio > colorize
*Do monotone fills and add a gradient adjustment layer instead of full colour
*Use vector layers for lineart for quick erase jobs
*don't lineart and just sketch cleanly

[imiogri]

I probably won't be of much help because i'm gonna be talking about a whole different style you probably aren't ready to change to, but making things lineless is at least for me super fast. I only sketch the pages based of my script and then slap on all the colors in one layer (but ofc separating characters and backgrounds) But yea it would make the art totally different, but I do recommend testing making backgrounds lineless, because it helps making them more subtle.

Collapsing things does wonder for your speed because moving around layers does take quite a while. I try to keep it to as few layers as humanly possible and sketch really badly because I only need an outline to see what to do. Otherwise I think you will naturally speed up as you get used to it. You can consider taking a break to catch up a little if you feel too stressed about it, I think we all need to do that at some point.

[ZombieOwl]

Well, I think deciding which details are most important is going to help you figure out your attack plan. See if there are things you can skip without "bringing the quality down" in your eyes.

Maybe look into making stock background images and textures you can copy paste into your work as well. It's a lot to do now, but it could help save a lot of time in the future

[MK_Wizard]

Well, there is one small trick. Make a default background as a separate picture and just use parts of it for the background in your panels by using layers. I find that doing that saved me a lot of time especially for scenes that required the same background again and again.

[droidmonkey1]

I think you need to prioritize your details.
make sure that the panel relay needs details or the appearance of them. some times details can overpower.

[Buurd]

THere's many good suggestions above, but one to add:

If you don't have a set method to your coloring - get one.
Idk what other people do, but personally my work outside of my comic has many more details and 'effects' (textures, better lighting, etc) compares to my comic work. Outside my comic I explore a lot of layer styles and adjustments with each of my pieces.
But for the comic I have a set list of layers and brushes that I use. It keeps my art in the comic more consistent - and helps speed up the process since I know each layer/opacity/brush to use for each part now from doing it the same each update.

[Rhonder]

See if there are things you can skip without "bringing the quality down" in your eyes.

I'll piggy back off of this because this has been my biggest time saver. Look for areas in every step of your process where you can skip things to save time and still have the end result look good.

For example, one of my characters has a way overdesigned jacket that takes longer than any other element in my comic to draw (I'm getting rid of it after this arc lmao) BUT I realized that

A.) The pattern on the jacket looks complex, but is actually really simple. I can skip it during the pencil phase

&

B.) The spikey blue fur doesn't need to be very accurate so I can rough that in super fast during pencils as well.

As a result I can shave a good amount of time off of my sketches while retaining detail:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqrVL8XB8T3/

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq37-x1B5PP/

The other side to this is to look for places to add detail that look good but don't require a lot of effort. For example, in these out door scenes, I've taken to texturing the dirt path a little bit with circles and dots/lines, as well as texturing the grass with lines and shadow. These look a lot better than if I left them blank, but also don't take as much time as, say, drawing every blade of grass xD

[akemikae]

I used to be a crazy slow artist myself, but I figured out a few tips and tricks that seem to have worked really well for me.

1) Figure out a more simplistic way to draw your characters. You can always show off on chapter covers/extra art/fancy panels.
2) Fill tool. Fill Tool. FILL TOOL
3) Vector lines are your best friend, trust me. They'll shave off a ton of time from your line work. (Especially if you're like me and like your line art to be super clean haha)
4) On that note, try to remember that not every panel needs to be beautiful. I guarantee you'll be looking at those panels at least 10x as long as the average reader.
5)This goes in hand with simplifying your art, but find a simpler, easier to replicate version of coloring. Once again, you can show off in other things.
6)Try to use as few layers as you possibly can. This took me a long time be comfortable with, but using vectors is a great start to this. Trust me, this will help more than you realize.
7)Batch work. This has been stated multiple times, so I'll be simple. Sketch multiple pages at once. Line art all at once. Color all at once. I went from one page a week to about five. This is a miracle step honestly.

Hope these help you! Sorry if I repeated anything that's already been stated, just figured I'd bring up things that personally helped me a ton.

[deadaccountrip]

The more you draw, the faster you’ll get

[vworksart]

There are some later pages that are taking me a bit to finish up

[vworksart]

So currently my workflow has been to sketch panels or thumbs before work Monday through Friday, then on Saturday and Sunday I do lining and coloring, details, etc.
I try to finish lining and coloring an entire page before I move to the next so I don't have to go back. Plus a finished page adds to my buffer. In top form I can knock out 7 pages in a weekend if I skip meals, but now it's more 3.5. that's about 8 to 10 hours. Saturdays have been rough lately because of unforseen issues in my life coming up so that doesn't help lol!

[vworksart]

I actually do something similar.
I have a sketch layer, line layer, flat color layer, shading layer(if needed), a panel border layer, a text layer, and a special effects layer. I have this repeated for my backgrounds as I tend to keep them separate from the main layers I draw my characters on.

This has grown a bit though to keep some layers safe in case I need to make changes. As for my brushes, I have a set couple that I use.

[vworksart]

It's funny. My characters and designs used to be a lot simpler, but as I moved on I felt that I needed to step up their designs to make it look more appealing. There are times where I need to learn to hold back though but I'm still trying to get a feel for how and where. Idk. I've somehow adopted this mentality of "if I draw it too simplistic, it's a disservice to my readers and they won't think I'm trying my best."

[JeanGuillet]

no

but taking time to look through tutorials may get you some speed tricks. my latest: set photoshop's new 'flip canvas' feature to hotkey control+/ it feels really fluid to hit that up a bunch while drawing.

dude I spend 8 - 12 hours each week just on lines. i just really suck at anatomy.