Hey laurenstrawn!
good idea to get stuck into a comic as a way to learn - the best way to learn how to do something is by doing it. on that note, never let yourself get trapped in a decision you made in this comic you grow out of - change designs and styles as much as you want to find what works for you.
i really like the concept - we dont have enough comics abt lesbians (bi women? idk) on tapas, and witches are always dope.
looking at your art:
your colours look nice, but i think you could do with playing around with colour more to match the tone. for example, this:
would be better if you faded from the pink to a dark blue or black background, with the panel far darker, cooler, and less saturated. something like...
this
a change in colour like that is a good way of indicating a change of setting, and can also say a lot about the scene. colour is reeeeally useful in story telling.
as another example, you could make 'this dance we do' less saturated, and darker, to indicate that its a grim situation, being enacted by a character who's very upset with their life. you should also change the colours for the exchange between the girls and the boys monologue, to make it clearer theyre two different settings.
id recommend looking into colour theory - theres some good tutorials on deviantart and tumblr if you look around.
also, as you probably already know, you need to keep working on the fundamentals. not just anatomy, but also gesture and form (and composition but idrk how to give u feedback on that. look at cinematography for some good pointers on how to compose comic panels tho. this was an helpful analysis for me)
when it comes to resources on brushing up on fundamentals - people-drawing, wise - my go-to recc is Proko on youtube. he has videos on figure drawing (which you absolutely should do, drawing from life is the best way to get better at drawing anything in any style) as well as illustration and caricature - i think hes an illustrator by trade, so thats cool.
i made a thread a while ago that has a lot of helpful resources for the fundamentals in the responses, check that out too
dunno where exactly to slot this in, but
this is a nice very nice hand, with good shading. shading like this throughout your comic would look good - the coloured lines are a nice touch too.
your backgrounds could do with being more detailed, to help with creating a sense of place. id recommend making models of recurring or important sets using model software like google sketchup (free, easy to use) or blender (free, more versatile, steep learning curve but good tutorials on youtube). thatd also help with the depth element. otherwise, think of your backgrounds as a set that your characters, like actors, are moving around - someone has built this set, and its a little worn, its full of stuff appropriate to the scene; your characters live there, they leave stuff around. a more interesting set gives your characters more to do gives you more interesting poses to draw.
looking at your writing:
im afraid im going to seem mean here, ie no compliment sandwiches - although as i mentioned before, this is a cool concept. i also like the anticapitalist vibes forming.
youre going too fast.
your main characters meeting is exactly 2 panels. when they next interact theyre texting like good friends, and the Problem of the story is already being introduced. instead, you should slow down, introduce each character enough for the reader to care about them - what happens after they meet, and find out theyre both witches? does pink invite flowercrown out for a drink, do they talk about witchcraft, being gay, rumours about shops closing down (foreshadowing) - maybe moan about this company thats closing them? are they romantic interests? are they just friends? how does flowercrown get pinks number?
if you think your readers are getting bored (theyre not, these gay girls are super cute) you can spatter this cute buildup with more 'meanwhile' scenes; show mysterious shots of the boy doing his depressing work, of this boss's devious scheming. maybe the boss shouts at the boy, who's upset all the way back to his studio. he calms down, and begins teaching a buncha children how to dance - this shows the audience a hint of what this boys motivations are, instead of him telling us upright. dont tell us that. leave it, until its pried out of him by one of the girls.
a big thing with comics is the act of showing, not telling - you have all these images to tell people more than the words alone do. id recommend practicing making short, wordless comics, that tell a story.
the other stuff (ie lettering and panelling and all that crap):
you moved recently to this kind of lettering
honestly, id say the coloured, borderless bubbles looked better in your comic, but regardless heres some tips:
when making the bubble for your words, you want to leave an even space around it - so no letters are touching the side and they all come to the same distance. a standard rule is you should be able to move a lowercase 'o' through the space between the letters and edge of the bubble.
this is made easier by structuring your lettering in a diamond shape - this setup takes up the least space for your bubble. dont cut off words for this a la
elemen-
tary
but instead change how you break up the lettering to accommodate long words.
so your lettering would look like this:
id also recommend getting a free, more comic-friendly font from blambot or somewhere similar. times new roman, and other default office fonts, really dont work. you want something rounder and bouncier, especially for a comic like this
as for panelling, youre generally fine - borderless panels, like borderless bubbles, suit your comic. you could definitely do to be more creative with your panelling; the zig-zag panels looked cool, what if you put them on a slant too? stuff like that can add drama to a scene.
also bear in mind that on tapastic, you have the benefit on infinite scroll. if you want to slow a scene down, make your panels bigger and further apart. if you want to speed it up, bring them closer together.
i know this is a lot of 'do this better' 'do that better' but try not to get disheartened - each and everyone one of us has been where you are now, and its brilliant that youre reaching out for feedback and looking to improve your work. keep working at it, and youll improve and improve until youre brilliant.
also, if youre cool with books and buying them (or ordering them from a local library) these are some good ones a lecturer on comics recommended to me:
- scott mccloud: understanding comics
- ditto, making comics
- ditto, reinventing comics
- will eisner, comics & sequential art
- ditto, graphic storytelling & visual narrative