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Jan 2020

I can't find the discussion where one person was asking whether they'd have to be good at drawing to make comics, so here's my response to anyone who's asking themselves the same thing.

Scott McCloud (super cool comic artist) has said there's four artistic tribes, or values that people have that give them the passion to make comics in the first place.

The Classicists: Those who are hard workers who aim for mastery of their craft, who want the beauty of their work to last. (Art/Tradition)

The Animists: Those who put content first, create life through art, and are led by their intuition. (Tradition/Life)

The Formalists: Those who loyally study the form of comics and experiment with them. (Revolution/Art)

The Iconoclasts: Those whose are honest, authentic, and unpretentious. They put life first. (Revolution/Life)

This doesn't mean any of us stay in one category, lots of people experiment and use more than one at once, but there's always a bit of a preference for everyone.

Getting into the "is this art bad" mindset keeps you from enjoying the vast potential of comics, whether it be reading or creating.

Comics are made up of so many different factors, and can still appeal to readers. IMO stories with highly polished art can sometimes have so-so stories but we read them because they're total eye-candy. Some comics have terrible line art but such vivid colours that you can't help but read on. Some comics have such simple art that it makes you want to laugh and cringe immediately, and works well with abstract concepts or comedy. Some comics have such strong stories that you don't care about the art much at all. There's room for everyone.

Here's a variety of comics that are well known enough and very different from each other, none of which I would call bad or say that they can't make comics because of their style. Enjoy:

If you want to learn about comics, I'd highly recommend Scott McCloud's "Making Comics". It's a comic in itself, it's approachable and in-depth.

I also have a comic here on the how-to's of drawing, feel free to have a look if it interests you: https://tapas.io/series/Summa-School3

Hope this helps!

What are some polar-opposite comics that you like?

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    Jan '20
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    Jan '20
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Solid points! Like, just from a clarity/legibility stand point, there is like a minimum level that one should achieve before beginning to publish. Like the text should be readable and generally you should be able to follow what's happening. But the bar for that is like, reeeeeeeally low. Most people who have like, read a comic ever, can get a feel for how to clear that hurdle. The art and writing itself is largely inconsequential- those are skills to be trained and improved, not conditions for starting.

If I'm interpreting the ending question correctly, polar opposite comics as in comics whose strengths are rather different from one another but I still like them a lot anyways, my two tapas examples are:

&

Pomp's Pomps is a comedy series with a super simple and even at times messy art style. The panels are drawn without a ruler, the majority of characters are virtually identical, it's thin black linework with very limited shading/color, etc. The author is capable of doing far more detailed/rendered work, if you look at their other series/instagram, so the style for this comic seems to be a deliberate choice. And above all else, it's freakin' hilarious (imo). One of my favorite comics on tapas, patiently sitting here hoping it comes out of hiatus at some point (although the author has been working diligently on another series in the mean time). I read this story for the humor and over the top characters, and not so much for the art per se.

The Witch's Throne on the other hand is a Tapas premium comic, and with that a certain level of polish/rendering/professionalism is to be expected. I love the art in this series and look up to it in some ways, as it's of similar style to my own... just way more polished haha. But on the flip side, the writing isn't bad by any means, but it's just kind of par for the course for this style of action/adventure comic. I'm not here for the writing necessarily, I'm here for the pretty colors and the fun action sequences :slight_smile:

Yep, yep! Exactly. I think it's good to keep these in mind. They're both comics that are capable of being liked by many. I remember one comic that I binge-read was just some dude's high school daily biography that was drawn with stick people.

Another example I think of is Hark, A Vagrant:
http://www.harkavagrant.com/index.php?id=30810
Historical comedy / general comedy that's drawn with pencils or ink. Some people think comics have to be coloured for people to read them, but this is one example that proves you don't. The art has a particular charm to it in a way that says "I didn't obsess over this page for 40 hours of my life, wondering if the shading on the upper lip would ever work, I had fun and you should have fun too." I've binge-read and bought books, shared them with friends, everything.

https://www.meekcomic.com/comic/chapter-1-cover/6
Whereas The Meek is just jaw-droppingly gorgeous in design, hella complex story... gah. Masterpiece. No other word for it.

I agree 100% with the text situation though. Even some decent sized MS Paint font is better for reading than words that are super tiny, or written in a way that no one can read. Some people's handwriting is fine, but I know better than to force anyone to read my hieroglyphic nonsense.

I do agree with Rhonder about readability. Not just with lettering, but with paneling and contents of those panels. A comic is a lot less enjoyable if the panel layout has no rhyme or reason, or if you don't know what's happening within the story. Like, in high school I picked up a manga once that was very detail oriented and the pages were filled with 12 or so tiiiiiiny panels from time to time, due to that combination I legit could not read it half the time. After a couple tries I moved on to other comics.
This isn't a popular opinion, but I do think a comic can be technically bad if it is unreadable. Sometimes you need to work on your Skillz™ before tackling the big stuff, and I don't understand the stigma with saying your not very good at something yet. It's okay to suck, we all gotta start somewhere, what matters is what you do moving forward.

As for the question, I would piiiick these two.


Perry Bible Fellowship is a gag-a-day comic with random, sometimes dark humor.

Scurry is a serious dark fantasy about mice.

These two could probably be opposites as well?


The Dogs on the Railroad is a sad, post-apocalyptic comic about dogs trying to survive.

Life Outside the Circle is an extremely fluffy romance comic with a couple of heavier subjects here and there, but is still overall very cutesy.

As a classicist I agree but if they aren't putting work into the aesthetic then generally to me they have to be making up for it somewhere. It depends on what we're calling "bad" though. There's atypical where it can be appreciated even if it might not be the prettiest but I don't think anyone here would call Order of the Stick artistically skilled. But it's fantastic. It's a balance. You can have the nicest art in the world but if you can't tell a story then I'm not reading it. But if you can tell a story and I can get passed the artwork then I'll stick around for the ride for sure. ESPECIALLY if I see you grow as an artist. See: Zap in Space. Basically as long as you're able to tell a compelling story through art even if the actual depictions are poor then it's fine.

Zap is always what I think about for that example, thanks for reading my mind, haha.

Yeah, story means a lot to me. I think we all have a comic out there that's our closet "B movie" that we read, even if it's not coherent, too cliche, or basic. I read a lot more of those when there were less comics out there to enjoy. I'm super glad that sites like Smackjeeves, Tapas, and Webtoons came into existence. They really help connect comics and readers together more than random sites.

Well Smackjeeves of about 3 months ago and before at least lol But yeah and there were some great comics that they had on there before the mass exodus XD I just joined Tapas and started being more active on webtoons. I do really like the community here :slight_smile: I haven't figured out if webtoons has a forum yet lol still working on catching them up with my other comics. I just dumped everything up to date on here but there I'm trying what I should have done here and posting a page every weekday until it's caught up lol Keeps it on the front page for longer. Since I don't really feel like I have a comfortable home with SJ anymore I've been trying to diversify and expand

I just read Sabrina last night and WEPT. It was originally so hard for me to get into because of the art looking exactly like an airplane safety pamphlet (and I originally tried to read it on a plane) but I got through it and it might be one of my favorite graphic novels of all time. The first graphic novel to ever be longlisted for the Man Booker Prize which is a really big deal.

Granted, I read a lot of more unconventional looking alternative comics that a lot of people here would probably point at and say “bad”. I think the simple art juxtaposed with such an emotionally complex narrative is ART.

In general, I also think more simple styles tend to carry the weight of dramatic or intense narratives really well. Similarly to how I think overall comedy can make the impact of dramatic moments more dramatic if done well.