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Puck
May '21

The title almost says it all. I´m a person who works best with a training method, daily schedules etc
That´s how I learned perspective, anatomy etc

The "just do it" thing unfortunately dididn´t work for me, I tried to "just do it" and I ended up with
many pages with just one or two panels on it, hundreds, you can´t even imagine how bad it is.
I finished some real pages which were really exhausting for me and I tend to overthink everything
a lot

2 methods work for me. The 24 hours / 24 pages comic.
I always finished the 24 pages in the 24 hours, I work well under pressure.
The other method I tried recently is to do tiny 8 pages comics, I fold a normal piece of paper and draw
a comic, I just start with a panel and improvise. I started my first one with a knight sitting around and chilling
and the story developed from there on.

My question is, are there more training methods like that?
How do I get from this to finishing real actual pages?

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    May '21

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drawnbyyannan
May '21

Are you asking about doing a longer form comic?

I find whats most important for me is to have a completed outline of a story - but not necessarily a script. The story gets divided into chapters or arcs and I'll spend a week or so making the thumbnails for the next arc to the story. Once the "story" part of the work is done, I focus on the "art" part of the work, lineart, coloring, etc, for the next several weeks until I finish the set of pages/episodes then repeat.

I think it can be tricky switching back and forth from story and art, so splitting up the process of just thinking about the story then thinking about the art is helpful for me.

Kaydreamer
May '21

Routine helps me immeasurably! And because I'm so familiar with my routine now, I can set small deadlines. For instance, lineart for an episode always needs to be finished by the end of Wednesday. Sketches have to be done by the end of Tuesday. (But preferably by halfway through.) If you plan to start a comic, set a routine for yourself and stick to it. (Allow a little flexibility at the beginning in order to figure out your pace, and how long each step takes, then get strict.)

I also work from a script. I'd feel totally lost at the start of every episode if I didn't have my script. Storyboarding is mentally intensive as it is, I'd be paralysed if I didn't have some pre-determined structure to start visualising from.

Puck
May '21

Thanks for the reply @Kaydreamer and @drawnbyyannan
I meant some kind of practice that I can do to get into the habit but I think I found something
now, I´m doing the 8 panel minicomics every day now, it kind of brings back the fun of making
comics back for me and I think it is a good practice.
My long time goal is to be able to draw 8 panels every day, I have that overthinking problem
and so it is very hard for me to finish pages

DNoble
May '21

First off, read Understanding Comics and Making Comics by Scott McCloud. He does some 'exercise' type things in the latter book, but those two are primarily just the best resources out there for learning how to think about your comic as you make it: What to include or exclude in a panel, how time works in a comic, how cartooning and realism affects the reader's perception, how words and pictures interact with one another, etc. Legitimately invaluable pair of books for anyone who wants to make comics.

I can think of a few exercises you can do that might help:

1: do a comic entirely in thumbnails.
Challenge yourself to make a complete story, but the comic is tiny and messy and sketchy. No room for details or gorgeously rendered art. Force yourself to use framing, composition, and very simple shapes to tell your reader what happens with as little information as possible.

2: Draw a character's room without the character in it.
This is one for if you ever find yourself slipping on environments: Pick a character in your story, and draw their room, but you're not allowed to draw them IN said room. You have to communicate to the viewer who lives there based on the posters they put on their wall, the plushies they keep on their bed, whether their clothes are in the hamper or on the floor, etc. The idea is to force yourself to stop thinking about 'backgrounds' and start thinking about 'environments'. The place where your comics happen can be just as, sometimes even more important than, the characters your comic happens to. Treat environments like another character and practice drawing those characters just like you would any others.

3: Draw your characters in an unusual environment.
Eichiro Oda is famous for doing this with One Piece; each chapter has bonus illustrations of the main characters in suits and cocktail dresses, playing on the beach, doing a cookout, as fantasy rpg characters, or whatever the hell else he wants them to be doing that week. It helps by A: giving you extra art to help promote yourself, and B: learning to portray the same person but within a different framework, forcing you to understand what has to stay the same about a character for them to be recognizable.

All three of the above are meant primarily as ways to get you thinking in a comics mindset instead of an illustration one; you're less focused on the art being pretty, and more on it being communicative. I'd recommend whatever block of time you normally set out for your own work flow, just take the first hour or so of it and do one of the above (or some other variant of comics-focused practice) in order to warm up your brain and get you thinking less about the technical details of drawing and more about storytelling.
I have no idea if that will help all that much, as I am personally HORRIBLE at routine and strict scheduling myself, but if you're having trouble committing to full pages, I think the best way to work up to that would be to spend a little time focusing on the strengths of the specific medium of comics and learning to think in those terms as opposed to straight-up technical details like an illustration might call for.

Puck
May '21

Thanks for the advice, yeah I got both books and I like them a lot and that´s why I tried the 24hours comic day which was
a great experience for me.
I´ll try out the thumbnails practice again, I did that for two complete comics already, I wrote the plot for two 48 pages comics
after finishing some 3 panel stories and some pages, when I finished the first story I didn´t like anything about it anymore,
the second story was similiar but I did the complete thumbnails for the 48 pages but I wasn´t motivated to draw the comic
anymore, it felt like I wrote it just to finish something and I didn´t feel it at all.
I´ll give this a couple more tries, at some point I will give it up and focus on something else, I love comics, I love drawing
and I love the idea of sequential story telling but somehow it got really hard for me.
I used to draw page after page as a kid, now as an adult and with better drawing skills it became hard to finish one page

gabriellabalagna
Jun '21

Sounds you're having trouble learning to make a long term commitment to a comic. I had the same problem. Here's how I worked up to actually finishing a 68 page comic.3

Hope these methods can be helpful to you! Otherwise, maybe just try making a schedule for putting out comic pages.

Puck
Jun '21

That is exactly it. It´s good to hear that I´m not the only one with that problem, I sometimes have the impression
everyone is like "just do it" and they all really just do it and I don´t know what I´m doing wrong.
I will check the link and I´m ready to do everything to change my situation.
I have a ton of good and funny ideas for comics, so that´s at least something, I also have time
and I´m fast but it´s exactly like you wrote, learning the long term commitment

thank you so much for the links, I will read and watch it all

Yulek
Jun '21

I can't add much more, I think the advice in here is super solid, and I will have to bookmark the thread

for the "habit of creating pages" I want to throw in the whole finished not perfect angle.
that's kinda what my gag comic is for. I have projects with full backgrounds and all that. Regular plot comics.

there's a lot going on in them. you have to keep an eye on everything at once.

but in something like comic strips, you can focus on storytelling and on cutting everything that doesn't actually contribute to the story.

like, you know my thing. there's no backgrounds. and if there's items, what gets colored depends on importance and stuff.

and it's actually a really good practice to not get lost in detail, think about what elements on a page actually have relevance and should thus be highlighted through composition or sth and what's just decoration and shouldn't dominate the page, it helps you practice story telling and pacing.

also it's really nice to have a thing where you can finish a whole episode in 4 hours, and are able to move on.
you learn a lot from finishing something completely. but the last few percent till completion can really take a disproportionately long time when it's full art and plot pages

soo yea. comic strips for conscious desicion making :D.

Puck
Jun '21

You added something :slight_smile: and it´s helpful.
I really dig your comics and it´s something that I considered too and probably will do

Puck
Jun '21

The 8 panel mini comics work pretty well for me right now, I surprised that I was able to do it 3 days in a row.
It´s a bit in the style like I was drawing as a teenager or like I would do a 24hours comic day but at least I finish
the minicomics.

It´s a folded piece of copy paper so 8 panels come out. I´ll continue to do that in june to get into the groove
of finishing mini stories

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