1 / 26
Jan 2020

Hello :slight_smile:

The comic I am working on right now involves a lot of fighting
(it is set up in a fantasy world). The problem is, I know nothing about martial arts and fighting!

For seeing how the fight is structured I am planning to watch a lot of my favorite movies and tv shows that involves fighting and try to understand the concept, do you have more ideas how I can improve my knowledge about fighting so that I will be able to understand and draw it?

As for drawing, I will probably try to find as many poses as possible and study them by drawing them in my sketchbook, do you know perhaps where can I find resources and references?

  • created

    Jan '20
  • last reply

    Jan '20
  • 25

    replies

  • 3.1k

    views

  • 11

    users

  • 21

    likes

  • 7

    links

The research part you already have planned out, so that's great. For pose studies, there are photo packs out there especially on Gumroad, though I don't know any links off the top of my head.

The important thing on both comic and writing for action though, is pacing. Don't do blow by blow unless the scene is about what each person does in their strategy, but also don't skip through it so quickly that the scene is over right away. Try to go for impactful clashes, or a clever attack, and some shots of the characters figuring out what to do next as a breather for the reader as well.

For a show with amazing fighting, I can't recommend Netflix's The Witcher enough! The sword choreography was beautiful!

I recommend looking at shows and movies with action and using them for an exercise I did in school a lot. Basically, you do a redraw of a scene. It helps you practice pacing and figuring out what needs to be shown (drawn) vs what can be inferred (not drawn but insinuated through onomatopoeia, flow of paneling, etc)

Not to mention, thanks to youtube, this can be done for basically no money required on your end.

Here:

In my School Time I was in the ArtClass and we had a year Movie as a topic.
We learn how to make script writing, storyboarding, cameraposition and so on.
This helps me a lot now that I draw webtoon.

So my tip is:
There are a lot of good article from film-makers about storyboarding/planning an action scene.
Read though them and look into a lot of storyboards like:
Thor and Iron Man fighting:

For me its also very important to follow the 180-degree rule, especially in action scenes. If you don't know the concept, please read over it. Its very important for the easy reading and to don't confuse the reader

Thank you so much for replying :]
I hope you don't mind be asking you a few more questions
by "Don't go blow by blow", you mean to not elaborate too much and to not make the battle too long (to the point when the reader feels it is boring because of how long it is)?
And by pacing, you mean the space between the panels or the pacing of the story overall?

And again, thank you very much :slight_smile:

Thank you, I will probably do it :stuck_out_tongue:
(even though it will be quite hard for me to pause the movie in the middle lol)
Do you have more recommendations?

And again, Thank you ^^

Thank you for the advice.

"I was in the ArtClass and we had a year Movie as a topic."
I want to read more about the subject, does it have any specific name? or is the name of the subject is movies?

Thank you again :sunny:

Sorry I was thinking about using a laptop, I hadn't thought about a tv screen :joy:

Though if you can use a laptop, you can also work on setting a panel to be visually appealing by taking screenshots, cutting, and then cropping them as well. Super important for action since it's so hard to make it read well.

Other good sword fights... The Witcher's the only that's had me frothing at the mouth these days, so none come immediately to mind. I'll add some if I remember any :+1:

ArtClass not together sorry. only in the Art Class in my school.
You must only search after 'movie making' / 'storyboarding' / 'planning' (...) and you find a looot of good articles and advices from directors/teachers...
There are also many books about it and when you search in google pixels you also find a lot storyboards.
Many different mediums use this concept, like 'movies', 'game developing' or 'comic artist'.
I hope it helps. :slight_smile:

Sure. I know action sequences are tough. (At least they are for me in my comic.) Don't be afraid to lay out several thumbs to figure out the flow.

Yeah, elaborating is a good term for it. Lots of authors think that a good battle has to have every punch and kick displayed/written and that actually slows things down instead - and this is where pacing comes in. It's both the space between panels (gutter) and the sizes and composition of a page that make the pacing - so little punches that get blocked can be very small panels just to show that it happens, the character being knocked down and taking a few seconds to get up could use a slightly bigger gutter to show that they took a second to recover, and a big, important move or attack that has landed can take over half the page or more if you want it to be the center of attention. You have to play it by ear a lot compared to a normal scene, but it pays to make sketches and reread it yourself to make sure it has impact.

Thank you :smiley:
And I also meant laptop XD (by tv shows I meant netflix lol)
I will try to give witcher another try then, I watched the first 2 episodes on netflix and just didn't understood what happened there and stopped watching XD

Totally understandable, there's a lot of time jumping, but it all comes together and makes more sense later.

Thank you so much!!
Even though my style isn't exactly manga, I am sure this book will help me anyway since I can apply what I learn here to my style (::

Yes, I am sure they are though :slight_smile:
But I am really passionate about this comic, so I don't want to give up even if I make a few (a lot actually) mistakes along the way. And I also want to challenge myself to go out of my comfort zone by doing this :stuck_out_tongue: Hope it actually works XD

One of the important things to remember about drawing martial arts scenes is you can't (and shouldn't want to) replicate the entire fight. You're looking for snapshots/key moments that best represent a sequence of events.