How much do you compromise?

[ylldre]

How much do you compromise with yourself or convince yourself to sacrifice details(especially arts) for your comic to be able to make comic without overworking yourself? Me I don’t have much strength of youth anymore, and I want to make a comic without wreaking havoc to my body or even taking too long to finish because….personal reason. Comic is a pretty unique case where you manage everything, not only you act as a director you also do all the hard labors yourself. So when you’re going solo, do you sacrifice much of your art style? Do you feel sometime too much sacrifice takes all the fun of doing comic itself? It’s extremely different drawing an illustration/art piece than making comic after all. Share your thoughts with us please

[GodbreakerComic]

Zero.

It isn't the best way to get readers because it means I can't have a schedule ("new episodes when theyre ready"), and it also means the story is going to take a long time to finish but I dunno... if I'm making compromises then what's the point? At least to me. If I take a step back and think "I could have done that better" then I don't want to release it at all. Not to say my art is perfect far from it lol, but its the best I can do.

Maybe one day I'll have the time for a regular update schedule AND zero compromises but today isn't that day.

EDIT: wanted to add that when my comic takes a more comedic and less dramatc/action heavy tone the artwork is more cartoonish and less detailed. This is by design. I wanted the visuals to match what was happening. So while not a compromise the comedic parts are much easier to draw.

[AmysGames]

I used to get really hung up on not being able to draw xyz thing, so I wouldn't even try... but if I don't try, then how will I get better at it? So I've been letting myself be more loose with my art, trying some crazy things even if they don't quite land. Sometimes it's okay to be "good enough" because that's how you grow.

Obviously that sort of mindset carries over to my comics. It doesn't really matter if some of the art isn't perfect as long as it accurately conveys what's going on.

That said, one thing with my art style in general is I tend to forego shading unless I feel like the piece needs it. Similarly, I've been pretty sparing with shading in my current comic, using it mostly in panels with an obvious light source or particularly dramatic moments. I feel like that's something that might change eventually, but for now I appreciate how much it cuts down on drawing time, lol.

[KSlinger]

I'm on the other side of the table to @GodbreakerComic and cut corners because no one can stop me.

But I totally appreciate wanting to be happy and proud of your work, that's a great way to be. For me it just wasn't efficient. I've gone years agonising over details in pages and it didn't get me very far content-wise. These days I try to depict as much as I can with as little as I can. I don't consider it a compromise because I admire efficiency in storytelling and wish to be better at it. Each to their own, but it's your work at the end of the day. The choices you make- what to do, what not to do- might develop your style into something amazing one day.

[GodbreakerComic]

Despite what my asshole college profs told me there is no wrong way to create

[powerplantanimations]

This comic is one big compromise.

I used it as an introduction to a lot of plotpoints to the story I REALLY wanna tell... my next story. We've reached the point where we're able to get away with chapters that're mostly stick figures now.

[river121693]

There's a noticeable difference between how I draw my Cover pages and the comic iitself. I sacrifice a lot of polish and background details. All of that would probably double my production time.

[Scarlet_Cryptid]

I am a firm believer in 'Perfect is the Enemy of Done'. I know I can't make anything perfect, and even if I could, it'd take so long that I'd burn myself out in months if not sooner. But I also hate putting out shoddy work, because I have definitely looked at other comics, even professional comics, and thought 'I can do better than that'.

So I do three compromises with myself. The first is that I put most of my effort into the things that people will notice right away are bad or wrong: faces, hands, layout, word bubbles, perspective. Anything that people are likely to miss during the maybe 30 seconds they spend looking at my page? I give myself a lot more grace on.

The second is that when I'm done drawing a page, especially a page I think I could have done better on, I go back to the panel/thing I'm least happy with, and I bring it up to a level I find acceptable. And then I let the rest of it go.

And every now and then, to get my perfectionism out, I throw myself into drawing a highly detailed, high-quality stand-alone illustration. It makes me feel less like I'm slacking/not pushing myself for a while.

[SoftWonderBun]

For me, comics work best when I stick to a formula. Whether that be page layouts, time spent per day, or page goals per month. Even how I execute my pages is down to a science. I'm always setting perimeters to fall back on to make sure the work gets done.

You can try something new, something different, something more difficult but it that doesn't work its good to have a fallback plan of action. Also know your limits.

Maybe you wanna make a comic about musicians, can you draw a guitar? Probably not, so just use a model. If there's enough use of that asset in the comic, overtime you'll have the muscle memory of drawing over it(assuming your not just popping in a 3D modeling and moving on) and you might not have to rely on it as much.

It is a long hard, road. You've got to make the process work for you, especially if you're doing it just for yourself.

This is all coming from a queen of procrastination so I'm sure most of ya'll don't need to be as strict with yourselves! lol

[theyrebothakilogram]

I use a lot of 3d backgrounds, and I used to trace and recolor them all by hand, and it was a really tedious and boring process, so I've started using filters to adjust the image instead of retracing every detail. I feel bad, but it makes the process so much easier for me that it outweighs the guilt

[BoomerZ]

My comics from the beginning was designed to be cartoony. Like a Disney cartoon. That way it can be drawn quick like an animation cell. I also don't focus on backgrounds unless establishing a location.

[DasIstWunderblyat]

Writing a novel instead of a comic is how much I compromise

[TheLemmaLlama]

I don't consider it a compromise because I admire efficiency in storytelling and wish to be better at it.

Now that I think about it, this is probably a more accurate take on my decision to not have neat/polished linework/colouring my comic. Like ... is it really a compromise if it didn't really matter to me in the first place? I just like being efficient and can't be happier with my decision to stop at the point where I get dimishing returns for my effort

Ofc there are times where I'm genuinely dissatisfied with a panel but I publish it anyway; in those situations I'll keep trying to improve it if I feel like I can learn something from it, but I'll give up and just publish it as is if I feel like I've been trying to fix it for ages and it's going nowhere, I've done enough learning for one day and I'll probably learn better if I come back in a few months to do a similar panel XD

In those cases I compromise quite easily, and when I avoid compromising,it's because I feel like I might learn something if I kept trying just a little longer (my current comic was partially meant for me to stretch my wings and improve on drawing environments, after all) It's not because I want my comic to be perfect, because I could always come back and fix it later if I really want to:

Advice/Discussion: How much detail should you sacrifice in comic art for the sake of time?

Advice/Discussion: How much detail should you sacrifice in comic art for the sake of time?

Is it worth it to not love the final art in exchange for being able to get the story out faster?

The way I see it is: you can get out the story in an unpolished form and polish it up later, but if you decide to polish everything up from the get go, you can't get that time back. So yes, I think it's worth it; because putting out art-you-don't-love does not doom it to stay art-you-don't-love forever :]

(Then again, I haven't finished any long-form illustrated projects, so take that as you will :P)

[darthmongoose]

I don't really think of the simpler style of Errant as a "sacrifice", I think of it as "enough for the purpose".

Like, yes, I am fully capable of doing paintings like this cover I did for my partner:

But... you know, I've also made good money doing podcast sketch notes that look like this:

And I'm happy with both of these pieces of work, because they are both appropriate for their function, and it's not a missed opportunity, because there's always another project where I'll have the chance to show off some other facet of my skillset.
Plus... simple art can be showing off too. When you remove detail, your lines need to be extra efficient to get across what things are. It's also very effective for being funny, and one of the things people have always praised about my work the most, is the comedy.

So... I don't think of the simpler art style of Errant compared to a book cover illo as losing something so much as making something with an elegant, limited set of tools that help me have clear storytelling and action, strong humour and a tight schedule. It's not a mess of excessive detail, it's not too pretentious to be funny and it's not overwrought and timid, taking ages to come out. It's a bold, confident comic that I feel proud of.

[allisoncandraw]

I definitely have to leave out some details from my strips, particularly in the backgrounds. I find myself thinking things like "sure I /could/ put more decor in this living room scene, or I could just move on to the next comic."

Comics are definitely a different beast than standalone illustrations. I get lost in the details on my illustrations, but when you got a comic with a deadline there's no time for that bs! Lol

[Mallory]

I started out thinking I wasn't going to compromise, but it was simply unsustainable. Each (hand-lettered!!!) page took me 20-30 hours of redraws and ctrl+z perfectionism. That's not sustainable for most artists, and especially not disabled artists like me, for whom drawing is physically painful.

OG pages:

New pages (they're still in color, this is a flashback meant to look like it's being played through a computer screen, like panel 3 in the OG page. However my colors going forward are pre-determined and limited, vs picking them individually for every page):

I basically stopped at what used to be my sketch layer and threw in some rough blocked shadows instead of painting them in individually. Oh and I made a font out of my handwriting and forced myself to use it. Is it way more ugly? Yeah. Is it enabling me to finish this story before the heat death of the universe? You bet! The speed also means I can put in little character moments and pauses into the story, allowing the writing to breathe, whereas before it was written to minimize how many of these time-consuming pages I had to draw. So... maybe it's not as much compromise as the appearance suggests.

I will however say that I LOVE rough/sketchy/unfinished-looking art. Love it. I seek it out in other comics, when I can. So the updated style, for me, was actually working towards something I personally think looks nice, if fast and loose - especially because it often enables more character building. With comics, you can't really have it all. You gotta pick what matters and what doesn't.

[XiuLyn_12]

Halfway through making my comic, I had to sacrifice detailed shading to make better backgrounds.

Now that I finished my story, I have moved on to making very short comics. I aim to make it as perfect as possible, including shading, backgrounds, and even challenging poses.

It does take a longer time for very short comics, but so far I've been satisfied with the results! Back pains are nothing, but good results are very rewarding, haha!

[GumshoeComix]

I simplify my art, basically cartoonify it as much as I can to make it simple and fast for me to draw so when I draw things that aren't related to my comic it looks very different
Backgrounds appear once per scene then will be very limited or not at all, you don't need BG's in every panel as much as I enjoy them :c
I'm trying to give myself some leeway since people are more likely to notice typos than art mistakes and your average person doesn't even look at a panel for more than 15 seconds. Their eyes are going to be on the word bubble during that time.
(Which I noticed maybe too late)
so Im trying to focus on doing the dialogue bubbles correctly more, since i cant frickin type

I cartoonify my art to such extremes cause I know my limits, I've been on hiatus 3 times already and I get sick easily Even if I have the ability to draw a more beautiful page, I can't or i won't finish my comic for another 10 years and I have other stories I want to tell

[KevinReijnders]

For me, making a comic was the compromise. I would have loved to create a full on animated series. But doing that on my own is near impossible and actually getting a project like Trespasser off the ground without having to make other sort of creative compromises to monied interests seemed even less possible. So I made it a comic, where I get to retain full creative freedom.