How to keep your style constant?

Alecaddd 2013-12-07 05:41:26 UTC #1

Hey guys, how you doing?
I've just started my first webcomic and I really love it, but now, after a couple of weeks of updating, I fell like I miss something, and finally yesterday, I figured out what it was.

Lack of consistency

I use to publish five pages per week and I try to use always the same brush size, same techniques and palette, but for me it's really hard to maintain the same style for every pages.

How do you choose the style to keep for your comic?
How do you maintain that style constant?
Is it ok to change/rethink the style during the publication process?

Cheers

NikolaiMcFist 2013-12-07 14:40:35 UTC #2

Unless it's terribly important to stay consistent (such as if you're doing a long form/story-based comic) then honestly I'd say it's a good thing. You'll learn different techniques and practices through exploration in that way, and add tools to your artistic repertoire.

Otherwise, it's a matter of repetition. I think moreso in getting certain bits, special things YOU do for that comic down. I actually had to go (voluntarily, of course) and re-edit 28 or 29 something pages BECAUSE of a problem with this. I think the problem stems from being impatient and not doing a few test pages to really get the style down. However, it's also hard to judge how we're going to evolve stylistically, especially for the comic we're working on, so I suppose such a thing happens naturally.

As far as choosing the style to keep, I find that it depends on the one you feel best fits what you're trying to accomplish with your comic. With mine, I want bold lines, bright, fun colors, kinda thin word balloons, and sound effects with colored outlines. There's certain things I feel fit within the theme of my comic.

tonygazso 2013-12-07 16:29:31 UTC #3

Exactly. My comics all have different styles. And I love doing that because, honestly, I'd get bored doing the same style all the time, but that's not necessarily true of everyone.

But I agree with NikolaiMcFist, it's all about repetition. I did the art for The Amazing Adventures of Cat Prentis and I've always wanted to go back and re-do the first 18 pages or so because I didn't really hit my stride and get familiar enough with drawing all the characters until that far along. I started out having to use my character design sheets for nearly every character I drew, but eventually, I didn't need those sheets anymore...

aimandps 2013-12-15 13:49:57 UTC #4

Well if you ask me keeping the the style constant is a quite difficult thing but its the way through which people recognize your work! For me... when i draw some pages and then after comparing it with the old one i feel some slight improvements and changes... for little by little my art style changes every time. I am updating my first comic so i`m just using my normal art style and i am trying to keep my art style constant

mboymanuel 2013-12-17 18:38:17 UTC #5

I came up with a simple solution for this one actually. I just made character turnarounds for everything

Twas hard to stray too far from what they looked after that

Alecaddd 2013-12-17 18:52:37 UTC #6

You're right, I never did character turnarounds, but I think is something absolutely necessary duraing a long term production series.
Thanks for the advice

IllusP 2013-12-18 11:43:21 UTC #7

Hey this thread caught my attention because I've been struggling with the same problem! What I do nowadays is whenever I'm drawing a new episode, I have one of the previous episodes open up on my screen, so that at every point I consistently refer back to see if I'm keeping inline with the style.

For this purpose, I usually choose the best episode, the one that I think best represents my style and what I want to maintain. It becomes my "template" as such and helps me stay as consistent as possible. I'm a graphic designer by profession, not an artist, but I hope this helps in one way or another!

digital_nxs 2014-01-01 04:52:52 UTC #8

I chose a style I was comfortable with doing without having to think about it too much. I also keep the pages up next to each other as a point of reference.

IntroducingEmy 2014-01-03 10:48:34 UTC #9

(Sorry if I'm bringing this thread back from the dead.)

I just completed a huge revamp (139 pages) on my first volume so that it's beautified for publication. It was really hard for me to stay consistent at the beginning and more recently I've made face charts for my characters so I can quickly reference common poses. I also go back and touch up pages that I've done within the last few weeks if I notice some really glaringly bad, off model drawings. I jump around in my plot with a lot of different characters so every time I start a new scene with a character I haven't drawn in awhile, I feel like I'm starting all over again and have to relearn to draw them.

In my opinion, lack of consistency is probably one of the hardest things to overcome in comics so if you master that, you're pretty golden!

scarlet_wings_kaili 2014-01-03 19:07:43 UTC #10

Unless I'm doing a really long comic, usually I draw everything out at once, fix everything at once, ink everything at once...etc.
I think that makes it fairly consistent for me.
Also, having a plan how your characters look, how a place is set up is really important in consistently too. Otherwise, you will keep changing the face ^-^

FUrbina 2014-01-09 12:33:24 UTC #11

I use to work on different projects at the same time, with different styles and needs.
Indeed, switching styles is hard work but also a great practice about staying fresh and learn to jump on any theme "in the blink of an eye".
In my case, usually sketching 2-3 characters/poses (even on the same page I'm going to complete) is enough to set my brain on the style I want.

HINT: Don't confuse graphic style with your "personal touch". You can mimic a graphic style while staying true to yourself and recognizable by others.

gib95 2014-04-09 21:34:46 UTC #12

I changed the format a couple of times, it's still confusing to some, but I do believe that's also because I am not an artist. I mean, I am trying to write a webcomic as a writer. I put too much effort in what is said and how everything is intertwined that I don't put much effort in the visuals.

mjmassey 2015-02-04 18:07:43 UTC #13

Part of my own lack of consistency is that I've improved drastically over the past few years of drawing the comic. Going back and redrawing some old Chapter 1 pages, I notice that my characters started out looking one way, and over time changed dramatically as I got better at letting their personalities shine through.

On the whole, don't be afraid to experiment. Sooner or later, you'll hit your stride.

Spinester 2015-03-12 02:51:42 UTC #14

You could always draw character expression sheets so you can reference your own drawings. That way when a character has a certain expression you can see how you drew it before to keep things on model.

xxcelestialangelxx 2015-03-13 22:48:47 UTC #15

Im trying to stick with what i think works however that may change as i get older. I may find a new technique i like better then my old style. But importantly its all about having fun ^^

http://tapastic.com/series/Nommie-Zombies

allenthomas 2015-03-20 05:26:27 UTC #16

Early pages in my comic, my style was sort of all over the place. Over time though I think my comic is sort of forming its own look and feel. I guess time is the only judge. I know I have A LOT of room for improvement, but at the same time I do know that the more I keep working at it the better it will get over time. Whether you yourself recognizes it or not, you comics over a period of time will definitely showcase your style.

AnnaLandin 2015-03-20 06:31:23 UTC #17

I.... don't. Well, I've arrived at a consistent style of colouring and inking, created by habit and a need to be pretty quick about it - but if you're talking about characters looking the same in every panel, hahahahaha nope.

The way I sketch, ink and colour is just the way of sketching, inking and colouring that comes naturally to me, and I keep the character's costume designs fairly consistent by having turn-arounds of all of the important ones.

BUT - I have partial face-blindness. I can remember individual features of someone's face (like how their nose looks, or their eyebrows, or their jawline) but I can't, for the life of me, remember faces as a unit - as in, all those features assembled into a face all at once. So every time I draw a character, I have to re-assemble all those bits into a face in my mind as I draw them, and I have to draw a character literally hundreds of times before I have any hope of getting it right on the first go. And even then, it's still a challenge.

Another trick for keeping consistent that I use is that I work chapter by chapter. I sketch a whole chapter, then ink, then colour. Now that I've started posting, and therefore cutting into my page-buffer, I switch off a bit, inking a couple of pages to start with, and then going back and colouring one page, going ahead and inking one, going back and colouring one - and so on. Having everything sketched out like that helps me keep my pace and consistency up.

keii4ii 2015-03-20 06:43:23 UTC #18

I HAVE THE SAME THING. PROSOPAGNOSIA. I thought this was perfectly normal, and was very puzzled when I saw police TV shows where they ask potential witnesses about the criminal's facial likeness. I was always like, "but how are you supposed to remember that unless you have superpowers?"

With my current comic, I have it relatively easy because the main character is of a minority race (white male, haha, but he's in a place where everyone else looks Asian). It's easy to make him look distinct with his big nose, sturdy jaws and butt chin. I even gave him huge bushy eyebrows to top it off!

Still took me a while to figure out how to draw him right, of course, but I think I've done well considering everything.

The weird thing is, once I took a portrait painting class (not much instruction though, just a time and place where you get to sit and paint a live model) and my paintings almost always nailed the model's likeness. I couldn't tell, but a lot of people commented on it.

THIS TOO! Well, I can't always do it this way; sometimes I'm not ahead enough to be sketching 10 updates ahead because I have to finish the next update, haha. But when I have the time, I definitely prefer it this way. At the very least, I like to get the thumbnails for the whole chapter done before doing any other work.

One other thing regarding consistency: often you're the only one to notice the inconsistencies. Even if they look glaring, other people may not really notice it. I believe in focusing on the basics before worrying about the style. Unless you're doing something drastic like switching from hard-lined B&W to lineless full color, you're probably fine.

AnnaLandin 2015-03-20 06:55:10 UTC #19

I can draw people accurately from reference! Either from life or from photographs - it's remembering them without the photographs, or once they've walked out of view, that's the challenging bit. And since characters only really exist in my head, and therefore HAVE no photograph for me to reference, it's really hard to hit a consistent look for them.

Funny how that works.

I'm currently 52 pages ahead of what I'm posting on Tapastic and Tumblr, 50 pages ahead of what's on Patreon, because I took the time to draw all of that before I launched the comic. I try to keep that buffer-size, just so that I can take the time I need to thumbnail and sketch the entirety of the next chapter before the current chapter runs out. Thumbnailing is one of the trickiest bits for me, since not only do I have to wrestle with page-layouts and the reading-order of speech balloons, I also do almost all of my actual writing - dialogues and all that - at the same time as the thumbnails.

I've kind of gotten over the block and am faster these days, but it used to be that thumbnailing 7 pages in a day was a lot for me.

keii4ii 2015-03-20 07:11:17 UTC #20

My brain can't construct a real, three-dimensional face out of a face in a photo. Sadness :<

Could it be... Are you my long lost comicking twin? Because I write my dialogues by typing them straight into the PSD files of the thumbnails.

I had like 20 chapters completed from a first draft of the comic made last year. When I first launched the new version of the comic, I was expecting to only draw 25% new stuff and fill the remaining 75% with recycled bits from the first draft... Turns out most of the first draft is unusable because the writing is just so bad, and the new writing doesn't work with the old art. Which is how I ended up doing four times more work than I had expected, haha!