Is one aspect to improve artwork have to do with the size of the page?

[DeleteThisAccountFag]

I use a large width, 4000 pixels wide, but I can't seem to be satisfied with my artwork. I keep thinking, "I need to go bigger" but my laptop starts having a heart attack when I increase the size. Only one of my strips ever reached 10000 pixels max and I needed to restart my computer afterwards. I think I improved the artwork a bit, but just a bit, as in resizing it to fit website regulations removed any improvement and it went back to looking like the rest. Yet, still, I want to increase the size of the page thinking this is what I need.

Am I misconcepting the idea of large resolutions being the solution to improve my artwork? I keep wanting to go bigger, but of course, the bigger it is, the much more stuff you got to draw and it may end up just looking the same anyways

EDIT:
I just remembered the actual starting point when this line of thought occurred, but I could not find the picture associated with it. All I can find is the thumbnail cached in DuckDuckGo, which is this one:

But the idea is this: years ago, I found this very image on DeviantArt. The picture isn't super amazing but it was very good as a starting point for myself. When I zoomed in to it's normal size, I realized that it was a JPEG, full of particles, and the lines were crooked and jaggy. Upclose, it was a mess, but zoomed out, it cleared all the jaggies and squiggles. It looks pretty good from a distance. This might have been the very start as I eventually started noticing great images that I would commission would be very large as well. Large enough that a person's face would fill the entire screen when zoomed in to normal size. I just wish I had the actual picture as a ref, but trust me, zoomed in to normal size, this illustration did not look good.

Also if you, by some miracle, find the original file of this (as well as another one that accompanied it), I would be so happy. I think the old DA account got lost with the move to Eclipse.

[VibrantFox]

there's a possibility that the issue may not be canvas size specifically but the actual resolution namely dpi (dots per inch) or ppi (pixel per inch) depending on what software you're using.

personally i work on a 940px wide by whatever length canvas (sometimes wider buy usually just at 940px) and have my resolution set to about 350dpi (some sites or tutorials may suggest higher but this has worked for me personally)

this may not be the specific thing to fix but one suggestion also if you okay with it maybe you could share your comic so folks could give it a look over (I'd be more than willing to try to help if possible)

[DeleteThisAccountFag]

I never thought about dpi actually. That never crossed my mind. But then again, I don't see how that can help. I usually go by whatever monitor I have on me and work with that, which is why I believe the size of the canvas matters more. I might be wrong, but I don't know, which is why I want to get people's opinion, you know, from actual artist. (At least, I don't consider myself an artist, just a simple man who knows how to draw)

As for my comic, well, here it is:

Mimsy's Kitchen | Tapas

Though I don't know if you can get a good idea since I have to resize it to fit Tapas. If you are willing to venture outside of Tapas, then I suggest my DA, because all my artwork is uploaded raw, including non-comic stuff.

Toolkitz User Profile | DeviantArt

Though you're going to have to download the files into your desktop as I capped the resolution size by half to fit the screen.

[VibrantFox]

Well looking at your work on DA the lineart and artwork in general appears much clearer then the downsized versions on tapas.

It's a bit difficult for me to explain but it could be one of two things: as I'd mentioned the dpi/resolution of the image and the resizing.

I'll try my best to explain dpi based on my own experiences so your absolutely free to disregard my advice if you'd like as that's all it is. So getting to the point dpi isn't just something relating to monitor resolution or size but the number of individual pixels in a one inch (or whichever unit of measurement) square of your canvas.That said the higher the dpi the more an image can appear crisp and clear when resized for digital uploading and for print. Some tutorials will recommend going as high as 600dpi for colored illustrations or other artwork while some say you can skate by with about 350 and still turn out looking decent. There's definitely some folks on here I think could break it down better than my rough explanation but that's the general gist of it.

Another thing that comes to mind when I'm looking at your uploads is not episode length but that it's all one image. While that works well when your working on the page (easy to track flow and all the specific details) uploading it straight like that can lead to really heavy file size even after shrinking the image. So (again just another suggestion) might be to slice the comic.

A recommended tool made by a member of the Tapas community would be Laht's Croppy tool that can be found here: https://knicknic.github.io/croppy/

If you still want to use larger canvas sizes there's not much stopping you though I would advise not going to large for the sake of your PC if it's already having trouble carrying file sizes as is.

I do hope your able to get some more input and find something that works, we all want our work to look the best it can so here's wishing you luck.

[joannekwan]

DPI makes all the difference!
Especially when you're working on a piece, you want to work at least at 300 dpi (600 is suggested for black and white/fine line work where crispness is paramount). It's also important to work at a higher dpi because your image will be compressed when you save it as a new file for web publishing.

Here's a graphic I quickly pulled up from a search. Each block is the same 'canvas' size, but you can see that the resolution varies between them greatly.

[DeleteThisAccountFag]

Oh my gosh, could it be, that what I wanted to do to improve my art was to just make it as crisp as possible? This is something I never thought of either. I hope you read the amendment I made to my original post because it kind of explains where this obsession with canvas size started, but perhaps the idea was not to make it as big as possible to hide the imperfections, but what I wanted all along was just to make the image as clean as possible. In which case, it's not "I gotta go bigger", it's more like, "I gotta find the right size." I can't believe I never thought of it this way.

I would like to get more thoughts on the subject, but this thread has already been valuable already. Thanks VibrantFox for your input. I'll definitely keep what you said in mind.

As for the file size, not sure what you mean. I have to shrink it for Tapas, which should make it smaller, by half most of the time. The biggest file I have is 500kb when put on Tapas, and that's only the first of 3 parts split. It only looks like it's one image because it's aligned one on top of another perfectly. Are you suggesting that somehow lowering the canvas size will improve the artwork someway? I'm really confuse about this part.

[DeleteThisAccountFag]

Oh, this explains dpi very clearly. After what VibrantFox said and seeing this comparison, I'm convinced that bigger canvas size doesn't necessarily mean better. But I'm new to dpi, so I'm going to have to investigate a bit further about this topic.

Thanks for your input, joannekwan. I'm learning a lot here.

[joannekwan]

Yeah, while canvas size is important, the crispness that you seek is really determined by the dpi/resolution.
Canvas size comes into play when you have to think about what you're ultimately going to do with your work. If you're going to print a large poster, then set the canvas size to the dimensions you want to print at.

I generally draw all my comics at common page sizes (at 300 dpi) so if I ever want to print them, it will be easy. I also generally draw all of my commissions on a 8.5 x 11" canvas (unless otherwise specified), in case the client wants to print them out on standard size paper.

The only thing NOT to do with a canvas is make it too small. Because if you find yourself in a situation where the final destination of your image, be it in print or digital, is larger than the dimensions you've used in your piece, you'd have to digitally scale up the image. And one of the rules of design is to avoid scaling up a non-vector image, as it will become blurry. Now, working at a high resolution can save it from being too unclear, but past a certain point, the image will end up as blurry as if you made it in 10 dpi.

[DeleteThisAccountFag]

So a wonderful soul by the name of Riisana found the picture:

https://www.deviantart.com/keiichi-k1/art/Power-of-the-Twinklestar-54501284

Though I think we've managed to figure out the problem was dpi, I still wanted to make my original point. If you look at the picture from a distance, it looks pretty good, but if you zoom in, you can see all the imperfections and jaggies. You need to download the picture to see the whole thing but if you don't want to or can't, here's a look at the second face raw, which fills up an entire screen by itself:

Oh yeah, look at them jaggies. It looks really crooked and not too good upclose.

My point being that when I saw this picture and saw how it hid all imperfections by simply shrinking it, it got into my head that my art can be improved by having a bigger canvas. I now know that's not the case and now I'm learning that dpi may be the next step I should learn to improve my artwork. That's my story.

and if you are curious about the subject of the picture, that's Load Ran from Twinkle Star Sprites, an awesome retro competitive shmup. Check it out sometime, it's an awesome game.

[joannekwan]

Zooming in, the jaggedness looks like it could be from the brush not being antialiased, but it's hard to say for sure since jpg compression often leaves artifacts that can blur around spots of color changes.

Line work can also look a bit shaky when done without confidence.

[DeleteThisAccountFag]

Oh dear. So it's a case of balancing the size of the image itself versus the size of the page. Yeah, that's going to take some practice. But I have noticed that my images do get blurry when they are downsized and now I'm realizing because I prioritized canvas size over dpi simply because it never occurred to me. But I'm such a greenhorn when it comes to dpi so I'm definitely going to have to look up stuff about it.

But either way, this thread has been beneficial already. I can't thank you guys enough for what little help you have provided.

EDIT:
I don't think the lines had AA to begin with, it's just that it's a jpeg so it ended up with particles.

[Kelheor]

The problem of picture you posted as example is not in resolution, maybe a bit of a shaky lineart, it's definitely the particular brush, that is not your usual hard round. Probably with some "pencil" or "pastel" effect.
As for the size of the canvas question, I believe if you want a good enough picture to put you gotta have it at least at A4, I usually work at A3 (or a bit bigger) and 300 dpi so I can comfortably cut the page into panels for Webtoons, and this is comfortable size for printing. I think you absolutely don't need 10000 pix wide canvas and 600 dpi until you expect to put your artwork on blanket ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Overall bigger resolution doesn't really make the art better. In the end if you are not satisfied with your work, maybe the problem is not in the canvas resolution