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smokesalty
Mar '22

Okay, this is an attack on my past self, but I wanted to ramble about this for a bit. This is an opinion of course.

ALL OF THIS IS LITERALLY STUFF I USED TO DO I'M NOT ATTACKING ANYONE IN PARTICULAR.

I feel like I see a lot of comics where 90% of the shots are these very nice 3/4 or front shots that are usually only torso up. I know I used to do this because I was scared of making my art look bad, but it often leads to scenes being boring as the same shots are used over and over again. I also feel people are scared to push facial expressions in fear their characters may look ugly BUT I LOVE NASTY ASS FACIAL EXPRESSIONS. Let your characters look a little janky for the sake of some juicy character acting.

A lot of the times a lack of background can lead to this (as having the character fill up the panel prevents you from having to fill in empty space with a background.) And the lack of background means half the time you don't know where characters are.

This can also make scenes really hard to read (especially action scenes) since a lot of the times we don't know where the characters are and usually there aren't enough pulled out shots.

I dunno, please tell me I'm not the only one who noticed this :cry:

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    Mar '22

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    Apr '22
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GingerLoge
Mar '22
1

I notice that a lot. As a beginner, I also did that. Now I try to do better. :sweat_smile: I think it mostly happens when the artist isn't confident in their own skill, but everybody grows out of this eventually.
I try to make characters act with their whole bodies, especially the hands, but I'm not sure I always get it right. Good acting in comics is awesome to see, one of my favorite elements of this medium.

smokesalty
Mar '22

Yup, true. true. I remember I wanted every panel to look beautiful, but I was not confident with more complex poses. I think it takes a while to grow out of only drawing what you're comfortable with in comics.

Legendofgenii
Mar '22

I used to do this a lot too. I think it was for time sake, and nervous about anatomy? Lots of talking heads lol. :sweat_smile:

I think for some genres you can get away with it more.

These days I’m a lot braver and I’m really enjoying drawing backgrounds.

allenT
Mar '22

Ya... I think if there's big panels for character closeups, it's better to have varieties. But when it's time to be casual/mundane, there's no need to push the camera angles, doing so would seem try-hard.

I for one enjoy shots where characters have moments facing against the 'camera', as they give a pausing, suspenseful quality.

darthmongoose
Mar '22

Yeah, a pet hate of mine is when practically every page of a comic looks like this:

Nearly every panel is one or two characters from about chest or waist-up, always facing either forward or maybe 3/4 view, always plonked right in the middle of the panel and with the viewpoint at roughly head-height, never at a higher or lower elevation. It's particularly bad when the artist doesn't put more than one character in any panels on a page, so it looks like they're talking on the phone, rather than being in the same place.

TheDoublekey
Mar '22

This is honestly too relatable. One of my biggest mistakes ever was just focusing faces. With more practice, I became pretty good at drawing detailed facial features and expressions, but most of the time, those were 3/4 shots! I had a hard time drawing other body parts such as arms, legs, hands (especially hands) and more.

Here's a bunch of examples:

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I started drawing backgrounds a lot more from the second half of chapter 2 onwards. The thing is... drawing 3/4 shots without any background is a lot less time consuming and easier, so I guess that's why most of us, as beginners used to do that a lot. The important thing, though, is to grow out of it, because otherwise it'll be impossible to make progress. Experimenting is always key when it comes to art!

KSlinger
Mar '22

Oof. I used to do this and have now gone to the complete other end of the spectrum and forgotten how to draw pretty 3/4 bust shots because there's been no conversation in my comic for about a year.

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redfish
Mar '22

let's be honest, we have ALL been guilty of this at some point haha

hjpetersonauthor
Mar '22

Pro tip for y'all that I learned in an animation class that also works with comics: instead of characters just having a conversation with nothing else going on, have them actually doing something while talking. Maybe they're talking over food, or driving. Not only does it help make panels where they're having a conversation more dynamic, but you can also use it to help your characterization.

Llyrel
Mar '22
1

I've definitely been guilty of this in the past :sweat_02: though, in my case, it was more of a case of "urrrrrghhh, do I REALLY have to draw 24+ pages of this crime scene featuring two corpses laying in awkward poses on the floor of a tiny ass room? Noooope, let's use some creative angles to avoid that as much as possible!" ...Except that the "creative angles" ended up being just the faces of my two detectives talking XD

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(Not 3/4 in this specific panel, but you get the idea)

Given that I was working traditionally at first and then only using digital tools for coloring, drawing backgrounds would also take me a lot longer, since I had to use actual rules and squares to do it (shudders).
Once I went fully digital and figured out how to use perspective grids, however, working with different angles was a breeze... to the point that now I add

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Very

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detailed

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backgrounds

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basically

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everywhere :rofl:

So yeah, I don't feel like judging beginners too harshly, since we've all been through this phase... though I definitely tend to get a bit annoyed when I see more experienced creators or even premium/original series doing the talking heads thing. I understand wanting to save time and I don't think that everyone should necessarily draw uber detailed backgrounds (nor are they required in EVERY SINGLE PANEL), but I definitely love to see some variation in shots.

DokiDokiTsuna
Mar '22

I actually didn't do much of that when I was younger...I always had a bad habit of biting off more than I could chew, so I'd see stylish cinematography in anime and try to emulate it in my comics. ^^; And I do think it helped me improve as fast as I did...but it might also have been the reason why most of my comics didn't last very long. Spending 10 hours trying to develop the skills to draw a dramatic stairwell shot WHILE you are doing it will take a toll on your artistic stamina...

But honestly, even if it's technically 'easier' to do a bunch of headshots in succession, I still wouldn't do it because it's just so boring to draw. I couldn't stand it.
I learned that the hard way working on DotPQ's first season...most of my drafts/panel planning consisted of finding ANY way to avoid just drawing the same three character's faces over and over and over again. The original slice-of-life concept ended up being just a little too simple for my taste; I'm glad I get to do more plot-heavy stuff now. ^^;

I agree with this, but also...energetic, animated facial expressions don't have to be ugly. Like, the meme-bait faces in Avatar TLA (for example) are funny, but they're not the only way to do it.

Any decent shoujo anime can teach you lots of cute expressions for your characters to make...anime in general is a goldmine for character emoting (since Japanese humor is so reactionary, it's a big deal) but if you want them to lean more towards 'silly and 2Dish' and less towards 'disturbing and 3Dish' , just stick to shoujo. That's where I learned my craft~

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nickolaidas
Mar '22

I agree with what you say. However, one of the reasons I often focus on faces is because

A) It takes less time than drawing the entire body and

B) The facial expressions are some of the best ways of conveying emotion.

If I had more time to spare, I would definitely, DEFINITELY work more on whole body poses and unique stances. For experience as well as originality. I would even focus more on the backgrounds.

But alas, I don't have the time to spare. I work a full-time job, which makes drawing a comic an extremely hard thing to do with the little time that I have, and my need to do other stuff (listen to music, buy groceries, do chores, play video games, watch a movie), and rushing an Oni Hunters issue as it is makes it a monthly occurrence AT BEST. If the issue has more detailed art and difficult panels it would make a single issue take 2-3 months.

Needless to say, this is too long.

Stargazer31
Mar '22

I used to be very guilty of this, but now I'm branching out into other shots.

TAMAnnoyingThe Cow
Mar '22

Ill take your challenge and raise you more panels with HANDS for all you cowards afraid of HANDS >D

Zhengo
Mar '22
2

Yeah, I think most people draw headshots all the time because they think it's the fastest way to get the panel done. But I've come here with a few life hacks to make quick panels during long conversations that doesn't rely on 3/4 headshots!

The first life hack- well, this one may need you to get decently good at drawing the human body, and certain body parts first, but it'll be a good long-term investment, I assure you! Basically, the "hack" is to break up strings of headshots with close-ups of hands, feet, etc. of what the character is doing. I usually use hands because they are one of the most expressive body parts, so sometimes I'll use it to imply an emotion the character is feeling, as opposed to just showing their face having that expression. Like in the example below with the hands clenching.

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While you may think it takes longer to draw things like hands, and it may be true if you have trouble drawing them, once you get the hang of drawing body parts like hands, you'll realize that usually there's a lot less need to go into a lot of detail with hands as opposed to drawing a head. With a headshot, you gotta make sure you're drawing the hair and eyes, sometimes mouth and nose, correctly, and depending on your style, you might be needing to put a lot of detail in those body parts! Meanwhile, for hands, the most you'll probably need to worry about detailing is the fingers, and maybe the fingernails if you draw that, and if you wanna go really detailed, maybe the wrinkles on the hands. If you color, you probably need a minimum of 3 colors to fill in with hair, skin, and eyes. For hands, you'll need a minimum of 1 color, which is just the skin for the hands.

Of course, a lot of the things mentioned above is a bit situational, maybe you have really detailed sleeves on the characters so it might be less time-consuming to draw the face in those situations XD But from my experience drawing a "hand panel" feels a lot faster than drawing a "face panel" once you start getting the hang of hands

But anyways! What if you don't want to draw those pesky hands or body parts. You're just not confident in them right now! Well, here's life hack #2: inject panels of objects that relate to the subject of the conversation. They can be close-ups of things in the environment, or just objects that directly relate to the conversation. Like in here, I used a panel of some papers during a mention of "reports" in the conversation. Drawing paper is way faster than drawing a face! >:0 (and also presenting you, legs walking up the stairs as another method to avoid drawing faces)

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I also think you can use the "focus on things in the environment" sometime as a neat foreshadowing trick.

Anyways, I don't know how well these "life hacks" actually apply, but I'm just giving my two cents of my experience and what methods I've used to make speedy panels without being too overly reliant on headshots.

I actually try my best not to use too many panels of just drawing headshots during conversations lately. The thing is, I'd either have to draw each face separately and make them look consistent across all panels, or copy paste the faces for every panel. The latter method is indeed super fast, but if I do it too much the readers are gonna notice!! :fearful:

nickolaidas
Mar '22

This is a great idea! You save time by focusing on a particular body part, but it escapes the monotony of said body part always being the head!

I'm definitely going to invest in this idea - it's brilliant!

1 month later

closed Apr 12, '22

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