Spoiling through your art?

[Iris-Grimoire]

Honestly, since it's about the journey and not the destination, I allow myself little spoilers. For example, Mortimer wearing bandages around his hands in scenes where the gloves won't make sense, or all the imagery about out-of-control black magic, or characters that aren't appearing for a while, because they won't make sense right now anyway. And thankfully, for the more "oh my god I want to make this scene RIGHT NOW" stuff, my own messy schedule helps me, because there's always a fun meme, fanart, or study to make that's going to take my mind off of it.

[nathanKmcwilliams]

Yeah all the time. I draw characters and talk about them before they even show up xD

Part of the issue is that many of these characters I've had for going on 10 years, way before I even started working on the comic officially.

┐( ˘_˘)┌ Oh well. How many people will actually stick around that long to see them come into fruition? I dunno. How many people will actually remember the spoiled characters? Probably not that many. Why worry about it?

[joannekwan]

It's funny, long before my story publicly got to the point, I drew two of its characters in some adult situations (which I only shared on Patreon, but still). I figured if anyone saw it and thought anything of it that it would be no more than a crack pairing. But lo and behold it's canon.
However, I can't bring myself to draw the end game because I think it's too plausible and I don't want to confirm anyone's suspicions ahead of time haha!

[frgmnt]

Oof I definitely have this problem... Usually the extremely spoilery stuff is just doodles I wouldn't want to post online anyway, but when I have an idea for a more complete illustration with a spoilery concept, it is a struggle, since I would love to post it, but can't So it's either rethink the idea to make it less obvious, or don't draw it. Not that there are many people who'd care, but still

There are some stuff that are technically minor spoilers for my comic but I don't mind showing art related to them because they are going to be revealed relatively early (eg. Nate not being a normal human), or because I found a way to portray them that is too vague for anyone other than me to understand?
I mean, certainly, it's possible to make theories off them, but I think that's actually a pretty cool thing and would not mind if anyone did that Casually dropping hints and foreshadowing in art, yes, pls. I love it when creators do that.
(I think this is how good anime openings work too, btw - the okay one will just literally spoil the events of the whole season, but the good one will show them in a way that fuels the imagination and makes the viewer want to know more.)

[Zhengo]

Having readers make theories off of my art would be a dream come true xD

[azzy-m]

Haha, I do that sometimes. Usually I keep the drawings to myself - for example, I have the entirety of my protagonist's outfits for the entire comic planned out (seems small but it's a fairly big deal), but sometimes I can't help myself and I publish the art, luckily it tends to be vague.

[surenlicious]

I try to solve the issue by using metaphors in my drawings. I do have drawings in which I just want to visualize major plot points (and writing them out fully for late use in my chapters) but uh...those...those I keep locked up somewhere haha.

[b-blythe]

Coming from a reader's perspective, I remember a lot of people I used to follow avidly would post art of things that were way in the future, or background info that would never be revealed in the story but would affect it later on. The thing was, it never ruined my enjoyment of the series, it just made me ravenous for more. I wanted to get to the really cool thing! It helped that there was never much, if any, context for the spoilers, and I kind of had to seek out that additional content. I could have easily avoided it if I didn't want to be spoiled.

[NickRowler]

I have posted pics of characters years before they appeared in my series, I don’t really have a following so no one really noticed. I also post a pic of a character which was later cut, which I guess is weird.