Stupidest thing you ever did/thought in terms of comic making

[sorrelma]

when i first started doing comics, i thought that the best way to do exposition was massive blocks of text covering the entire page
(this is an example of really sub-par lore explanation anyway lol. it takes on a really uncomfortable romantic vibe in retrospect. i was 13)

you can't even see the art beneath the text?? i spent a lot of time on that drawing in 2012 and no one will ever see it. the entire first chapter of this comic looks like that

the other issue i had was with scheduling. it took a long time to find a quick way to make pages so i was working on these panels that took 8-12 hours each and i didn't have a buffer so my weekly updates became "maybe twice a month on a random day in the middle of the night" updates

[eslameldeeb]

because I was absolutely traumatized from the screen tone experience :')

LMAO

the stupidest thing i ever did is that (plz, don't laugh) i thought that the size that appears on my computer screen is how it's gonna look like in print
so i made my canvas 100dpi, not the web version no, that was the actual and original size i used to work on

[miseryhunting]

sigh I think this might be not giving myself enough time? As in, I've planned my pages but I start drawing each one 1-2 days before my deadline.
And I still do this.
I need to start learning from my mistakes...

[marygold]

Well I don't know too much about the dpi stuff if you drew too big then that's a good thing right, just in case you ever want to print? 🤔 How much dpi is good for the web?

[marygold]

When I started running out of time I took a two week break. Seems like a long time but it's veeeerrryyy worth it. I am now drawing without worry 🙂

[eslameldeeb]

for print, the page needs to be at least 300 dpi
for web uses, usually 72 is good

[marygold]

@eslameldeeb Thanks I wasn't sure when converting my page from print size to web size

[TACOBERTO]

I started publishing.

Naaaah. About halfway through my series we finally decided to increase the size of the pages. I went back and started manually resizing the pages to fit the new format but threw the proportions waaaaaay off by screwing up the aspect ratio. One page in particular is smaller than the rest and if I go back to anything before the second half of Chapter 3 the quality is pretty shoddy. To this day I don't know what to do about it ._.

[TACOBERTO]

Yikes dude! Yeah when it comes to text less is more. I'd avoid text blobs and exposition drops like the plague

[marygold]

Haha... My other stupid mistake was sizing my canvas at 940 pixels right from the get go, meaning if I ever want to print my pages they'll only come out HD when they're small and thin. I changed now but practically my entire pilot chapter is screwed. Oh well.

People told me to always do the original page print size (just in case you wanna publish) and then downsize a copy for the web. Not much quality sacrificed there 👌

[indagold]

I actually had a almost screw up recently. I thought of making a 10 page teaser comic to advertise a comic I'm working on to get people interested and introduce them to the world. Then I noticed all the characters would be side characters and the main character would never appear again... ever. Not to mention it would make people wait forever for the comic to start only to find out the main character who the teaser was building up is not the same one as the teaser. Most I did was thumbnail the pages and draw concept art and then realized I dun goofed.

[TACOBERTO]

Huh, I see. I might just go back and restore all these pages to their original sizes then. Gotta bite the bullet on this one

[marygold]

@TACOBERTO check out this thread. It might help 🙃

[Zanreo]

Not really "stupid" in general, but for me personally... working in a program that had no text tool rip me :c Even worse when my workflow is kinda erratic, not just the usual "draw ALL the sketches before you draw ALL the outlines before you draw ALL the colors" but instead I might have outlined panel 1 and 2, while 3 is fully colored and shaded and 4 is still just a sketch, and currently I'm working on the background of panel 5 where only one of the 2 character is drawn yet. So for me it's not just as simple as "write in all the comic text at the very end" (also because I need to make sure the text actually fits, even when sketching bubbles it can be hard to know before actually writing in the text. What I did was opening the image in GIMP, adding text and then saving just the text as a rasterized layer... which would be a pain if I ever needed to correct a typo) SAI is a great art program by all means, but for comics... they've been so much less stressful to work on after switching to Manga Studio. I'm kinda amazed by all of you who can comfortably work with multiple programs for one image, haha... with my workflow I'd just keep switching back and forth.

Also, working at 900px for a long time instead of working big and resizing down. Not because I want to print but because I had to work so "small" (which sometimes made me size up characters/other objects unneccesarily so they wouldn't be annoying to draw). Then I saw threads with almost everyone saying they worked on a much bigger size and sized it down afterwards, and even though I thought at first "nah, that's not neccesary, my art is fine the way it is" I couldn't help wondering if there WAS something to it... so I started working on 3000-2500px wide and then sizing down... and somehow it actually looked better? (Plus sometimes it hides tiny mistakes better hehehe)

[carloswebcomic]

I used to ink with Adobe Illustrator using a mouse.
That's 3 years of my life that I'll never get back.

[marygold]

@Zanreo when I have a bunch of panels I need to do before n update I always do my favorite ones first, regardless of where they are. I used to either do everything in order or save the best for last but by the time I get to the ones that actually need a lot of work I'm too tired and numb and they end up looking crappy. I have a general question, the original is supposed to look a teeny tiny bit more blurrier when you downsize it right?
@carloswebcomic oh no XD I feel your pain

[Zanreo]

when I have a bunch of panels I need to do before n update I always do my favorite ones first, regardless of where they are. I used to either do everything in order or save the best for last but by the time I get to the ones that actually need a lot of work I'm too tired and numb and they end up looking crappy. I have a general question, the original is supposed to look a teeny tiny bit more blurrier when you downsize it right?

I wouldn't say "blurrier" exactly (not in a bad-lookng way at least), that might depend on your lines/style and how much you're resizing down? Examples?

[marygold]

@Zanreo my lines are about 3-4 pixels wide. I go from 2400px for width down to 940
2400 zoom in:
940 zoom in:
Little bit of quality change right?
EDIT: crap lol of course they're both gonna be posted at 100%. I mean if you zoom in on his nose (for example) on 2400 they'll look cleaner and more solid then if you zoomed in on the same place in 940

[Heck]

No planning at all. Thought it would all "come to me". Just started page 1. With a mouse. Took 12 hours. Did the same thing for pages 2 and 3. 36 hours. Mouse. Still cringing.

[mariusthered]

In terms of my comic Talesfromswipecity I think my first season is a bit of a stupid start if I'm honest. There is some scenes about spanking that start the rivalry between characters. As it's the first season people think it's just a spanking comic and it's far more than just that. I have corrected the mistake by toning down the punishment scenes and putting more crime/ action scenes in later on.