Traditional Artist Meet And Greet

[a.g.meade]

Hey there, traditional artists -

I thought it would be fun to do a TA community meet-and-greet with some icebreaker questions. So, let's chat!

1. What is your medium of choice?

2. From thumbnails to final edits, describe your typical process for creating a page. How long does a page take from start to finish?

3. What's your favorite/least favorite part of being a traditional comic artist?

4. Do you think you'll switch to digital one day?

5. Optional - How do you feel webcomics have affected traditional comics, if at all?

6. Share a link to what you're working on!

I'm looking forward to meeting all of you!

[gmaximin]

Hi there!

1. What is your medium of choice?
   I’m using basic material, it’s part of the concept (efficiency=ambitious output / basic input) I’m working on, so ball pen, ink gel, ink brush, markers, Chinese ink, I even had episode using coffee powder or cigarette butt. Usually on white A4 printing paper, or recycled printed paper.

2. From thumbnails to final edits, describe your typical process for creating a page. How long does a page take from start to finish?
   It really depends. Once concept, writing and layout are clear (which I generally think about and draft in my down time at work), I force myself to finish a page in 6 hours max. Pencil/ink/scan/ps if need be to balance black.

3. What's your favorite/least favorite part of being a traditional comic artist?
   Least favorite: It’s time consuming, and you can’t make some mistake disappear with a click...
   Favorite: it feels more natural, relaxing and humane, and it generally shows in final pages

4. Do you think you'll switch to digital one day?
   Never say never...

5. Optional - How do you feel webcomics have affected traditional comics, if at all?
   Page composition...

6. Share a link to what you're working on!
   Effy, about efficiency personified...

Effy - The Living Efficiency | Tapas

[UrMom]

1. What is your medium of choice?
Color pencils on 9x12 bristol paper.

2. From thumbnails to final edits, describe your typical process for creating a page. How long does a page take from start to finish?
Alright!
- First I do the thumbnail on whatever scrap paper I have lying around, usually doodled out with a ballpoint pen.
- I pull out the bristol paper and do a really loose sketch of the panels and content, then I properly draw out and ink the gutters using a grid ruler and a size 1 micron pen.
- I start drawing the panel contents, using perspective grids where needed, and placing the speech bubbles.
- Next comes inking. I ink in the bubbles using a black 05 prismacolor pen, and ink the panel contents using a blue 005 prismacolor pen. (sometimes I'll use a red, orange or green pen for fire or things I want to stand out)
- Then I color. It's just a bunch of layers. Light shading for shadows, mid-tone color, base colors, finalizing shadows and mid-tone. Sometimes I use copic marker to fill in larger areas, then color over that with color pencil to keep the page looking consistent.
- I ink over everything again with mix of 08, 05 and 03 micron and prismacolor pens.
- Lastly I use white dip ink and a fine tip brush to outline the characters and foreground items, and apply shines to the shiny things. Then I fill in the gutters with sharpie markers.

It takes me between 20 to 30 hours in total, depending on detail, to finish a page.

3. What's your favorite/least favorite part of being a traditional comic artist?
Favorite part: Everything, except drawing cars and cityscapes.
Least favorite part: How time consuming it is. Also 97% of art tutorials never apply to me. Lol

4. Do you think you'll switch to digital one day?
No. Drawing digitally isn't enjoyable in the slightest, plus it gives me motion sickness.

5. Optional - How do you feel webcomics have affected traditional comics, if at all?
Well, there are certainly a lot more scroll comics out there than there used to be?

6. Share a link to what you're working on!
Sure, but a few warnings first: This comic is rated R/17+ for nudity, profanity and substance abuse. It also contains heavy and uncomfortable themes relating to mental health, abuse and trauma, please read at your own discretion.

The Guide to a Healthy Relationship | Tapas

[EmmyPax]

YAY! Love meeting other traditional artists. Here's my profile!

1. I work in watercolor, with outlines done in ink (mostly speedball with a dip pen) though as a whole, my comic is pretty multi-media.

2. Process wise, I don't ever draw up a traditional "page." I really love the scroll of Tapas and Webtoon and for me, that was may more of an inviting and intuitive way of creating comics for the web than trying to replicate the "page" format of print comics. Instead, I put out episodes that average around 30 panels per episode (depending on size of panel) My process goes:

   • draft script for current episode in word - usually takes about 1 hour.
   • divide a 14x11 inch sheet of hot press watercolor paper into three columns (each column is a little over 4 inches) to mimic the size and shape of scrollable panels. Then I start sketching. If a panel is really complicated, I will also thumbnail it, usually in my rough sketchbook, but a lot of the time, I just jump in. Each of my episodes is three of those sheets, and I try to get everything done in batches, so I do all my pencils for an episode in one go. Pencils takes between 6-8 hours, depending on how elaborate various elements are.
   • Inking! I do small details with micron pens, since they're steady and I inherited some of my family's predilection for shaky hands. Then I go in with a dip pen and speedball india ink. Usually takes 2-3 hours to do inks.
   • Painting! I bust out the watercolors and go to town. Once that's done, I finish up with small touches, using posca pens and pencil crayons. I also do some panels in marker, though that's usually just for a special effect. Below, you can see what one of my boards looks like just when it's ready to scan, including places where I just dropped blubs of paint, because I new they would get cropped later to look neater. Painting usually takes 6-8 hours

• Lettering/editing it all together. After scanning, I go into Krita and put it all together. I hate my own penmanship, so I don't bother trying to letter on my own. Hurray for fonts! Getting it all ready to upload usually takes 3 hours. Uploading luckily takes no time at all.

So all in all, it's 18-25 hours to get the whole comic done each week.

3.Least fav: it's hard, if not impossible, to reuse art and then just change the expression. Very little ability to use copy/paste to speed things up
Fav: I think traditional comics have a beautiful, free look to them that can be harder to achieve in digital. I see so much digital art that looks like it's been tweaked and redrawn within an inch of it's life, and I think it's a lot easier to accidently create stiff art in digital.

4.I tried digital, but it was not for me. My linework got so much worse (not that I couldn't improve as is) and the joy left the process.

5.I know the vertical scroll really helped me get started in comics. I no longer have to do a perfect page, and can instead just go panel by panel, then edit it to make sense once I format it for the web. Also, I LOVE all the space for speech bubbles in the margins, instead of over the artwork in the scroll. I also think webcomics opened up a lot of room for people interested in genre variation that print comics just wasn't publishing back in the 90s, before the digital revolution.

6.Hurray! Link time! My comic, Neptune Bay, is linked below!

Neptune Bay | Tapas

[a.g.meade]

@gmaximin - Hey! Great to meet you. Wow, I've heard of walnut ink and tea, but never thought about coffee powder or cigarette butts. I'd love to know what led to you using those "inks". I totally hear you about the page composition. There's so much that can be done to tell a story with composition alone... And 6 hours max per page - you work quickly, I see!

[a.g.meade]

@UrMom - Hey! Really nice to meet you. Oh my goodness, that's quite a process for each page - so many layers! But, it definitely gives your work a very distinct, rich depth and look. I like it! Ha - yeah about art tutorials, I totally feel you there. Motion sickness? Oof, yeah, that would definitely not make digital art enjoyable in the least. What kind of Bristol paper, out of curiosity? I've tried a few brands, but have never found one that 'works' for me.

[a.g.meade]

@EmmyPax - Ooh, watercolor! I really admire artists who use watercolor in comics, so cheers! (I have never figured it out and always wind up getting frustrated with it, haha.) Wow, what a process you've got there - but it's clear you've got a method that really works. Your setup of pre-drawing scrollable panels makes a lot of sense, and I'm sure also saves a lot of time of cutting and pasting into a new document. I do agree about traditional comics having a "freer" look to them - a lot more 'organic' looking, I think. Good points about webcomics opening up the field to all kinds of stories and genre variations! Also, what kind of watercolors do you use?

[EmmyPax]

I feel like watercolor is a thing you either LOVE because it's fast and free feeling or HATE because it's so flipping hard to cover mistakes, though I've gotten better at adjusting sections where I make "mistakes" and knowing what I can/can't fix. I honestly don't have the patience to paint with anything else because it takes so long for acrylic and oil to dry. I would go crazy! Plus, I love the transparency mixed with the dark, thick, opaque lines of india ink. It's perfect for comics!

As far as brand of paint goes, years and years ago, my mom got me a bag full of second-hand Winsor and Newton watercolors for cheap off of ebay. As she puts it, this was back before people really priced things appropriately on ebay and you could get some sweet deals! I've gradually added to the collection/replaced tubes as I've used them. Since they were second hand, some things were more used up than others.

I really love them, and I'm very grateful the paint lasts so long. If you're thinking of trying them again sometime, I think there are other high-quality sets that are cheaper, but they're great, reliable paints.

Honestly, the bigger issue with watercolor is the paper. I wish I could afford good paper, but I just use so much making the comic. As it stands, each episode costs about $1.50 to make, just for the paper! And I'm not even using the fancy stuff! Like, I can't count the number of tutorials that try to talk you into splurging on paper and I'm there going NOPE! This girl ain't paying for Arches until, by some miracle, the comic pays for itself!

[EmmyPax]

One of the other challenges of working traditionally that's specific to scrollable comics - big panels!

I really love the long scrolling panels you see in some webcomics on Tapas and Webtoons. For example, I'm thinking of some in Lore Olympus where Persephone's hair just goes on for days and it's atmospheric and delicious. I really wanted to incorporate some of that in my own work, but there's no natural way of doing that traditionally, especially if you (like me) have a scanner that's only the size of a standard piece of paper.

So seeing as I'm not patient enough to measure out linework precisely, my work around has been to hide transitions between scanned artwork in washes, where it's easy to blur out the line between things. So for example, my comic opened with a sequence with a bird flying over the countryside in a long scroll. So when I had to put it in the comic, I hid the line between the transition in the water.

Anyone else come up with work arounds for traditional comics in the digital age?

[gmaximin]

I’m doing black and white (no color), so 6h of pure drawing & inking is a max... it makes sure that I never get stuck somewhere...
Coffee powder: because it was an episode about coffee (Orthotics), and my wife was drying her coffee powder to feed plant (never really understood why, but in any case it’s not really working), so I thought: hey why not give it a try...
Cigarettes butt, that was for an older project, about a smoker, so again it made sense... and I had an ashtray full of it handy...
But, all these are really hard to work with (less to no control), and unless you really scrub it, it hardly marks the paper. So altogether, it’s good for mood, abstract, but not for clear lines... and in both case, I ran out of supply before finishing, and had to use other means (like middle panels in orthotics (https://m.tapas.io/episode/1678201) were finished with graphite).

[a.g.meade]

@EmmyPax - Ha! So watercolor is one of those love or hate things, eh? Alas, I like the look but I think I am far too detail-oriented to make it work for me. I'm glad it works so nicely for you - it's clear you love it from your work!

Ah, I've heard good things about W&N supplies in general. That's cool that you've stuck with them this whole time. I'll keep that brand in mind if I do venture into watercolors again. I still have 95% of the watercolors I tried out

My goodness, I didn't realize that watercolor paper was so expensive. I'm familiar with Arches (and yeah, wow, their stuff is crazy high priced) but WOW.

Oh yeah, I know the types of panels you mean in Lore Olympus (high five fellow Lore Olympus fan!). It's really cool the kinds of effects that can be achieved from long panels like that (though, are those even panels??). It sounds like you've adapted your work well to those really long panels - right on!

[a.g.meade]

@gmaximin - The time limit definitely makes sense to not get stuck somewhere. That's a good idea - the 'done, not perfect' notion for sure.

Oh, how cool that you incorporated items from real life into creating the topics of your episodes! I looked at the page you sent. I wouldn't be able to tell that you ran out of supplies if I wasn't looking for a difference - you blended standard tools with the coffee grounds really nicely.

[gmaximin]

Thanks... but you can see difference in control between:

(coffee ground applied with cotton buds! scrapped... scrapped...)
and

Btw, what's your process for Borrowed Faces?

[UrMom]

I use the smooth Canson brand, it works pretty well. Doesn't warp too easily, isn't overly textured and it has a nice thickness. What media have you used before that hasn't worked with the Bristol paper?

Hah yeah, it is quite a process. Sometimes I wish I went with markers instead, but color pencils were the cheapest option, plus they're really hard to mess up with. The motion sickness thing is kind of funny (wtf funny, not so much 'haha' funny) because about 10 years ago I decided to draw and/or color digitally for a year to give myself the experience. It was just as unenjoyable back then, but for some odd reason I didn't get sick at all, this just happened a couple times when I decided to pick up the tablet again to show examples for an art critique. Got so sick I had to stop everything to keep myself from throwing up. Sooo even if a blue moon happened and I actually wanted to start drawing digitally, I probably won't be able to without getting drugged up first. Lol

[a.g.meade]

@gmaximin - Ah, yeah, I can see the difference in the control there!

My process? Oh, ha, I guess I didn't actually say! Thanks for asking.

I'm not an artist by formal training (writing is my background), so I write my scripts first so I can make sure that the story is what I want it to be. Then I do the pencils, go over it in ink (and fix with white where needed), and scan it into my computer. I go over the panels with a thicker digital line, clean up any smudges, and that's pretty much it! It is probably very simplistic, but I think it just comes down to the fact that I get impatient!

[a.g.meade]

@UrMom - Thanks for the info about the paper! I'll have to give the Canson Bristol a try. I have pretty much every other type of their paper but not that one. I've only really used pen and ink/marker on previous Bristol boards, which I've heard is supposed to be the perfect pairing. I don't know if it was something I was doing wrong, but the ink just didn't look dark enough to me. I tried 3 different brands and only one had the 'look' I was going for, but it wasn't Copic-proof, so that was a non-starter. Alas!

Oh wow, that is very strange indeed - I wonder why digital didn't bother you 10 years ago. Well, it sounds like it kind of works out since it isn't your medium of choice anyway. But yes, there are always motion sickness drugs if you ever change your mind, which might lead to some very interesting pieces!

[EmmyPax]

Finding Copic proof ink is sooooooooooo hard. In my experience, I was able to get my speedball ink to work with Copics when I let the ink cure for AT LEAST an our (longer is better) and was careful not to blend over the ink lines. I did all of Inktober that way last year, and didn't have much for problems with smudging, even though I was using simple sketchbook paper.

[feuersichel]

1. What is your medium of choice?
   For my comic I use Copics / or simmilar markers. But I also do stuff with watercolor.

   1. From thumbnails to final edits, describe your typical process for creating a page. How long does a page take from start to finish?
      Scrap page -> Pencil sketch (I now use erasable color pencils as it makes the editing easyier later) -> inking -> Now I scan it in and erase everything other than the ink, do some corections and print it on some marker-paper -> coloring -> scan again, edits and add the text -> Aaaand finaly upload ^^
      I'm unsure, how long the process takes, as I work batch-wise but I'd say a day per page from scratch to finish.

   2. What's your favorite/least favorite part of being a traditional comic artist?
      I love to work with those mediums and I think I'm faster, than doing everything digitaly. The inks and refils get pretty expensive though :,D

   3. Do you think you'll switch to digital one day?
      Maybe I'll do more digital stuff, once I learn more about my art program (Clip studio) but still, I think I'll keep on doing most of my art traditionally. I feel like, when I work traditionally, I HAVE to think what I'm doing and plan ahead -> Not many options to redo things ^^'

   4. How do you feel webcomics have affected traditional comics, if at all?
      For me personally, it has thought me alot. I get feedback more directly which is a big plus in my oppinion ^^

And this is the comic I'm currently working on. This one basicly was my "learning how to do comics"-comic. So I'm actually working on the redrawing of my first chapters.

The story of Osram | Tapas

[feuersichel]

I got around that problem, by scanning my pages in and printing them out again. My laserjet-ink seems to be very marker-proof. But I haven't found markerproofe ink neighter so far. exept for the pens, copic and some others sell. But personally I don't really like to work with them.

[sushy00]

I use both traditional and digital media for one page, so I would be in the middle of this I guess? XD