What bits do you dislike? and love (making comics alone)

[JeanGuillet]

now I can't afford ComicCad just yet.

what is ComicCad?

agree 100% about the inking, marketing, forgetting stuff.

[arcojawa]

Gotta do it for the aesthetics! It looks good when we put our full effort into it. I don't think you necessarily need to enjoy the process (as per the common knowledge) because if you care for the result that's often enough to put in the work.

[Iris-Grimoire]

COMICAD NETWORK

Put an extra C there by accident. It's a system to buy ads for the comic! Seems pretty easy to use but I'd like to have a little extra on my savings for now.

[azzy-m]

Things I love about making comics alone:

• Story and art decisions are only made by me and not anyone else. I'm not a huge team player, so apologies if I sound slightly arrogant.

• Telling stories in a visual media. I used to be a novelist on Wattpad and I was never the bestat describing people and places without resorting to the pet peeves everyone hates, i.e "The sun was setting, turning the sky into a rich tangerine color mixed with streaks of grape-violet." I don't have to do that as much with comics, and thank god for that.

What I hate:

• Having to balance between the comic and real life. I just started school a week ago, and since my school started a month ago (I don't want to say why it's fairly personal) I have sooo much to catch up on, as I've essentially just missed a month's worth of school work. During my first week I had barely any time to catch up on progress on my comic (having had only one day after I got home from school in that entire week to work on it and waking up the next morning with a painful wrist) and my initial august 9 release has to be postponed. One thing I heard a Webtoon featured artist has said though (who is also a college student, aka, much busier than me, who is a high school student) is that "you'll never be able to get both the comic and your school life perfectly" and that's something I'm thinking about a lot.

• Backgrounds. I've had to draw more backgrounds in the 3 episodes I currently have up alone than I did for 6 years of digital art (and 4 years since I got my first and current tablet). They're not very good, tbh, but nice form of practice.

[IndigoShirtProd]

I think my least favorite part of working alone on a comic is that when I have to take care of things in my life, like work or school, just life in general, no one else is working on it. I've been trying to build a buffer for a month ad half but it's slow work because when I stop working in the comic, no one else is picking up my slack. I enjoy writing and drawing, though both can be tiring at times. Another thing is that being a solo creators and having multiple intellectual properties means you can't really throw yourself in one without letting another one falter. Kudos to the people who are able to structure their life in such a way so they can devote a good amount of time to each of the stories they want to tell.

[JeanGuillet]

thank you! looks like a great idea! definitely bookmarking this for future research...I think these sort of site interlinking tools are going to become popular again in the near future as all the social platforms make themselves so mobile friendly that all but single-panel comics get left behind, and then there's also the content censoring issue. the future of comics on the internet looks like it'll be decentralized. even Tapas just censored one of their very popular comics for accurate depiction of male chest hair. when there's no place left to go but your own website, a mutual ad network seems like a sensible thing to be a part of.

[Shanny8]

This one might seem a little surprising............. I'm.......... I'm not super fond of drawing.I know I know, what a travesty! The common knowledge is that to do well in comics or in art in general you have to enjoy the process of making art, but I dunno! It's kinda tedious and hurts my wrists. I still like what I produce. I like my art style and I enjoy the writing process. I just find the actual drawing and digital phase kinda dull.

In this phase as well. Not to say I'm sick of drawing and want someone else to do it; I just feel a little burned out right now at times and my arms/wrists hurt when I try to do too much...this is one of the main issues behind me dragging to produce pages currently besides too much day job work.

I LOVE inking! Once I get the pencils done, I kick into a whole 'nother gear with inking...I enjoy seeing the finalized look of my work.

I'm still kind of "ho-hum" about coloring, but it's mainly in the starting stages; once I get past dropping the background colors and the initial flats on the foreground stuff/characters, then I become a little more enthusiastic about the results.

I also love lettering- it's like the decorative icing on top of the cake; you have to do it well for the whole thing to look appealing.

I definitely LOVE people reading my pages and getting feedback- it pumps new life into my veins everytime I read comments. It makes me feel that I'm heading in the right direction and gives me desire to want to continue to work(even though I'm in a bad way right now).

[Lucca_Vendramel]

The most annoying part to me is the backgrounds. It's just a lot of work for maybe 1 or 2 singular shots and it kinda bums me down

[Kann]

My favorite parts of making comics is lineart and adding effects. There's magic in my comic, so a lot of times I have to draw some glowing stuff, fire and whatnot and I absolutely love playing around with that. Luminosity layer mode in Sai is my best friend, lol.

What I dislike? I find putting the text in the most boring part. Since it's just "copy text from the file> paste it into the page> edit text>repeat" until all is done.

[ble]

This post was flagged by the community and is temporarily hidden.

[mariusthered]

so here is a tip for you people like @Lucca_Vendramel who dont like backgrounds.

What you see above is my background library. when ever i do a new background for Blunderland it gets made here in this file and stored for later use. then i can just reuse it when i need for speedy page backgrounds.

@Iris-Grimoire Comic ad network sounds super useful I will have to give that a look.

@azzy-m see my tip above. also try not to be too upset about school life getting in the way, it's one of those things you will look back on and miss one day believe me. just try to see it as the challenge to achieve while building your comic.

@IndigoShirtProd yes totally with you on that. right now I'm working on new stuff for Blunderland book 2, converting the old chapters into issues for sale and working on the new stuff for Blunderland compendium my buffer is not what it was anymore due to this load.

@Shanny8 yes you cannot beat a little bit of feedback from fans and readers, even having someone press the like button can make such a difference to the mood of a creator, i so wish we could get this message across to readers better.

@Kann yes i love adding magic to pages too fairy dust is cool stuff with comics. we also add text in the same way I do that as my first stage on a page and work around it.

[TenguHarley]

The upload process asdf like I have to do it when I'm not burnt out from work and such since I do post to about 5 websites(deviantART, tapas, webtoon, smackjeeves and comicfury) and then post updates on twitter, insta and about... 15 aminos.

In honesty I do hate my moods where I don't want to sketch? I want to ink or color or do backgrounds because it's relaxing but that's moreso linked to me being burnt out from work and the summer heat. As of now I'm on better schedule and pace with the process so I switch around from sketching late at night or doing the pages through portions such as paneling, speech bubbles, backgrounds, characters and then when I near to the upload time, I do a look over to ensure for no errors or anything missing.

.....but I also tend to restart on certain sketches, changing from what I planned from my thumbnails -x-);;; like I could have composite this page better etc etc

[Iris-Grimoire]

Just like comics make you practice every art skill, writing for comics makes you practice language in general! English isn't my first language but just like I got fluent by shitposting on forums and trying to play games without translations, I hone my skills by writing the script english first, portuguese second. Anime Ace also doesn't support c-cedilla which is a very common letter in portuguese so I have to manually add it, but shhh

As for backgrounds that a lot of people said, it's really hard but it's gonna get easier with time, and don't be afraid to just use photo references or simple 3D models or this bunch of black magic, because it's all about training your hand to quickly draw a scene on the fly. I wouldn't reuse backgrounds unless it's the exact same camera angle or blurred out, people pay attention to that.

[mariusthered]

yes i had quite enough of still life art when i was younger, given assignments on drawing cabbage leaf veins. but it can be lots of fun to look at a thing and try to see it as something else. ( i was doing that today using plant seeds as reference for fairy wings)

[irene_addler]

I've never really done much promoting and barely have time to draw tbe comic itself, much less make banners and stuff to promote it!! Lol I wish I did! I guess that's what I hate most, I hate that it takes so long to do anything with it that I feel like I just can't because I'll burn through my buffer too fast if I do all the other things or spend as much time as I probably should on each aspect of the comic. What I love is hearing from my readers about it, whether it's constructive criticism, just general happiness with it, or just a comment, knowing that they read it and took the time to say something about it really makes me happy

[Rhonder]

Hmm, for me the inking is the part that's the biggest drag. If I could outsource 1 part of the process to an assistant, it would probably be that xD Especially since I'm doing mixed media for my current comic (traditional line work, digital coloring), something about the speed at which I must produce pages mixed with the permanent nature of ink is just frustrating. I'm switching to all digital for the next season of my comic and will reserve the traditional work for illustrations and shorter comics even though this season will "only" be ~65 pages, still soooo over it.

My favorite part is definitely the coloring! Regardless of digital or traditional with my markers, seeing the final, full color piece always feels like the pay off that makes it worth it

On the non drawing side, i agree with others:not at all a fan of having to play social media for marketing and such. I feel like it doesn't yield great results because I don't have enough time to dedicate to it, but at the same time just neglecting it is even worse than what I currently do. Blegh.

Favorite is also fan reactions and chatting with them! The comment sections for my comic are gold, definitely better than the comic itself

[indagold]

Everything eventually. When you first start a comic it feels like a breath of fresh air as you speed through the pages joyfully and then you realize how draining it is months in. The end product is wonderful but damn the amount of time you lose to be able to spend time with friends or leisure is so insane. I love my work, don't get me wrong but It saddens me this is probably the last comic i'll work on cause job and life takes a toll. I do love being able to look back at what you make and realize you made it with your own hands. That is precious to be able to make a craft and hold on to it years to come.

[PaulieBlade]

What I hate is promoting. I feel so fake and pathetic when I'm shilling. Ugh. I pretty much stopped doing this. Also, not the biggest fan of drawing backgrounds.

What I love is putting the final touches on the page. It is almost complete, so I already feel comfortable regarding the deadline, and adding some extra grit, shadows or cross-hatching, while didn't seem necessary, it added so much to the overall depth of the page.

[Kelheor]

Hate the first step - making a layout, paneling and thinking what action goes where, and from what angle I hate it with all my guts. My husband/writer is so much better with it, so he is usually sitting near me, telling me what to do 98% of the time, while I am sitting whining and cursing drawing this first draft with a speed of a snail. I just don't have this feeling of how to make the interesting layout.

I love lineart! I am really truing to put so much more in lineart now, more, more. I need to become better at colouring too, but I know that my inking is doing the most part anyway. It also takes so less time than colouring

[azzy-m]

Oh wow thanks for the tip. I'll remember to do this after my next episode gets published.