What is the worst advice you got vs the best advice you got?

Worst advice: if you can't come up with a 100% anatomically correct sketch within ten minutes using no reference at all, you better just scrap the whole thing and redo it all again. And again. And again. And again. Can't reach perfection? ...Then give up.

This was from my illustration teacher (which isn't apparently teaching illustration anymore now, thankfully XD). Needless to say, it put me in the condition where I just stopped drawing altogether for 8+ years because there was no way in hell I was going to make a "100% anatomically correct sketch" in ten minutes using no reference at all.

Best advice: "You don't need everything to be perfect. Good enough is okay. Improvement will come as you keep working"

This has pretty much saved my life when it came to comic making. It helped me forgive my own mistakes and keep going forward rather than obsessing over every little detail of a single drawing. And you know what? My digital coloring skills have improved immensely once I stopped being so obsessed with everything being -perfect- right from the start. Instead of spending 3 months on a single drawing, I got to produce dozens of drawings, illustrations and comic pages. And for the first time in years... drawing feels fun again.

Worst:

I had to kind of reach for this one because I can't think of much poor advice I've received honestly This wasn't so much advice as me following a tutorial religiously despite it not being compatible with me but,

Thin, detailed linework is king.

Probably the most damaging tutorial tip that I ever saw when I was younger that stayed with me for years and stunted my inking growth for ages was this artist that I really looked up to on Deviant Art. She had posted some coloring (marker) and inking tutorials and since I used the same media I studied and followed them for years without thinking about how they worked with my style. The coloring tutorials were actually pretty useful and taught me how to do some neat things with alcohol markers! But the line art tutorial... wasn't incorrect, certainly, but basically she talked about in depth about how she preferred to use the thinnest possible fine liners (like .003 and .005 size) so that she could just load her artwork with details and such. And it looked great! So for the longest time I ordered a bunch of those and rarely used my thicker liners trying to emulate her artwork.

The problem is... I have a less detailed style that vastly prefers thicker, more expressive line work. So my inking just looked janky and off for like 10 years before finally a non-artist friend made an offhand comment "hey, have you ever considered using thicker lines?" Being the big dum dum that I am, no- I had not ever considered this. And thus like 22 or 23 year old Rhonder FINALLY started experimenting with line weights and voila, my line quality feels much much much better than it ever did from middle school-college.

Best:

When approaching your first comic project(s), consider starting with something small and easy to complete.

I had always been enamored with writing and making a huge long-running series that resembled the stories that most inspired me to start making comics in the first place. But after years of starting these big projects only to get a few pages in and drop them I realized, at least to start, that wasn't a sustainable path for me to take. It was only after hearing and deciding to try this advice that I was finally able to start my comic journey "for real". Now that I have a few finished projects under my belt I've been working my way slowly up to longer projects, but I don't know if I would have made it this far if I tried to keep just brute forcing my way into a long story I wasn't ready to tackle. Even now a few years in I don't feel comfortable starting something that would take more than 1-2 years to complete. but I'm trying to train my speed so that I can tackle bigger projects and have them take less time

I think the thing about advice is really that it doesn't work for everyone. You'll see a lot of conflicting opinions.

Because...
"Start with a small project first" is the worst advice I've heard in my opinion. What if there's only one story I want to tell? And what if it's big? Then what? I'd rather spend over 12 years failing and having false starts, because now I'm where I want to be.

For good advice?
"Draw everyday/do something creative everyday" is the best advice, for me. I've been doing just that for basically my entire adult life. I maybe take one day off a week to recharge. But other than that, if I'm not drawing, I'm not getting better and gaining ground as an artist.

But. Advice. Like art, is subjective, and that's okay. Not all advice has to work for you. Find what works and throw all the rest away.

That is so true. Some people do something and it is a break out success like when recently an author gave away 7 of their 8 books for free, for the launch of their 8th books launch. Make SOO much money, but doesn't work for most.

Also who ever told you that bad advice is a jerk. Digital takes just as much skill to create a beautiful piece. Is it a different set of tools? yes! Do you have to know what your doing? Yes! But if your skilled and can create, that is all that matters.

You do you!!!

Worst advice: Had a teacher look at my animation after I did sound editing, didn't really critique the audio but said my film would be much better if the characters grunted like banjo and kazooie characters every 5 seconds.

Best Advice: Learning to balance things out in comics such as less text makes it easier to read and that an establishing shot helps readers figure out where a character is in the page.

The worst advice I ever got was that art was a waste of time and that I could never do anything worthwhile with it. I heard this from so many people for years and years. The worst part was that I believed it and internalized that idea while I pursued things I hated just to feel like a "real adult". It took me years to decide to embrace what I really wanted to do all along and I'm never looking back.

The best advice I've gotten is that art is representational. As long as you're not working in a hyperrealism style you can bend the rules, be weird and experiment. As long as something looks identifiable as what you're trying to represent you can make stuff toony and super expressive.

For me the joy behind art is self expression. Ignoring that bad piece of advice and jumping whole heartedly into the message behind the good one has helped me immensely.

If someone says digital art is not art or not to use reference then this is not advice then
you are talking to a toxic person and you should just run away and talk to someone else.
This is my advice to everyone.

I received a lot of superb advice in my life. I try to soak it all in. There are many advices,
I think it´s clever to listen to them all, try them and see what works for you as an individual person

Definitely the worst advice I've been given was advice relating to how I depict gender. In my early online work, my female characters were frequently mistaken for male, because in the late 90s and early 00s, bishounen characters and ecchi were all the rage and barely anyone, even in LGBTQ+ circles was familiar with terms like "nonbinary", so I got told over and over and over "your girls look like boys!", "you need to make your girls more feminine!" "They need more prominent boobs and eyelashes". People were VERY concerned about this, as though a girl not being very very obviously a girl with exaggerated feminine characteristics was a horrible thing that needed resolving, even in a story where the character's sex or gender were completely irrelevant. My work from the mid 00s looks really awkward because of this attempt to make characters more superficially feminine, and I feel like it held back my anatomical drawing because in reality, male and female bodies and faces actually aren't all that different, and treating them like it's two totally different approaches to drawing anatomy is silly. It's much better to learn general anatomy more like it's a sliding scale like "okay, people with a more female pelvis it tends cause trousers to crease like this... Broader shoulders work like this... More muscle tone in this area will look like this..." etc.
In other words, learn what physical characteristics will make a character appear more masculine, and what will make them look more feminine and to have the freedom to mix and match and play around and to not have to worry about people getting on your case because they're angry about not being able to neatly assign gender to characters (and they're scared that maybe they're a bit bi, I dunno? ).

Best Advice: "Do what works for you." Basically, early on with manga stuff especially, there was this common idea that to draw "proper manga" you had to use a dip pen and a pot of ink on a piece of bristol board on a drawing board, real screentones, draw right to left and draw in a style that was as indistinguishable from Japanese creators as possible. But some of the more experienced artists on the UK scene advised a more pragmatic approach. They'd give advice like "no, draw your comic left to right if you're making it in English; it'll read better", "Use the pens that you can afford and have space for and give you the best result", "Of course you can mix manga influences with other comics influences!", "Yes, digital tones are fine, just make sure you're working with the right DPI for your print size!"
In the end, it's all about what gives you the best pipeline for keeping making pages that look decent, are easy to read and express the feeling or action you want to express, and if your way of doing that is a bit different, that's okay!

Worst Advice: Focusing on muscle when drawing anatomy. This is how most drawing anatomy classes teach it, that you start with the skeleton, then add the muscles on top to build up the form. And while I think muscle groups are useful to know, it can lead to all your people looking like body builders. You can't even see muscle on most people who aren't actively flexing. I found a tutorial one day on building up bodies by focusing on fat distribution instead of muscle, and it's helped me so much.

Best Advice: If you're making comics, cheat as much as possible. Pretty much all of my background are traced. Don't steal other artist's work, but take your own photos or use 3d models. Looks twice as good in half the time. And there's still a lot of skill in setting up the background, most of my exterior shots are like four different photos I've taken stitched together in photoshop, and then I drawn details and textures over it.

Worst (with a caveat):

"Don't start with your magnum opus. Write something small and short."

Ok ok ok. I get that the advice is about learning the ins and outs of writing AND showing to yourself that you can complete a project. And there is absolutely value in that. However, "small and short side-project" is not the only way to learn all those skills. Why the heck would you waste your time writing a 10-page comic about settings and characters you barely care about? A MUCH better version of that advice is "Look at your magnum opus. Now pick a small portion of it that would tell its own short, completed story. Maybe the main character's grandma. Or the MC as a child going on a short adventure that defines them as the MC in your magnum opus. Then tell that story, start to finish. Then you can move on to your magnum opus, but break the story up into smaller chunks, each as its own milestone, serving as a place where you can happily hang up your hat if you so desire."

I also got the load of BS that was "art isn't a real career" BUUUTTT I ended up being educated in a medicine-adjascent field which has come in QUITE HANDY when it came to diagnosing my issues and communicating with doctors who didn't really care. So in retrospect I don't mind getting that advice, because being able to read medical research papers and journals has come in very handy.

Best:

There's a number.

1. Don't talk about doing your projects, because it creates the same kind of hormonal release that actually DOING the project does, and you become satisfied with just talking about it. I do talk about my projects a bit, but I also just sometimes tell myself to shut up and work.

2. Set REALISTIC AND ACHIEVABLE goals. For years I kept chasing the "write 1000 words a day" thing even with my medical issues and pain. I could never do it and always felt like a failure. Then finally one day, I read a writer's advice who was like, no, you need to figure out what YOU can do in a day and set that as your goal, and then ALSO add a stretch goal where you really pat yourself on the back. Maybe your daily goal is 100 words. That's fine. Just do that. So I did that, and I ended up completing my manuscript in a few months because of course I wrote more than 100 words - I was happy I was reaching my goals! I apply the same thing to art. On some days, the goal is just one panel sketch. On some days, I just decide - I am going to take a break.

I agree that drawing everyday (or as often as you can) is good advice if you are looking to improve.

I draw every day because I love it, and life is short.

I agree on that 100% and it´s the same for me.
I do it because I enjoy it, the same like playing instruments.
You have to challenge yourself a little bit every week but this is
how you improve

Worst: You can't make money on webcomics.

Best: You can't make money on webcomics.

Worst advice: "You should be just doing art for fun and not making money out of it, making money out of art is such a disgrace"
-- from the people who thinks they're more superior of an artist because they're so 'passionate' that they think making money out of art is 'a disgrace towards art'
Best Advice: "If you plan to make a career out of art, be prepared to clash and defy the 'norms' --- don't mind the 'norms' just go for it, its either you start now or never at all."
- guess I'm stubborn enough to defy their 'norms' and i'm still having fun with art while I make a career out of it. Seriously, whether you make money out of it or just do it for fun depends on the person -- that's why there's art as a hobby and art as job/a career -- no one should be telling you what do you plan to do with YOUR art or what SHOULD you do to your art.
It depends on you, on how far are you willing to defy the 'norms' surrounding you if you plan to make a career out of art -- People will always have something to say no matter what you do and the decision whether to move forward to pursue it as a career will ALWAYS rely on YOU and you alone.

best advice: draw with your whole arm, not the wrist

worst advice: draw every day.

You do not have to draw every day to get gud. Actually, drawing every day may even be harmful. Take rest days. Know your limits.