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

[skippyjoeskilling]

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.

[skippyjoeskilling]

Ugh, I remember seeing so much of the same type of bad advice about drawing different genders. 'draw women with round shapes, men with angular ones, this is how to draw male shoulders, etc.' and I felt so self-conscious about drawing men too feminine (I was getting out of my anime phase then and super upset by people comparing my art to BL or shonen manga).
I remember seeing an interview with Alison Bechdel where she talks about how without gendered clothing and haircuts, most men and women don't look very different, and it made me realize how totally terrible all that drawing advice was. Way more useful to think about body types as 'muscular vs fat' or 'broad-shouldered vs slender' instead of 'masculine vs feminine'.

[Mallory]

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.

[Puck]

Focusing on learning the skeleton and the muscles is essential for anatomy understanding the human body/movement and learning to draw figures.
I don´t think that this will lead to characters looking like bodybuilders. The distribution of fat i useful but teaches you nothing about the movement
a body can make and basic anatomy

I 100% agree on the second statemeant about cheating, whatever works for you and gets the job done

[Legendofgenii]

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.

[Puck]

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

[ble]

Worst: You can't make money on webcomics.

Best: You can't make money on webcomics.

[Legendofgenii]

Exactly!

[Eiranyx]

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.

[disqette]

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.

[NickRowler]

Best advice: Learn traditional art.

Learning how to draw and paint traditionally can help you understand techniques in digital art and cartooning.

Worst advice: Copy other properties that you share similarities with.

Ex. If you’re art unintentionally ended up looking a bit like Steven Universe, you should be writing a story similar to SU. If you write a story about unicorns, your plots should be similar to My Little Pony.

This is awful advice yet quite common. Stop telling people this.

[WillowTree]

The best advice I got waaaaay back when is to write the story you want to write. You don’t need ‘permission’ to write characters who aren’t exactly like you (race, gender, sexuality, etc) just do your characters justice.

The worst advice I received was the opposite of the above lol. I was told I need to only write white women main characters since I’m a white woman lmao.

[Rhonder]

Among the manga copycat section, the right-to-left created comics in a language that reads left-to-right is the trend that always boggles my mind the most While there's nothing wrong with it, per se, it absolutely just sows confusion in the average "your native language" reader. Heck, even as someone who has read a fair amount of manga, I still get confused sometimes when stumbling into right to left reading webcomics, especially if it's not explicitly stated somewhere!

My most recent experience with someone's work like this is a little less obtuse- they're making a comic in english, left-to-right reading... but using almost exclusively tall vertical speech bubbles lol. We like to talk shop about comics, so I've pointed out before that typically English comics work better with horizontal speech bubbles due to the amount of words that you can fit on a line being more natural (and that manga has vertical bubbles due to the writing direction of its native language) but I think they were pretty committed to keeping the vertical bubbles lol

[DualDragons]

Worst advice: people trying to convince me not to become upset when my brother continually pried into my stuff specifically to make me angry. Which wasn't even the point of my question back then.

Best advice: just try out digital art. I did it for the colouring atleast and I made a big step last year. So I don't regret that advice.

[Llyrel]

"Of course you can mix manga influences with other comics influences!"

Love that artists in the UK scene would say this. Here in Italy there's still this super common mentality that is still being pushed by a lot of art teachers, art schools and even professional illustration and comic schools that "you can't sell manga in Italy, so you should never EVER draw in that style, not even for practice. NEVER". Which is absolutely ridiculous, if you think that W.i.t.c.h. and Winx, aka two of the most popular Italian series that are known all over the world were heavily influenced by manga and anime. Our "professional" and "100% italian style" comics that supposedly "sell more"? ...They're basically only popular in Italy. A few series had like two/three comic books (out of over 300 here in Italy) published in other countries and pretty much NONE of them made it to the UK/US market. And I'm saying this as someone who loves Italian style comics and never had any interest in drawing manga (except for W.i.t.c.h. comics, lol): even to this day, I still hear students saying that their art teacher in middle school told them that drawing manga was "wrong" and that they shouldn't do it, and I'm just... STAHP SAYING THAT, DAMMIT.

Yes, you shouldn't just copy a style mindlessly without putting any effort on it and you definitely shouldn't limit yourself to one style, but to say that a very popular style is "wrong" and should never be used just because some publishers are apparently still stuck in the 40s and won't see that the world isn't limited to their own little country? Urgh.

[pepasmaga2]

the worst "advice" i got was - "give up" :v

the best advice i got was - "keep doing, because, why not? you are an artist"

[rajillustration]

so I've pointed out before that typically English comics work better with horizontal speech bubbles due to the amount of words that you can fit on a line being more natural (and that manga has vertical bubbles due to the writing direction of its native language) but I think they were pretty committed to keeping the vertical bubbles lol

YES. THIS. This is actually a huge pet peeve of mine because I have a little background in graphic design. English readers have a hard time reading these narrow paragraphs that are only one word a line. This has been proven, switching to what your language naturally does only makes it easier to read. When I see sentences--like full on 20 word sentences--squished to 1-2 words a line I can't read it properly.

[HippieGhost]

This is the first I've heard of drawing with your whole arm. I need to try that.