What kind of illustration style do you have and how does it relate to your story?

[catty152]

I've seen a lot of webcomics and they all have different styles in terms of illustration and colour palettes. Some tend to go for realism type of colouring where everything is exactly the colour you think it would be ex: trees with brown bark and green leaves. But lighting will still change the colours. There are some that do not have any type of effects from lighting, they maintain their colour blocking no shadows. Some do sketchy outlines, some do perfectly straight black outlines. some have no outlines and the colours are mixed like in oil paintings. I've seen that the styles people pick tend to go towards the mood or the type of story they are trying to tell.

So tell me a bit about your illustration style and how it's connected to your story.

[sefra114]

Cool topic! I rarely use color in my webcomic Oni x Fox, but when I do, I tend to use relatively vibrant colors, and my shading style is often similar to hatching. My work is pretty energetic and wild, be it with action or expressive characters, I find the loose hatching and bright colors adds to the liveliness! Even though Oni x Fox is almost entirely in black and white, I still utilize hatching to shade and texture throughout the entire comic.

[misterloki]

My comic Until the Last Dog Dies is a 1920s comic about werewolf dog fighting. I use grayscale with red spot to accentuate significant parts of the comic. The grayscale gives it a great noir type feeling, whereas the accentuated red spot is a story element, representing one of the characters and his connection to the dog fighting ring. It works very well for me and I think that it does a great job of piquing the interests of readers!

[Damatris]

Fallacy is a drama fantasy story set in fictional viking age. I have mostly pretty earthy/muted color palette, even if it's not monochromatic with the shades, and painterly coloring/shading technique. it seemed fitting to not use overtly bright colors as the story isn't adventure/humor based. And I absolutely love using watercolors so I wanted to imitate the look and feel of them with the digital coloring too.

[Zanreo]

My comic Consolers is a parody comic using personified game companies to talk about recent gaming news and game history. I use a somewhat cartoony coloring style with lots of colors (but trying to not make them eye-burningly bright) and plain black lines, with more simple shading (usually just a block of what is kind of cell shading with softer borders) Unless the scene calls for it and I want some special/dramatic lightning for effect, I don't tend to use special shading affected by lightning, or (except for hair and certain shiny objects) highlights (a lot of the time they're not in a specific "place" anyway) and just stick to one premade shade color for each differently-colored part (I also prefer shading on the same layer since my shade brush blends better into the base color). Many of the backgrounds are just random shapes and patterns in various colors, for backgrounds with actual areas/enviroments I usually use the color things "actually" are but also want to try experimenting with BG color palettes and stuff when what would fit.

My comic is a mostly light-hearted, not too serious gag comic with a cute art style, so I think that fits (plus I really prefer working in color anyway)

[Ambat]

Initially with Nocturne my intention was to go with minimal/color based backgrounds with emphasis on character expressions for my illustration "style," but as I finished up the first chapter and began the second, I started to realize that the environments/atmosphere of the comic were equally as important to telling the story successfully as the characters were.

My chapter 1 style looked more like this and was inspired by the way I saw big city buildings handled in old cartoons like Darkwing Duck and Inspector Gadget (basically just squares upon squares to imply buildings haha)

For chapter 2 I'm trying to go more in the direction of Steven Universe background wise, including a lot of emphasis on fantasy-esque color palettes to set the mood and detailed environments with some personality. (this page hasn't been uploaded yet cuz it's part of the page buffer for my comic but sneak peak hehe!)

I'm really not all that great at drawing environments, so working on this comic has been a great challenge for me! As I progress through, I'd like to get to a point where every page feels like screenshots or snippets from an animated television show, because in terms of pacing and storytelling style I imagine the story as if it were animated, so visually I want to capture that feeling as well.

[punkarsenic]

in there was a war, i have a very sketchy style with limited colours and specific brushes that make it look pencilled - this is to reflect the ruggedness of the environment and culture of fomors in ancient coastal ireland. colour is limited because its important; it needs to be saved for when it has a symbolic purpose.

i mean, its also because its faster and less stressful this way.

[indagold]

Welcome Back is a crazy mishmash of weird. I changed my style a bit for the comic where I would have less shaded pages to cut down on time, so only dark areas would have shading, light areas wouldn't usually. Since it took place in a dreamworld I would have weird colorful pages or strange shifts in imagery. The dreamworld is super vivid and bright contrasted with the real world that is in black and white. I went for a mixed media approach, I made 3D backgrounds, took photos, drew the backgrounds, etc.

[UrMom]

For 'Void' (Warning: Blood, violence, nudity), my over the top domestic drama comic (is that a thing?), I used a somewhat more "realistic" style and full colour. The style used is just a general style I have that isn't specific to anything, I don't plan on tailoring it to certain stories till I get more of the basics down. Colour was used for this comic to improve my shading, ambiance, or certain moods. My previous comic was all black and white, shaded with pen so colour has been a challenge, and despite wanting to experiment my shading has leaned towards cool colours more often than not. Lol.

[MissMagicGirl]

My comic Magic Advisor was originally planned to be all in black and white. But then I realised it did not go with the goofy story I had in mind. So I decided to make it in color. At first I experimented with having grayscale backgrounds but only did that in the first chapter.
Like this:

But since it is a comedy and all characters has their own unique clothing style I did not feel right about always having gray in the background. So the backgrounds are pretty colourful now all of them.

I use a lot of photographs that I take and I draw on top of them but saves parts of them. I don't know if I am the only one who does that but I did come up with it myself

I want to have a really fun and lighthearted style to go with the story that is usually pretty weird and hopefully funny

I try to always improve and do better.

[Afroskeleton]

I still not delivered what I think it could be called an artstyle but I feel confortable making an enfasis in some aspects of the drawing just forme like texture and volume have to work in simbiosis, lack of detail it's not a bad thing if texture works, warm and cool colors have to be in the drawing making contrast etc

And these thing I aply in any kind of media, pixelart, kind of realism, cartoonish etc but I feel like I still can't say I have a defining style.

[Mineu]

Hi! Nice topic!
Well, it is hard for me to talk about my illustration style because I'm still very experimental with it but in terms of coloring I do everything with watercolors, ink and pencil.
For Tsukiko: The Moon Child's Wish I've recently started to use colors, mainly because I am really bad with b/w. Regarding the palette, I like to use neutral colors and shade with complementary colors and add some pencil work to strengthen the shading. I'm kind of new into this, though, so I'm still learning a lot.
This is my latest page so you can see.

In my other comic Wyrd I like to go with a more impressionist style in my coloring. For lighting I use white (usually made by not painting on the surface of the paper) and for shading I use ink, because it makes sharper but darker lines. And also white trees trunks

How do they relate to the story? Well, as I said before I have yet a lot to learn about using colors in comics; I usually focus that the color I am using conveys the right emotion. My first comic has a lighter story and it is more action-based so the style of coloring is simpler too; while my second comic is more introspective and slow-paced so the coloring style is more expressive... I still don't know if they mix well at all but yeah, we learn something new everyday hahahaha xD

[mkrenez]

I use mostly a minimalist style for my comic and keep the flat colors. I also like using the somewhat thick outlining for the line art. When it comes to colors, again, I like keeping it flat and simple, and add texture to some features in the scene.

This minimalist style relates to how most comics in the retro age had flat coloring and simplistic style, especially in the 1980s.

[spadesart]

My comic SPIRE's design/environment aesthetic was heavily inspired by steampunk art, but since most of it is super edgy and gray/brown/muddy looking I wanted to try something else and make it vibrant and colorful. It takes place in a fantasy world after all, and the bright colors kind of gives it a sense of not being real I think. I really like using dramatic lighting and color to help make a scene look more intense.
The style itself that the characters are drawn in is just my style in general but I kind of want it to look cartoony AND realistic(ish) at the same time? So I've kinda taken to keeping the lineart and way the characters are drawn more western cartoony but keep it fully colored and shaded. I also want it to look almost like it could be a movie done in CGI(???) since Dreamworks movies inspire a lot of my lighting and color use in it.

[Puppisama]

For my comic VCvsDvsCFAD I'm going more for a cartoonish style with some traces of manga, mainly because I wanted to do something I could draw quickly without concentrating too much on details but also because I want it to feel more parodic to the manga/anime in general. I went for black and white for the same reasons above, quick to draw with traces of "manga" without being one hahaha.

[jeffanime1]

Well I think my comicManga Academy has a pretty mainstream manga look. I'm still working on how complex or simple I want the designs to be but I'm improving as I go.

[joannekwan]

For Demon House I use my "usual" cartoony style, since I want it to appeal to as many people as possible. Also, as it's somewhat of a comedy, I can pull some exaggerated expressions in the characters' faces.

For Heavy Horns, it's a romance/drama, so it had to be more serious hence I use a more realistic approach. Plus I wanted to escape the whole BL=manga style (or heavily influenced thereof) mindset.

Then for my other two series Erie Waters and At Ease, they're more simplified styles of the ones above. These ones have very limited casts and I want the focus to be on the characters' journey. They are essentially simple stories with more minimal art.

[BeetleMilk]

Literally just binged all of this. Soooooo good so far! Keep it up!

[BeetleMilk]

My comic is Psycho Babble. I chose to make the style cartoony and pastel-toned to off set the serious undertones and adult content in the story!

[Aspie_Gamer]

Life of an Aspie being influenced by, but is not a shoujo manga naturally has a shoujo-ish look to it.

Above is a rare "shoujo moment" in LoaA.