What random advice would you give an artist that's new and wants to know what to learn to be a good comic artist/writer?

[JonBovi]

I'm giving advice in a Year 7-9 comic art club in about a week or two (depending on the principal) and figured might ask more experienced creators while I was at it for what kind of advice they'd give if they were in my situation

btw year 7 - 9 is like 12 - 15 or so also there will be some older kids I was told that there would be some 16 and 18 year olds but majority of the class is 12- 15.

[punkarsenic]

i think a good quote for beginners is from spike trotman: "everyone has 200 awful comic pages inside of them. the only way out is through." its important for kids to not be scared of getting started bc they dont think theyre ready - the best way to learn is to do, and everyones first project is flawed. its the doing that matters. the earlier you do the first shaky project, the sooner you can start developing your craft.

in a similar vein, they should start with something short. start with something four pages long, or ten pages - dont kick off with the saga, bc youre gonna develop really fast in the next few years and you dont wanna be stuck with the decisions you make now. an important thing when starting out is to get something finished - so start small.

also - learn the fundamentals. dont be cocky about it, youll regret it later - learning gesture, form, and anatomy is so incredibly valuable. id recommend showing them someone like proko on youtube, hes both comprehensive and understandable for beginners, so i think the eager kids in your group will be able to get smth out of that.

[minerrale]

"Finished, not perfect"
The first comic will never be as good as you hope, but it's not a reason to not finish it. Mistakes happen. Art evolves, so does storytelling.
Read. Read stories, read comics, read until your head is full of ideas and you have a solid base to work with. You can't learn to tell a story if you've never read one.
Have fun. That is perhaps the most important. In making art, you have to enjoy it. Sure, you'll also hate it sometimes, we all do, but overall if you don't have fun doing it you won't produce a good piece.

[unknown_user]

I'd give kids an advice: Listen attentively to constructive criticism, learn drawing and composition techniques etc from more mature artists. If you will learn from their knowledge and experience, it will allow you to express your thoughts and feelings through art more nicely and precisely.
BUT!
Don't give a shit about opinions of people who afford themselves offencive criticism! People who mock on your drawing, or trying to order you in pushy way what should you do in your creative work and what shouldn't, or say that you have no talent and must give up, should be ignored. Even if they are adults and look clever and authoritatively.
Remember that many adults are extremely arrogant toward kids, while actually they not even necessarily are smarter than you. They think they know better what and how young persons should draw, and that they have a right to offence kids, who do it "wrong", but this is nothing more than ignorance and violation of your personal boundaries.

TL;DR: Learn from experienced people how to express yourself better, but don't let anybody extinguish your spark just because it doesn't fit their standards.

[dawgofdawgness]

Ooh! I’m running a comic club at my school also the first thing I did was teach everyone how to do comic strips so they could practice timing (and drawing in squares). I would suggest having them draw scenes too, which are the main ingredients in any story ¯_(ツ)_/¯ and maybe move on to minicomics (but after a lot of practice - minicomics are tricky)
A tip from my experience though: if it’s a club, don’t lecture the kids. Just give them a bunch of projects so they can practice. Art is a medium where lectures sometimes aren’t very effective anyway.

[qwerty]

Well, if I had to condense the things that have helped me the most personally, I think it would be something like -

• Whenever you don't know how to draw something, you can use reference material. There's no shame in it, that's how we all learn. In fact, how can you expect to draw something well if you don't actually know what it looks like?
• Just about anything you need to know, you can probably find in a Youtube tutorial
• There's no such thing as "perfect" or the "right" way to do something, the important thing is just that you do it.
• maybe 80% of "art skill" is just learning how to see properly - how to observe things in real life, and how to notice strong and weak points in your own and other people's art. The other 20% is just getting your hand to do what your brain wants it to.

[Merle]

1. If you want to get into comics, just start making a comic. No matter what it looks like, this is the best and most effective way to learn how to make a comic, if
2. you are always open to learn and improve, listen to advice of other Creators, and look at their work progress every now and then.

[Yulek]

read a lot of comics critically and build a visual library + gain knowledge from unexpected sources ... makeup tutorials, movie reviews, photography ...

[JonBovi]

Yeah I figure that's what they do I don't run it though I got invited cause the teacher who runs it heard my podcast and thought I was qualified for some absurd reason so I figured leverage the community to look more koala-ified than I am XD

[JonBovi]

Wait how do makeup tutorials help?

[JonBovi]

das some real talk right there I'll use that at the end so I sound experienced and dependable

[Yulek]

I personally got better at faces and shading thanks to make up tutorials on contouring etc

[JonBovi]

Ah that's legitimately new advice to me goddamn

[racarter]

My advice is, and this is something I struggled with growing up: “Do your best, but don’t get hung up on everything being perfect”.

For example, I could never draw hands well. I learned techniques but somehow they just never came out right. I pitched a fit, threw my sketchbook, cried, etc. all because I couldn’t draw hands right.

Turns out it wasn’t the hands themselves making me upset, it was all my pent up insecurities about my art. The hands, in my mind, represented my shortcomings as an artist - reminding me how I knew, deep down, that I’d never be “good enough”.

Eventually, somehow, I moved past that and stopped caring about the fact I was bad at drawing hands. Then all of a sudden, I realized I was drawing hands better. Or perhaps I just stopped being overly hard on myself about it so they just looked better, even if I didn’t actually get better.

Later on I discovered that all artists have shortcomings. And sometimes even terrible or bland artists can make it big. And I mean genuinely terrible and bland, like goblin looking human characters that were designed by an SJW Tumblrina who thinks Anime characters (who are Japanese) are not POC enough so they redesign them to be unrecognizable blobs in a very poor attempt to mimic SU’s art style with no consideration for actual anatomy or basic design.

Yeah that sounds a bit harsh, I suppose, but it’s what helps me remember that if garbage like that can gain any sort of readership then so can mine.

But if you want something more optimistic, my dad has been telling me this story since I was very young and I think it rings true no matter what you’re talking about:

He said he used to play badminton a lot, he got so good that none of his friends wanted to play him anymore. So this one day he’s out playing and some random guy comes up and asks if my dad wants to play with him. My dad said yes. My dad promptly got his ass kicked by this random older guy.

So what’s my dad do? You’d expect that, after being beaten so badly, he just wouldn’t want to play the guy anymore, right? A lot of people would just give up... but my dad? He wanted to play this guy again and again.

Why is that? So that my dad could become an even better player than he already was. Turns out he wasn’t even that good, his friends were just worse than him at the game. By playing this guy tho, he got better and better.

The moral of the story being, don’t envy those who are better than you - learn from them to better yourself.

Most people are more prone to envy and thinking “if I can’t be as good as X then what’s the point??” instead of “if I learn from X then I can get better”. So my advice is to reject envy and thinking you can’t measure up to others.

If you want to get better, learn from those who are better than yourself. And keep doing it, keep improving. Practice. Learn on your own. Don’t aim for perfection.

Also: Create what you want to create and don’t let anyone censor you. Censorship is bad no matter what’s being censored, if people don’t like what you create then it’s okay - they can just avoid it. But don’t let other people’s hang up prevent you from really creating.

That is also something that took me a long time to figure out.

Also, as far as comics go, learn paneling and scene set ups. It can be tricky but it will become second nature once you get it down and you’ll be amazed how creative paneling can make up for anything lacking in your art and story. Just follow the left to right rule best you can.

[Luminosophy]

For any beginner, they need to throw themselves at the most seemingly impossible tasks, and revel in the terrible work they make trying to figure it out. Hands? Feet? Backgrounds? Dynamic poses? Do it all. Never shy away from a challenge, and feel good that you face them head on.

[LouisMiz]

This is probably more common sense than anything, but tell them to save ALL of their work (especially if it's art/writing being done on a computer). When they're further along their journey, they can look back at the progress they've made, but in general the should ctrl+s digital stuff as frequently as they can when they're working on it, or keep folders/binders for for their traditional artwork.

Try to have one tangible backup (flash drive, print out, computer hard drive, etc) and one intangible (cloud storage, Google drive/email copies, etc). It probably seems a bit out of place, but this isn't advice that I see given out very frequently ._.

[Fridgewriter]

Writer here, three bits of advice I haven't seen covered:

1. Try telling brief stories in comic form. Show don't tell when possible. You might know someone who is able to draw nicer than you, but even if your work isn't that great, to do it consistently and clearly tell an entertaining story, even if it's about getting a cookie, without much dialog in 2-5 panels is a powerful skill to be proud of.

2. Stories need conflict. "Conflict" does not equal sword fighting, robots crashing into buildings, and intense dramatic mental anguish. Even slice of life stories about best friends hanging out need some kind of issue to make it a story and not just a chain of events that could be an Instagram slideshow. These conflicts could be as simple as trying to make it to a shop to get a limited edition item they always wanted before it sells out or one person trying to pry gift ideas from a shy friend for their upcoming birthday without tipping their hand or getting frustrated.

3. Editors are your friends. Like art, creative writing takes a lot of practice and skill. Good editors will help build on what you're trying to achieve, not just check for grammar, and know when to back down when they're off track. Adding a new perspective on the story is very helpful as long as you also can remember that constructive criticism is on the work and should never be on you. You might be proud of what you worked on, but taking a step back from the work is crucial when talking to an editor/professional who, if they're honest, will be telling you the positives and negatives of their experience reading your story.

[charliesackett]

Here's all the advice I wish I followed more often XD:

Read everything. Think hard about what you like and don't like about what you read. Copy pages you like, the easiest way to get better quick when you're just starting is mirroring. You can worry about 'your style' later when you know what you're doing.

Also, always do sketches roughs, and visual studies first. And ALWAYS use references, don't just go from your imagination until your visual library is built up.

[wekanian]

Having a strong first episode will be good. Since that will be the only thing readers have to consider whether they want to sub or not to your story. It will be even better if it implies where the plot is going so readers know what they are getting into if they sub.