Yall ever just cheat on your panels?

[phantasmalart]

My main character has used her phone a few times and instead of making whole new designs for wallpapers, I just re-use old art pieces of mine. Anyone else? (cant have pics cause files are too big ig)

[moontokkym]

Yep, there have been a few posters out in the town for different in-universe things but I haven't gotten around to making the in-universe advertisement yet so I just did some quick mock-ups with my concept art.

[morganicfoods]

I model almost all the rooms/buildings in clip studio paint and then convert them to lineart. Saves me hours of time. It kinda feels like cheating, but, if it works it works.

[RedLenai]

Will depend on what you consider cheating to be honest

But I did re-draw old panels, use 3d models, take pictures of my hands and redraw on top of them, use assets for certain accessories, clothing or similar.
As well that I use 3d backgrounds done in the Sims 2

I'm planning on sit down a day and make stamps of characters's faces in a vector layer so I won't have to draw them, simply adjust them a little and done.

I also reduce the detail of my lineart and coloring to keep it presentable but simple so it doesn't take as much time either.

Another times I avoid using background or just stick to gradient colors for it.

[BLTX]

For this crowd, I ended up mostly reusing sprites from a panel for an unreleased episode.

Also, since my comic is digital, a lot of assets do end up getting reused. For example, my characters are all essentially sprites.

[DarkSena]

Hahaha, since I'm drawning my entire comic with traditional I never used any cheating lol everything is drawn from scratch and from zero until finish

[Lensing]

Shortcuts are good.
I´m writing, sketching, inking, coloring, lettering one page a day right now
and I have a deadline.
I use old sketches/old comics pages that I drew and trace over them. I model
backgrounds and use 3d models. I copy/paste things. I always use the same
skyline in the background, trace over it and change it a little bit so it looks like
you look at it from a different perspective.

[GothickangelStudios]

Disney other Animation companies and even anime studios use references and have traced over them for motion and angles.
To me cheating would be stealing someone elses work fully illegally and calling it your their own.

[river121693]

after working on comics for 2 years now, I find any cheats and shortcuts I can lol. I reuse background, trace over my old poses, and straight up copy and paste my panels all day.

[PoquitoBird]

I wouldn't consider it cheating, just working more effectively. Aside from sometimes reusing backgrounds/objects or just using color splashes for panel backgrounds for some scenes saves time, especially if you have life commitments like work and family.

I do a lot of my comic's art as traditional water color/media for some objects and backgrounds. Over a long time, I've built myself an asset library of objects that I can reuse for scenes and kinda collage everything together digitally and add shading, etc to the objects and backgrounds that need it. I can also piece objects together to make new objects if needed.

Here's an example of an object asset sheet I use for a scene (originally much bigger & saved as a transparent .png):

I can also distort perspective and angles of objects or background pieces for different panels with a single painted piece:

Both are the same art piece, just perspective distorted with Procreate/CSP and cleaned up digitally.

Shortcuts are not cheating, its just good time management skill building that can save you so much time and stress while making art or your web comic!

[allenT]

Once in a while, yes. Most of them are spikey thought bubbles.

My last cheat was the loom. I already drew a reference lineart of it before the comicpage. Since it's good enough, I drew the right camera angle in the panel for the loom to fit in.

[feuersichel]

I usually draw everything new, because I have no stress plus I want to improve. But for one color backgrounds behind characters, I reuse my premade aquarell backgrounds.
The focus is on the character anyways so it doesn't matter.

[midnightsun]

If I ever think a certain part of my art looks bad I try to position the speech bubble just so it covers the flaw. I also sometimes take a picture of myself for reference when I’m struggling with a particular pose. I have a similar body type to the main character in my comic so this has been a surprisingly good shortcut for me. I also do this with my hands often because hands are always a struggle for me to draw.

[N1ghtm4r3]

i guess you can call it " cheating" being how i will sometimes pic certain camera angles or poses so i don't have to draw so many details , or sometimes will just use a basic color back ground

[Glofernwolfe]

oh wow.... so useful! Thanks for sharing!

[BLTX]

I've built myself an asset library of objects

I've actually often thought of doing that myself. Actually, I guess I do do that already in a more limited sense.

[TheLemmaLlama]

Yes, I regularly commit adultery against my panels by working on other pieces behind their backs

[annaportia]

That's what I do too! It can get VERY time consuming.

[PoquitoBird]

Thank you! I'm really glad that this helpful! :3

[PoquitoBird]

I think the hardest part is the organization of everything. If you have objects already, saving them for future use is helpful. I put certain objects libraries with certain settings/scenes folders, but I also just have a general object file so I can grab any items and copy/paste it into the panel.

Also external drive back-ups and cloud drives are critical just in case your computer crashes... x_x