AnnaLandin

Anna Landin

Comic artist, illustrator, storyteller, interested in a little bit of everything. Secret superpower: amazing memory of pointless facts. Drawing Grassblades, a comic about a grumpy swordsman and his amazing travels.

Joined
Mar 10, '15
Last Post
May 19, '17
Seen
May 24, '17
Views
1520
Trust Level
member

I can't speak for others, but I did not receive any notification of these changes having been made, and I have been in a mad deadline crunch on freelance work for the past couple of months, and have therefore not checked in regularly on the forums either. I had entirely missed this addition to the…

Do you want to keep creating that comic? Then do it. Don't worry about how popular it is. Make the things you want to make. If we only made things because they were popular, nobody would ever make anything that meant anything. And if you're in webcomics for popularity, you're in the wrong game, h…

Spoilers: for a lot of us, that "I can't draw well enough" feeling never goes away. It's always there, nagging at us. In fact, I just woke up two hours before my alarm and spend the whole time staring at the ceiling angsting about how I'm not good enough at drawing environments. If it's getting…

Dude. You've been here for 2 weeks and you have 15 subscribers already. You're doing better than a lot of other new comic creators! Like, by a wide margin! There are people who manage to get maybe 2-3 subscribers in a month. Some people don't hit 100 subscribers even after a year of posting. You'…

For the main characters, no. Grassblades is about a homeless wanderer and the orphan who tags along with them; they literally HAVE no other clothes, and have to make do with washing/mending what they've got. Some minor characters do get costume changes occasionally, though. I do have some on…

Yes. Yes, your art is good enough. It would have been good enough if you'd drawn stick-figures in black and white. Webcomics are nice like that; you don't have to live up to anybody else's arbitrary standard. Do the thing. Make the comic.

Um, no thank you? If you need help with anything, you can post here on the forums.

100% yes. Drawing comics forces me to a.) draw on a very regular basis, b.) draw a LOT, and c.) draw stuff I'd otherwise avoid. If you'd asked me to draw a crowd-scene 2 years ago I would have screamed - now, I still don't enjoy drawing crowd-scenes, but I can pull one off without too much tro…

I post my extra stuff on Patreon! Means my patrons get access to stuff regular readers don't, and I don't have to spend tons of extra time producing it - I mostly post stuff I'd be drawing ANYWAY (like architecture sketches, costume designs, etc.), which means I can spend more time on drawing the ac…

I had a look at my own stats. I've had 56445 views total this month, and that has earned me $9.93, if that's any help. You'll need 5000+ views to earn a dollar.

Yep! I went to college for Comics and Visual Storytelling, so it's not like there's any point in hiding it! XD Also, I've been drawing and telling stories since I could hold a pencil, so they've known all along, and are very supportive. None of them are artists - though my mother likes to borrow …

Uh, no? I haven't used deviant art in years?

Drawing at 72 dpi will most likely look jagged and pixellated when you draw it, so I really do recommend you go for at least 150 dpi.

I draw them at that size because I want to be able to print the pages in a book at some point, and I can't do that and have it look good if the resolution is lower than 300 dpi. I shrink them down to post on Tapastic because a.) Tapastic's size-limit is 940 pixels wide, and b.) shrinking it dow…

I look up reference photographs! I don't know what kind of machinery you're trying to draw, but you can usually find decent pictures if you just google "[type of machinery]+ínside" or something like that. Find a good picture if what you're looking for, and reference that when you draw. Since it's…

"Asking for help is healthy and good for you. Stop running from your goddamn problems, man."

I have no idea what dimensions his canvas is, or what resolution, but here's some general advice: Draw at higher resolutions. 72 dpi is just fine for posting stuff online! But when you draw it, you want to make sure the resolution is set to higher dpi - 300 or more is good if you intend to print…

Have you tried going to the menu bar at the top, and clicking Window > Tool Settings? That should bring up the same pop-up window.

This will ALWAYS be the case, even if you have thousands of subscribers. If one of your subscribers reads through your entire archive of, say, 200 comics, you will gain 200 views - from the same subscriber. Likewise, you'll always have people who drop in, read a few pages, decide it's not their th…

I currently make ~$130/month on Patreon, and have about 40 backers. It varies from person to person! If you've got a massive following already, and you start your Patreon, you're likely to see more patrons early - but if you start your Patreon when you don't have thousands and thousands of foll…

A lot better, tbh. Just pushing the popular/trending/new back up top, and for the love of god, adding the link to the forum to the header bar, would do a lot. There are a few smaller things - like the colours of different notifications, etc. - but re-arraging some elements on the front page wou…

I personally have no issue with the font-choice, but I can def. see how it would be troublesome for people with visual impairment or dyslexia. My main issue is with the layout of the front-page. I've already emailed Tapastic about it personally, because I couldn't find the link to the forums (why…

Same. I'm analytical about some things, but intuitive about others. I know enough colour theory and rules of composition and such that I can analyse the heck out of an image if I want to - and I sometimes do - but a lot of my colouring process is just throwing things on the page to see what wil…

Tumblr-user here. I post stuff, tagged it with relevant tags, and people showed up and liked it. Rinse and repeat for several years. Fanart helps, but people can definitely tell if you're just doing it to get more views? I only draw fanart of stuff I really, really enjoy - and I tend not to dr…

Don't! You don't have to go out of your way to design elaborate or unique-looking people - just settle on a small number of basic looks, and then vary the details. Draw a chubby man in a yellow t-shirt - and then at the opposite end of the crowd, draw him again, but give him a blue t-shirt, a bigger…

1930s? Well, they could be lots of things! Is your setting urban or rural? Anyway - they can be factory workers, railway employes, aerospace engineers and airplane builders, they can be lab techs, they can be office workers. They can be department store employes, they can be newspaper hawkers, th…

It's not, though. If they use a copyrighted character that isn't their own, they can't monetize it. Those are Tapastic's rules.

There's StArt Faire's Excellence in Webcomics-awards! I was on the panel of judges this year, and I think the plan is to bring it back annually.

I have been lazy over the winter, because I hate going outside in the cold, but now that the snow is gone I'm trying to get back into the habit of going on walks every day. I live out in the countryside, so there are some nice forest paths to walk on; lots of hills and such. That's about 6-7 kilomet…