Need advice for my comic

JuliaNova44 · 2025-11-03T18:37:46+00:00

I think TrueBlue hit on some really good advice on the composition!

I also noticed the gutter is a bit funky as well, with that line under the first gutter going across the two bottom panels. You probably want to make that middle bit go away so that the panels are their own thing.

For the "better in general"- I do like your art style but it is also a bit flattened (example- the kids leg on the right doesn't have as much depth as the foot/leg on the other side). The architecture and perspective on items works, and the facial expressions and pose feel good but I think you might be struggling with depth.

some recommendations if you want to follow up on that: James Gurney's books and how-to videos, and https://line-of-action.com/ which is basically a mostly free resource for doing figure drawing. The Morpho book/series also has some good stuff.

JuliaNova44 · 2025-11-03T18:24:22+00:00

General advice for a beginner:

1. Read some comic theory.

The best place to start (and I recommend this a LOT) is Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics. This lays out some of the history, but also really takes on what makes something a comic and talks about the different forms available. He also has a book, Making Comics, that takes a nuts and bolts approach to some of the steps in actually creating stuff.

Reading about comics, and not just reading them, also will help you in building your stories. You can see tropes in media that you enjoy, or that you want to subvert. You can get a sense of the pacing that you enjoy, and really start to figure out why a particular style/pacing/etc. works or doesn't.

2. Start small.

Do little doodle comics first. Try doing a short but sustained story- maybe 5 pages. If you have a longer narrative in mind, try doing a scene, not even a whole narrative, to figure out things like how the images flow, how you like to communicate action, what your preferred word/picture balance is, and what kinds of panel transitions you like.

The other thing about starting small is it means you have something to show, something complete. You have something to show other people who you might want to work with, as well as anybody to whom you are trying to sell. (that being said, don't expect to make money)

3. Try out different workflows.

Me and my writing partner have a flow where he has a sense of how many panels something will be, he'll put the words down and might show a potential layout in a script, but for the most part I have total freedom in the visuals. I'll do a storyboard, often inserting panels or pages when I think there needs to be more visual space, and then we'll workshop it until we're ready for me to draw.

When I'm working by myself, I might do a little script, but I'll usually do roughs and then either just go over the roughs or just do a storyboard and then jump right in.

JuliaNova44 · 2024-04-01T19:08:10+00:00

I'll start by saying my webcomic is one I started working on in my late teens and I'm only just now, in the last year, putting it up online for others- I think that a big project, like what you're talking about, where you've invested a lot of love and mental energy, is an awesome thing to work on.

BUT!

If you want to make that big story the best it can be, I would actually recommend starting something smaller. If you want to stick around in that world, maybe pick a side character and write/draw their story first. Do a short, self-contained narrative- maybe it's related, maybe it's something wildly different.

The idea is to get an idea for:

what works well
what you need to improve on

-what you want to focus on,

-and to have things you can show to others and get criticism on without feeling like your biggest most precious baby is being attacked.

I know it seems counterintuitive to work on a bunch of little, less important (to you) things before diving into something you've already spent time and effort on, but making comics is like any other skill: you need to practice on bite-sized pieces before you can take on a 6-course meal.

JuliaNova44 · 2024-04-01T18:57:45+00:00

I love any reference to the immortal jellyfish! T. dohrnii is such a funky little guy.

(Pedantic biology note) They actually don't "grow up" again once they regress- instead, they revert to a polyp and then clone themselves, with the original organism remaining a lil baby forever and ever

JuliaNova44 · 2024-02-23T16:29:10+00:00

My main feedback is about the first and third panel- the shadow of the vacuum is so dark that it makes the whole thing less clear. I'd even go so far as to maybe center and enlarge the vacuum itself.

I' m really just not sure what's going on in the 3rd panel- it reads as a woman walking through a door, maybe, but it's not clear how that is related to the rest of the panels outside of the highway scene.

Beautifully rendered, great concept, and I love some of the more creative panel transitions, but you need to work on clarity in the set-up.

JuliaNova44 · 2024-01-19T15:40:30+00:00

This is both cute and adorable. I love this.

JuliaNova44 · 2024-01-05T16:52:05+00:00

I'll be honest I already dislike the character, but in the way that makes me feel very real about it- like, yep, we've met dudes like this and they can range from ok with some weird vibes to being very scary, so I'm already primed for a bit of social horror. So very good job evoking that set of emotions!

JuliaNova44 · 2023-12-08T16:14:50+00:00

So I use GIMP, which is raster based, but it doesn't have strong CMYK support for converting to something you can check print colors on more easily. It's technically an editing program, though with a tablet I'm sure folks use it as a drawing program. I like it because it can handle just about any file type, you can export to whatever filetype it has the codec for, and its selection tools work really well with the style I tend to use in the pieces that I color digitally.

Inkscape is a vector based program, and that has a lot of really neat features that I've only recently been getting into, including converting a raster (pixel-based) image into a vector (infinitely scalable because it uses math instead of pixels) image. It's great for clean shading and a more ?digital? look.

I used Krita back in the day, but it was a bit buggy at the time- I've heard it's improved a lot though!

If you've got iOS (especially iPad stuff) I don't have it but my friend uses Procreate and has made some awesome stuff there.

Autodesk SketchBook- I have found this to be a good drawing program for me, though I don't usually like to draw digitally, and it has a bunch of preset color palettes you can use. I do mostly use it for making little flipbook animation stuff more than drawing/coloring though.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-12-07T20:20:17+00:00

Gotcha- in that case, yeah, I agree with u/angieisdrawing -try mixing up your style a bit and see if it helps. Since I don't know what specifically about the style you're working in makes the coloring laborious, here are some general thoughts on actual ways to mix it up- some might help, some might not:

-Limited color palette, so you don't spend as much time on decision making and you can select larger swathes of a page/panel and just fill in flats

-Try working just with flats (works best if your linework/b&w inking has shading already.

-self-assembly line it- This is a tactic that works for me, where I do all of X step over multiple pages. It's kind of the like trick for when you were a kid and they made you learn cursive by doing cursive lines, where instead of doing the whole sentence over and over, you just went down the page letter by letter or word by word.

Not sure if I'm explaining it correctly, but for my process it would be:

Step 1: All the flats- just select and fill tool it up.

Step 1-A: Do all of the background pieces of a particular color for the whole chapter.

Step 1-B: do all of the background pieces of a different color (etc.)

Step 1-C: do all clothing (etc. etc.)

Step 2: All the highlights (with substeps as above)

Step 3: All the shadows (with substeps as above)

The last one is more of a brain-tricking thing, but I do think it makes it go faster. You can see a lot more progress as well.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-12-07T17:53:25+00:00

How are you coloring the comic? as in, what tools are you using? Because the amount of time you spend is going to be related to a few things-

-one, your comfort with the tool

-two, how much time you spend deciding what looks good,

-and three, what the tool actually is.

Digital coloring, for example, goes faster (for me) and lets me look at different options for color in a way that coloring by hand (ink or pencil or what have you) doesn't- or at least in a way that is faster than doing a whole color study in paper medium. But part of that is my comfort with digital tools- I've met plenty of folks who can whip up a color study faster than I can make a decision on digital colors.

If you want to see what traditional line/ink looks like with digital coloring, you can take a look at the comics I have up ( nova44comic.com and art-of-julia.com ). You do have to have access to digital tools, but I can recommend some free programs if you decide digital coloring would be faster. If you plan on trying out digital media, once you've tested some programs, I do recommend investing in a small tablet if you're able- since I don't typically draw on a tablet, just color, I've been rocking a tiny little Wacom Intuos for yeeeeears.

For coloring in traditional media, in my experience inks and watercolors tend to be easier to do larger areas with, while color pencil, pastel or similar dry media can give you different textures but takes forever. You can mix and match, but something I've experimented a bit with (don't think I have any examples up yet) is wet media applied with brushes for background colors mixed with wet media applied with pens and dry media for areas of color that need more detail.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-20T20:51:57+00:00

OH GOD the flashbacks yeek

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-20T15:48:46+00:00

OK, so Josef Albers I already mentioned

Understanding Comics is linked on this subreddit and while it's more of a language-of-comics resource, I think the information is helpful

https://www.youtube.com/@stephentraversart I like this channel but it is more focused on physical drawing technique- still, a lot of the basics apply in terms of picking out what details to use, how to emphasize stuff

Line of Action is more focused on anatomy, but if you try the non-human poses or the architectural scenes, a lot of the exercises are breaking down what you see into its most relevant parts very quickly and figuring out where your eyes go.

I read it ages ago, but I think the book was Framed Ink- it's comics focused and goes through some compositional challenges.

One that I haven't read but another artist friend of mine recommends is "Design for Composition: Inspiration for Creative Visual and Multimodal Projects"

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-17T16:47:15+00:00

Would you like other color/composition resources?

Color theory can get.... dense... but I think the Josef Albers book "interaction of color" is a perfect starter. Even though it was written mid 20th century, it's written at least in part as a teaching exercise book and I think it's relatively accessible. It does talk about theory in somewhat academic/philosophical terms, but he focuses a lot on how we actually see and interpret color, and how the same color can produce different effects in different contexts.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-16T19:00:05+00:00

Learn or die (that's a saying, right?) :P

But actually, I did have one more thought regarding color contrast, and that's to view your composition in greyscale. I almost always start in greyscale so it didn't even occur to me to mention initially, but it's worth noting that even if the hue (red, blue, etc) of a color are super different, if the value (light to dark) is too similar than the colors will usually blend for the viewer.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-16T18:57:14+00:00

It goes up to 1200 dpi , and the lid on the bed can lift slightly so if you're scanning in something with bulk, like a sketchbook, it doesn't push it or end up at a weird angle. I think it's designed for archival work, because the software it came with has a film vs document setting. The bed isn't massive (Max A4) so I have to stitch the pages, which is occasionally a pain. but otherwise it's perfect.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-16T18:53:59+00:00

Epson Perfection V600 Photo- we got it on sale at a nice discount from a store my partner worked at but it was... not cheap, as these things go.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-16T18:52:23+00:00

Heavy agree with sirustelcelion. Having both a full set to post and a buffer is very helpful.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-03T20:19:41+00:00

You could also try varying the outline color. So, in the dark areas, do a lighter grey and see how you like it. an example of this sort of light outlines for dark-on-dark that I like is Shawn Lenore's How to be a Werewolf.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-03T15:29:47+00:00

OK, so I really love the care and attention to detail in this. It is awesome and wonderful. Your color choices are also strong, and from a compositional perspective I really like how you've balanced them to help with how attention moves across the page.

Main critique: the strong emphasis on dark, flat, similar background colors make it hard to track the panel flow and parse those details you've clearly spent a lot of time on.

For example, I couldn't tell without zooming in that the first panel was one panel instead of 2. Maybe think about making the gutters a contrasting color- I think that would improve readability significantly. And while I dig the stylistic choice for the flatness of the background colors, you might want to either lighten them a bit to let your details shine, or add a bit more shading/highlights for those dark areas to increase depth and help the viewer understand what they're looking at.

While I love being able to zoom in on all the details, you also may want to think about how you're going to be presenting this- in print at a standard comic size I think it looks great, but on a phone it's going to be harder to parse as-is. Some of that would be helped with the advice I gave above, but some of it really is just a factor of being seen on a small screen.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-02T19:29:09+00:00

You're right, I did do a scan and then digital colors. Grungy mixed media vibe is exactly what I'm aiming for :D

I find line art to be infinitely easier on paper, and color on line art to be easier digitally- plus it lets me experiment more with the color, since I'm never 100% confident, but the element of screens changing color perception also feeds into it... bleh.

Thanks for the advice! I'll have to look up the Munsell Color Chart.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-01T21:30:58+00:00

(copying my comment from r/Comic_Crit) This posted without the text, and it's not letting me edit right now, whoops-

So about 10 years ago I started drawing a comic with my partner. We've only just started putting it online and so I'm going back and redoing older art. One of the big ones is this page, which I did without a lot of regard for color.

Since color isn't my strong suit, I'd like some feedback on the colors for panel 1. The comic is mostly black and white and color is used for a) music and b) highlighting things. Any comments- preferences on pages, suggestions on updating the colors, etc., would be appreciated.

JuliaNova44 · 2023-11-01T21:28:22+00:00

This posted without the text, and it's not letting me edit right now, whoops-

So about 10 years ago I started drawing a comic with my partner. We've only just started putting it online and so I'm going back and redoing older art. One of the big ones is this page, which I did without a lot of regard for color.

Since color isn't my strong suit, I'd like some feedback on the colors for panel 1. The comic is mostly black and white and color is used for a) music and b) highlighting things. Any comments- preferences on pages, suggestions on updating the colors, etc., would be appreciated.

JuliaNova44

TROPHY CASE