/ic/ - Artwork/Critique

>>6980545
Then draw random things. People,places,objects.

Then...think about them.

Why did you make them as you did? What details crept into their forms, and what do they suggest to you? It's the reasoning that will make the world your creations inhabit. For instance, I drew the demon head initially, and thought what role it would play in ficdom I illustrate. It turned into a "scene from an adventure in progress",something that I like to do for teaching myself to stuff them with small details that hint at the bigger picture of what such an adventure would entail. Then a second page expanding these ideas happened, then a third. And after 180 strips over a decade, that storyline is 2/3 told. And so it happens.

>>6971591
I once drew a random picture of a demon head in a new sketchbook,and I thought about what it might do in my ficdom. This page grew around it,then a second and third,and since I began this story in the middle, I had to start making a beginning to it. The story spans over 180 strips and is two-thirds told. So redraw her,and think about her pose and what attitude she suggests.

>>6804600
Challenge yourself.

If you are in a rut and recreating anime characters or whatever,try drawing them doing something EXTREME. Exaggerate the action and emotion,one or the other, or both. Have them Doing Things. Extraordinary things,yes,but ordinary things too. And when you are figuring out what such things look like,it will help you to figure out WHY the character is doing whatever its doing..And suddenly you are telling a story. It happened to me once,on this very page. I had a new sketchbook, since I was destined to have my artistic aspirations sidelined by being dragged into various waiting rooms as a Supportive Boyfriend for the foreseeable future and I had time to kill. I had the plan for a weekly newspaper sized strip that I could make in my spare time,but I am a gentleman and when your lady is in hardship you stick by her,which,in retrospect,was the stupidest decision that I ever made, save one.

But here I was,pen out and I doodle the demon head,and think that I should insert it somewhere in the World,since I was happy with how it came out. And so I thought of the second character more deliberately, making her look like the melding of two other characters of mine,rival mages and major players in the old wars. The dialogue was to reflect a scene from the middle of an adventure, something that I do occasionally as a one page glimpse into a story in progress that the reader is invited to speculate about its beginnings and ending. But I did another page,expanding the story. Then a third. It was around the 30th strip that I seemed resigned to making this story,so I gave the art side serious attention. Eventually I got to get near my computer again, so I had the time to clean up the subsequent strips and Photoshop legerdermain here and there. The story is 180 pages so far,and could go on for a lot more. The Big Villain has appeared and wants coffee. That's why I kept at it. I wanted to know What Happened Next.

>>6623301
Plot it out. Very roughly, very quickly. Story and situation onto paper. It looks like fun. I once drew the demon head on the first page of a new sketchbook, and it spawned a story 180 strips long,so far. Explore your premise visually, using cheap paper and blocking the panels with scribbles. These you will reference when you design the elements of the panels, and those will be referenced in turn when you finally compose the scene for etching onto the Bristol board, the final work. All else but steps to this conclusion, explorations neccessary to the development of this penultimate point. Your sketch may lead to something worthy of telling,and listening to.

>>6450975
Stories come from anywhere.

This was the very first strip I made. I was resigned to haunting waiting rooms with my girlfriend to be supportive and such,so I brought a sketchbook and the demon head was the first thing that I drew,and even that was a random bunch of squiggles. Then I thought about why the demon head was there,and drew another character next to it. This was more planned, I deciding to have this person a blend of two other characters as if they had a baby. And soon a story was materializing under my pen. I would often make single page snapshots of stories in progress, stuffing them with enough suggestive details to make the reader supply their own conclusions about what was going on. But the second strip had another character, and I made her a younger sister to be J's age,and a personality evolved from a few word balloons. The Art influences the Story and the Story influences the Art.

So I was stuck following this woman around with her kid,who is so ruthless that I have to be on guard around her lest I be caught up in one of her cockamamie schemes. She threw away 15 garbage bags full of our belongings from the storage room next to hers,and I could only rescue a basketful before the garbage men came. I told her mother,she screamed at the kid,who was 20,and what do you think her reaction was?

Remorse? Shame? Not her.

She screamed at ME for interfering, because if I didn't show up early in the morning at home that day,the garbage bags would be gone and no one the wiser. And she sounded like a Scooby Doo villain griping about those Meddlesome Kids. If she wanted stuff gone,all she would need to do is make it a Mother Daughter time,order pizza,give some attention to this woman who longs for the company of her kid again. It's what I would advise, if asked.

Instead, she insults me,or tries to goad me into hitting her,charging across the room wielding a pet barrier gate like a club,intending to batter me,expecting me to attack her ,but stopping short,her feign failed. She was taken away from her mother for " abuse" ,but I think that the kid was trying to live with her grandmother, a higher social class,and once this happened, I had the woman camped in my studio apartment, because she couldn't face the empty apartment.

I am a gentleman, and sympathetic, and to toss her out would be heartless. So I accommodated my world to hers,which was work-draw-masturbate-sleep until then,and now I was away from my computer nearly all the time. So I drew a demon head, and thought of why it was there.

And a Story happened.

>>6396194
No,just explaining the history behind all this. I had planned for a different kind of strip,but although I was capable of drawing the chunks of a panel in pencil while balancing the Bristol board on my lap,but I didn't have the time at my computer to use Photoshop to isolate the images,chopping away the extra white of a drawing and leaving it as a layer with clear transparency surrounding it. And that takes time that I no longer had. So,a story sprang up from a random drawing of a demon head in a bubble. This strip. Not meant for public consumption, but I liked how the head was coming along,so I decided to add another character, and thinking about how they would interact. What sort of character? A hybrid of two other characters, anthromorph races being normally incompatible for breeding.
"It doesn't stop them from trying ",to quote Cassandra. As the pen made images fade into view,I invented personality and reason for these things I create. I like to make single panel snapshots of "a story in progress",with enough visual cues to imply a whole plot from a single moment of the circumstance the characters find themselves in. I thought it as no more than that.

Then I did another.