My brother and I were debating this as we were finishing up our most recent comic page: How much is too much detail and energy when it comes to drawing a crowd?
I know a lot of other comics where, when drawing a large group of random unimportant characters gathered in a single place, the artist chooses to draw simple generic characters to get their point across. Its a busy room, so who cares about the background characters, right? The past two pages in our comic have had large groups of people and we've drawn the exact opposite and its incredibly time consuming. I find I'm spending just as much time drawing, inking and coloring these random nobodies as I do the main characters. So the question is, is it worth it? Do people actually take the time to look at all the details? What do you guys think? Not that we don't enjoy how the pages came out, but is it spending too much time on seemingly unimportant things, or is it worth the effort?
Bill Amend is a pretty beloved syndicated cartoonist, and even he puts minimal effort into his "crowd" characters. Now, obviously, FoxTrot is not a comic that features in-depth, realistic, detailed artwork to begin with, but I think this gets the point across that your crowds don't have to be ultra-detailed or even nearly as detailed as your main characters to the average reader. However, it's sort of like choosing a generic computer font or doing your lettering by hand--the average reader may not care which you choose, but if it gives you satisfaction to put more effort into it, then by all means, do it!
Serenagold wrote:My brother and I were debating this as we were finishing up our most recent comic page: How much is too much detail and energy when it comes to drawing a crowd?
I know a lot of other comics where, when drawing a large group of random unimportant characters gathered in a single place, the artist chooses to draw simple generic characters to get their point across. Its a busy room, so who cares about the background characters, right? The past two pages in our comic have had large groups of people and we've drawn the exact opposite and its incredibly time consuming. I find I'm spending just as much time drawing, inking and coloring these random nobodies as I do the main characters. So the question is, is it worth it? Do people actually take the time to look at all the details? What do you guys think? Not that we don't enjoy how the pages came out, but is it spending too much time on seemingly unimportant things, or is it worth the effort?
First off, learning perspective will help you with crowd scenes by having the people in front taking up a lot of room example. Then the viewer get a better feel of how crowded the room is and then you have to draw less and less of the other people in the crowd as they go back in space.
I think it looks good, though I agree that perspective is a good tool to use. Looks like you've got an isometric thing goin' on right now, which is okay in a lot of situations, but it kinda trips me out in this one.
sorcery101 wrote:
First off, learning perspective will help you with crowd scenes by having the people in front taking up a lot of room example. Then the viewer get a better feel of how crowded the room is and then you have to draw less and less of the other people in the crowd as they go back in space.
No, I definitely agree that the perspective in these two pics are off. Proportions are off as well and the angle is a bit weird. We were trying to go for an overhead type of view so you could see people wandering among the crowd as well as putting some characters in the background equally as blended in that aren't being called attention to right at this moment. We tend to put alot of these overhead 'Where's Waldo"esque moments in the comic and I think it will probably be a while before we've gotten them perfected. Although they are getting better.
I like it. I revel in high-detail shots like that. It excites me as a viewer to see that someone spent some time, and had some fun designing dozens of characters just for a single panel shot. To me, it shows care and creativity. Also, the perspective bit doesn't bother me. The lack of proper perspective and proportion actually lends an agoraphobic quality to the panels. It's like a case of, "okay, way too many people, senses going into overdrive," kinda situation.
As far as whether it's worth it to you, as the artist, I'd say that it should be worth it. As long as you're not trying to fill every panel of every page with unnecessary details, panels and pages like your examples serve to really punctuate the situation and the setting of the comic. I'm of the personal belief that the mundane elements of the world are way too often discarded for speed or some attempt at reader friendliness. Readers can handle more than they so often get, visually. Besides, it's up to you, as a creator and storyteller to use everything at your disposal to make the story you're telling as immersive as possible to your audience. Pumping up the visual narrative once in awhile with a moment of Too Much Information can be a potent tool, indeed.
"Just because we're amateurs, doesn't mean our comics have to be amateurish." -McDuffies
If I was going to draw a crowd, I try to make the first couple of layers of people simplified when compared to the main characters in the panel, with the next layer even more simplified, with the remaining just vague outlines.
<b>"We can't stop here, this is bat country"</b> <i>-Dr. Hunter S. Thompson</i>
There's a scene in a good book (which will remain unmentioned due to the fact that what comes next will spoil the ending) where a painter reveals a painting to someone else that features a multitude of refugees. Each and every one has their own story, for instance one woman in rags was actually hiding her jewelery in her mouth, and so on. It's those small details that make it a more meaningful piece of work, even if no one else will notice.
There's good advice already given, so I'll just share my opinion.
As a reader, if I was reading your comic I'd probably look at this panel for about 20 seconds, tops. The reason for this would be that if I was reading a story-driven comic and came across a large, highly detailed page like this but it had no dialogue - I'd just think 'that's nice' and keep going.
If it was the latest update, then I'd probably look at it a bit longer.
As an artist, I'd get a huge sense of satisfaction from having drawn something that detailed, even if some of the elements are slightly off. It shows that effort and care has been taken. I might also have planned to have empty gaps or areas of lesser detail in order to put word balloons over the top. Loads of detail and a good level of wording would make for a slightly cluttered, very overpowering panel.
As a storyteller, panels like this are a gold mine. If, at some later stage, I wanted to introduce a villain or something, then I could go back to a panel like this, pick out one of the characters and use that design for the villain. That way, I could weave 'false' backstory into it and show that the villain had indeed been in the story all along, but people hadn't noticed him / her.
As an editor, I'd want there to be several pages (two or three) of much simpler panels leading up to this one so that when the reader comes on this one they say "Woah!" and are right proper impressed by it.
All told, that is probably an excessive amount of detail for a webcomic, but would look gorgeous in print. But as Fat Tony would say "Listen to your heart".
Dr Neo Lao wrote:
As a storyteller, panels like this are a gold mine. If, at some later stage, I wanted to introduce a villain or something, then I could go back to a panel like this, pick out one of the characters and use that design for the villain. That way, I could weave 'false' backstory into it and show that the villain had indeed been in the story all along, but people hadn't noticed him / her.
This is actually hilariously true. When we were doing the page with the staircase, there's this one disgruntled wild haired bald dude going the opposite direction of most people that we fell in love with and were all like "we gotta use this guy again later!"
Thats one of the fun things about these crazy pannels, the accidental discovery of the creation of a potential great character that sparks possible story outcomes. Its just, like I mentioned before, incredible time consuming to give each random person a life of their own.
I'd say it depends. If you want to show a crowd but want people to focus only in one detail of it (e.g. one specific character), I'd say you don't need to give the crowd too much detailing.
But if otherwise you want to HIDE something in the crowd, then you should provide people with many details, like "Where's Waldo?" I guess.
Personally---and I know what a headache they are to make---but the degree of detail (and yes, perspective would be nice) is MUCH appreciated by the reader and is impressive as all get out. You have to balance regular updates with stuff like this, but it tells something of the care you take with your comic. So, yes, I'd say it was worth it to do crowd scenes like this OCCASIONALLY, but certainly not every update.---Al
To me, the level of detail of the crowd is related to the importance of the crowd to the story. If a main character is feeling anxious and overwhelmed by the crowd, than a lot of detail helps bring that home. If the crowd is just kind of the setting, then far less detail is needed, especially if the character is largely ignoring it - like a life-long New York resident working his way across a busy sidewalk while naturally dismissing the hoards of humanity around him..
well speaking as a former artist - and as a reader i can give two opinions
one from what i learned from talking to Linsner ( from Dawn fame )
(copywrite JMLinsner ) he did OMG details on everypage .. but as he went on his work be came more streamlined .. when i asked him he said he enjoyed doing it - but it was killing him in time and effort , i also did HUGE amounts of details in the art i used to do , i loved to do killer amounts of details , so i guess the answer is if *you* enjoy it .. do it, but most of the time very few people are going to understand the time and effort that you spent on it .. so i would reserve that kind of detail for one offs or splash pages just my two cents
Anyone who considers protocol unimportant has never dealt with a cat.
-- R. Heinlein
I think if every page and panel were like that I'd probably go insane and the comic would never update. As it stands now, doing huge crowded panels like that pushes the update to be delayed a week (something we're trying to avoid, since reliable updates is something I've found has always been an issue for me when deciding to regularly follow a comic).
How much details you put into it affects the style you're drawing it. I don't think you should ask yourself whether readers pay attention to every detail you draw, I think you should ask what kind of impression you want to make, even at first look: of a highly detailed, consumate art, or of a slakishly drawn art (which is not without it's charms, of course). If the first one is what you want to achieve, and really care about it, then I guess you should take all the time you need.
Time spent in drawing a page is very variable. I mean, it takes me twice as much to draw nighttime scenes than daytime scenes, and there's nothing substancially different between those, I mean noone will be gasping in awe over shadows on my nighttime pages. It's just, you draw what you need, and if you start to cut corners (more than you usually do, I guess), that shows off as inconsistency in your work. 'Course, it's yours to decide whether this inconsistency significantly damages the comic as a whole.
Incidentally: with crowd pages I find it the most problematic thing to make some characters stand out. I usually have just a few characters important in the entire scene, and I want the reader to look at scene, and see those characters first. Which can be very difficult and drawing crowd pages can have very unpredictable results.
Try looking at an old football comic to see quicker ways of drawing crowds. One super-detailed crowd shot is OK but when you need one in every panel and the comic is a weekly (or in the case of football newspaper strips before they became CGI-rendered and identical-looking, daily) you quickly pick up ways of 'suggesting' a crowd without actually drawing it .
If only i had some of my 70's and 80's Hotspur, Victor etc annuals here i could scan something. There may be something in one of my 50's Champions, i'll look later but they might not respond well to scanning
I read the story first but if I see something like a good crowd scene I know I'm later going to go back for a look. But if it's an artist I admire I'm going to go and study it and indulge my eyes for a good long while. So I say keep doing those crowd scenes as long as your happy with the time spent and the results.
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