How did you find your groove?

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

If you ever found it, that is.

I'd be interested to know about how people figured out things about themselves as far as being a comic artist is concerned. When did you start to feel like you'd developed your own style? What changes have occurred in your style since then? (If you have picture examples, do share!) How long did it take you to become fully comfortable with writing your characters?

On that note, how do you relate to your characters? A friend of mine has said she feels maternally responsible for them, like a mother/child relationship. I've heard others who've based their characters off of friends/family/whoever until the characters blossomed into their own right. For myself, as time has gone on, my characters originally began as abstract individuals with a handful of assigned traits, but the more I write and think about them, the more I see myself in them (and vice versa), yet the more they also stand on their own.

How did you come about settling on an update schedule, if you were ever able to pin one down? Did you have periods of overexertion, unintended hiatus, perhaps times where you thought you were being more productive than you actually were? What kind of recommendations could you make to someone looking to settle on a "decent" update schedule?

Since I've read quite a few of y'all's comics, it'll be interesting to see how answers line up to the comics I'm familiar with in my head Also, I'm bored and can't focus on a project I'm supposed to be doing. Help distract me with your bountiful thought food!

[McDuffies]

I'm not sure I did find my groove. It seems like for every comic I first have to figure out how I'm going to do it. In hindsight, "mcDuffies" seemed like a lengthy adrenaline rush, where I was quickly throwing all ideas out there, I'd be sitting there, making a week's worth of updates in a day, so it only made sense that I'd update daily. Then when the rush started passing, I went to three days a week, and when it completely dried out, I could barely get myself to do anything, no matter how half-assed. I think I had a list of storylines that I wanted to do somewhere, I think I actually got to make less than one third of it.

LWK was a completely different thing because I was working with huge amount of information and had to figure out, how do you make a historical comic at all? I spent something like a year only preparing for it, which I think was useful because when I got the feel of the epoch, I didn't have to keep consciously worrying about what is appropriate and what isn't. I'd write a big batch of notes, individual scenes, then I'd arrange them into an order and I'd fix final things while drawing, which I thought helped me fix the timing, add a scene where needed or trim another scene. It was all much more planned than mcDuffies ever was but there were still great big holes and occasionally I'd have an epiphany it form of some scene that was visually great and fit into the story. All very relaxed.
LWK is on a lengthy hiatus brought by pressing real-life matters a few years ago, and it's very hard to get into the gear, although most of it is written all through the end.

I usually work with a lot more stress though. I'm a kind of a stickler for a "vision" and I normally never live up to it. It doesn't help that I'm very unorganized and constantly lose my papers and stuff.

I've heard webcomickers with long-running, reliable schedule talking about neccessity to bring an order to creating, to treat it like a job that you have to do perhaps an hour or two every evening. I guess my life is generally too unorganized for that to work out. I say grab the inspiration and carry on with it as long as you can.

Characters, I think that my comics always start with a plot, a high concept of sorts, and characters start as kind of archetypes that are needed for that plot. Then I start thinking about their character when I'm trying to figure out, what is it that drives them? Why are they acting the way the plot requires? That's where a sort of skeleton comes from, from trying to make those characters make sense in that story. Other things like quirks or phrases or whatever come along because they make sense, or often quite because they don't make sense, because I'm trying to make my characters not seem like a list of points on character sheet... Anyways most of it is conscious, I feel that if I tried to do that part more instinctively, all the characters would end up sounding like some variation of myself.

[Bustertheclown]

I never really found a groove with comics. Now that I think about it, I suppose that's a big reason why I've lost a lot of interest in comics overall in recent years. It's hard to keep enthusiasm up about something that seems forced, when other artistic endeavors seem so much more fun and easy. It's a shame, really, because I still love comics as a narrative method, and whenever I think of stories I want to tell, I always think that the best way to tell them is through comics.

[Phact0rri]

I don't believe a lot of artists really go "oh this is my style" or what not. it sort of happens, and were never really all that happy with what ever we do.

[Bustertheclown]

I think that intentionally developing and maintaining a certain style is a reality for certain artists. Of course style is inherently organic, but organic can both be a high-tech hydroponic garden or a wild old-growth forest. Some people tend to their style, and some people let it grow on its own. Certainly, there are plenty of commercial artists who are style-tenders, and given that illustration and cartooning are children of commercial arts, it would stand to reason that people who are into cartooning or illustration would actively cultivate at style. I know that I did when I was younger. It wasn't until I stopped working toward being a professional illustrator that I really stopped trying to work within a style, and just started letting it happen on its own.

[McDuffies]

There's as organic part as well as an intentional part. I know that I have a lot of things in my style that I just don't know how to do differently, things influenced by all the sources that I used for studying or the earlier influences. But given that, there's still a lot of space to make conscious decisions. Though I don't think that artists go "I got to come up with a unique style", I think it's more like "I like this, I think I will draw it like this from now on". So, more a conglomerate of influences based on what artist himself liked rather than an organized effort.

[Phact0rri]

I can honestly say when I'm looking at at and I see an artist who does something really cool, that I start drawing it in that way. Truthfully I always wanted my own style but I get bored of drawing a certain way for to long. but there are certain things that just work with my hamfisted art. heh

[Terotrous]

I'd be interested to know about how people figured out things about themselves as far as being a comic artist is concerned. When did you start to feel like you'd developed your own style? What changes have occurred in your style since then? (If you have picture examples, do share!) How long did it take you to become fully comfortable with writing your characters?

If I have a artistic style, it was developed entirely by accident. I put no effort into developing a style, when you look at the first comic in my archives, that's the first time I ever drew those characters. Then over time I just incrementally refined that look until it became something vaguely consistent. But you'll notice that the core appearance of the characters really hasn't changed much.

This is actually also how I draw using my "third style" if you want to call it that - I use flash, and I just constantly redraw the same lineart over and over on top of itself (on different layers), making it a little better each time until it gets to be something I can live with. I never use this style for my comics (it takes too long), but some other pictures I've done are drawn this way, like my avatar for example.

On that note, how do you relate to your characters? A friend of mine has said she feels maternally responsible for them, like a mother/child relationship. I've heard others who've based their characters off of friends/family/whoever until the characters blossomed into their own right.

My characters are largely archetypes, because in comedy I think that's what works best. When you have a character with an archetypical personality, the audience can grasp the nature of them fast and relate them to people they personally know. On the occasional times when I write something serious, I think of my characters as being separate individuals who I discover more about as I write. I try to make sure they aren't simply reflections of myself, because I don't think that's very interesting to write or to read.

How did you come about settling on an update schedule, if you were ever able to pin one down? Did you have periods of overexertion, unintended hiatus, perhaps times where you thought you were being more productive than you actually were? What kind of recommendations could you make to someone looking to settle on a "decent" update schedule?

At first I set my update schedule in order to make my comic popular, that is, as much as I could feasibly update without interfering with my work. However, I very quickly burnt myself out on this because I often had to draw comics when I'd rather be doing something else, and in the end I ended up just quitting comics altogether for a very long time. I did eventually come back, and I realized it was far more important to enjoy what you were working on, so my schedule is now more of an "it updates when it updates" one. Readers might not like this, but I don't really care because I don't think I have any anyway. It's what works best for me.

[IVstudios]

I can remember very vividly the first moment I considered myself as having my own style. It was during my senior year of college in the middle of an Illustration class. Everyone was presenting their ongoing projects and showing what they were working on, and it was the first time I can remember seeing other peoples work and not wanting to be able to draw like anyone other than myself.

Not to say I thought I was better than everyone else, or that I didn't think I needed to improve any more, just that until that point whenever I looked at other people's art I would always think "Man, I wish I could draw like THAT." That class was the first time I can remember not feeling that way.

As for writing characters, I dunno. I like to think I've got a knack for knowing how to write people. When I draw a page I know roughly what everyone's going to be saying, but not really how they'll say it. As I draw it start to get an idea of how things should be worded based on how the scene plays out. Sometimes I'll change some lines to match a facial expression that seemed more natural than what I had started out with. Or I'll decide a line needs to be angrier or happier or more subdued and I'll rework the panel to suit it. (Working on a tablet helps with that a lot because it's very easy to change things like expressions and stuff.)

[robotthepirate]

The way I draw RTP isn't really a style, its just a bizarre, restricting character template I hope makes the comic curiously quirky. I don't think I have one yet.

Like McDuffies, I like to think through my characters motives. I work backwards in time, consider their parents and upbringing, what they've seen in their lives that makes them who they are. And there's quite a bit of animal stereotyping too. So far I haven't had much chance to display their individuality though.

Schedule wise I groan internally every time I think of how slow I go. 4 new panels every week and a half is glacial speed for an adventure comic. I am getting faster at drawing and processing the comic but I seem to go through phases of doing nothing. I'll make 4 comics in a week then wait another 4 weeks before doing any more. Part of me want to cut to a weekly schedule to give myself more pressure to keep it up, but then I risk damaging my morale with missed deadlines or rushing updates. I always say I'll build up a buffer then go for it, but the bigger the buffer I have the less motivated I feel to draw.

[Jops]

I think my style is in constant evolution.
I recall back when was a kid, i would draw all characters having a round nose, like a ball attached to their face and their eyes being squared. I guess that was the first time i found my groove as those were distinctive traits, and i've have stuck to those statistic elements until, one day, i decided i didn't like the squared eyes anymore.
Then it was an other phase of experimenting, until i landed it was was the old SDXF style. Strong japanese influence but not enough to actually call it "manga". Everything was cutiefied, even cars, guns and monstrous creatures. I guess it was the second groove finding-moment, i guess.
However, full color and smooth shaded... in part it was too time consuming, in part i had some criticisms suggesting a more clean-cut shading.
What i'm doing in NGITK, i think it's still in it's evolutionary phase. I still retain some elements from SDXF, tho the style dropped a good deal of its chibi feel.
But while I'm trying to stay consistent within the comic, i'm also still experimenting. Adjusting it here and there.


Yeah, my characters are a bit like my kids to me.
After all, the two protagonists of NGITK, are the direct evolution of the two mains from SDXF.
They're not the same characters, but, in SDXF, the Lynx and Sanja's personality was still simple and sketchy.... when i designed Mikayla and Dinian, i basically took the SDXF duo and begun fleshing them out, detailing their personality, adding background story, trimming down or completely removing some traits that didn't fit in the new setting anymore (ie. Lynx's insane love for blowing stuff up).... Feels a bit like watching them growing up.
In addition to, now that they both have a very well defined personality, when i write the story i no longer think in terms of "what should i have her do in this scene" but instead it's a: "what would she do in this situation?"


For update schedule i try to keep a weekly one. Unfortunately real-life gets in the way so i occasionally have to take breaks here and there, but generally if nothing out of the ordinary occurs, i can easily maintain the schedule.
Also, some scenes prove to be more interesting and "fun" to draw than others (like the velociraptor car chase scene), so i'm less prone to distractions and become more productive.

[VeryCuddlyCornpone]

They're not the same characters, but, in SDXF, the Lynx and Sanja's personality was still simple and sketchy.... when i designed Mikayla and Dinian, i basically took the SDXF duo and begun fleshing them out, detailing their personality, adding background story, trimming down or completely removing some traits that didn't fit in the new setting anymore (ie. Lynx's insane love for blowing stuff up).... Feels a bit like watching them growing up.
In addition to, now that they both have a very well defined personality, when i write the story i no longer think in terms of "what should i have her do in this scene" but instead it's a: "what would she do in this situation?"

That's a really cool sensation, isn't it? There are some traits I had originally assigned to the characters that ended up being phased out or dropped completely, just because it didn't seem natural anymore. Like, Tony was supposed to be kind of a kleptomaniac, but I never got to a point in the comic where I could implement that and looking back it doesn't fit "him" at all. Or Aggie was supposed to be this delicate flower with almost no personality, and now she's probably the nastiest SOB in the bunch.

[Jops]

That's a really cool sensation, isn't it?

Yup, it is.
And the best part is that, they're big girls now. They stand on their own and i cannot decide for them no more.
Even if I'm their author, creator and have full god-like control over the whole world around them.