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I've removed myself from my comics and analyzed them from a different perspective. It's kind of depressing. Laziness controls me in every way. I rarely use references in comic writing or artwork.

That's strange because I've done plenty of artwork and written plenty of stories that have nothing to do with comic cliches over the years and I KNOW I'm better than this.

My stories are always about completely not-normal people who are removed from humanity and they spend a lot of time thinking to themselves, and eventually fighting/killing enemies. I almost always have my characters walking around in alleyways or city street sidewalks or rooftops and rarely draw anonymouse background people unless they interact with the characters. I hate drawing cars(although with reference I can do okay) so I rarely do, thus we always have empty city streets with no cars or pedestrians in them.

Whever I write and draw a comic, I naturally seem to never have the main characters interacting with the backgrounds. I can never even think of a reason for the characters to interact with anything, (except other characters). I do eventually (forcing myself ) draw the backgrounds in, but they are always more of just a backdrop.

The majority of my backgrounds are always bricks, brick walls, sidewalks with generic buildings in the background,.. and trash cans. My biggest influences in my comics are movies like The Terminator and The Crow, and comics like The Dark Knight Returns, Spawn, The Punisher, Sin City and The Maxx, despite the large plethora of other genres I've taken in.

See a pattern?

I have watched and read a huge variety of movies and comics that are all different than what I listed. Hell,.. I've been watching plenty of romantic comedies and emotional dramas lately ,.. but something inside me is only interested in making comics about misanthropic loner tough guys who think to themselves a LOT, run around in alleyways and trashy downtown city streets and rooftops,.. and kicking ass just because someone or something wants to kick their ass.

When creating a comic,.. it all mainly comes down to me wanting to just draw a character looking cool and kicking ass. It's like I'm a kid with action figures,.. and they are all that's important. Backgrounds,.. motivation,.. normal everyday people and things are all "boring".

I make excuses such as "I'm paying homage to oldschool 90's comics." But the stuff I do doesn't even stand up to the material I claim to be paying homage to.

I need to change and actually make something good and interesting!!!

(snaps fingers) Damn it didn't work. (clicks heels) Wait, I'm not wearing womens shoes! (takes magic pill) Damn! That was just a painkiller. (pushes big red button) Oh crap I just nuked my house.

It's not that easy I guess.

Can anyone relate? Lets try not to suck..... together!!!

I understand you pretty well. Crawling out of an emotional black hole of my own, or attempting to, right now.
I bought some books on perspective last fall to challenge and improve my skills as I have a big action "set piece" coming up involving many characters, weapons, vehicles, a large landscape, and an as yet only vaguely defined building. Then I promptly stopped drawing altogether.
Backgrounds are imperative. Think of them as environments, as characters in your story, instead of as some disassociated chore you must do to complete your page. Try laying out your scene from a new angle, maybe higher or looking up from the ground level.
Feel free to PM me, as I'm struggling to get back on track too.

backgrounds... oh how i lothe you.. for me backgrounds prove to be a real challenge , but without them you cant get a real "feeling" for the world the charcters live in , or are a part of , even the movies you have listed each one has sets that are important to setting the "tone" of the movie

a charcter on a blank background is just a figure..
however a charcter "in" a enviroment makes the pic a LOT more fun for people to enjoy and get a feeling for what your world is like -
your chacters are the "food" but the enviroment is the seasoning , dishes , silverware ... ect ..

any how thats my opinion -

Blackhole wrote: When creating a comic,.. it all mainly comes down to me wanting to just draw a character looking cool and kicking ass.

It seems to me that you could benefit from working with a writer and/or an editor.

It is nice to have other people read your work. Sometimes, I wish my "editor" was more critical about the writing and could point out how I don't always tend to make things obvious to the audience.

LibertyCabbage wrote:

Blackhole wrote: When creating a comic,.. it all mainly comes down to me wanting to just draw a character looking cool and kicking ass.

It seems to me that you could benefit from working with a writer and/or an editor.

I think I'd probably benefit from the same thing.

My problem is more about losing my zeal for a given project about five pages in. It would be nice to have an equally invested teammate to prod me on, and keep me on task, as well as provide the talents necessary to make the work that much better. The biggest part of this problem, though, is that I'd like to have someone to collaborate with on a face-to-face level.

The bottom line is that a lack of creative environment for me has contributed greatly to the stall in my progress as a cartoonist. I'm trying to get back into it, and have set some goals toward achieving what I need to do, but it'll be an uphill battle. So, yeah, Blackhole, I feel your pain.

bustertheclown wrote:

LibertyCabbage wrote:

Blackhole wrote: When creating a comic,.. it all mainly comes down to me wanting to just draw a character looking cool and kicking ass.

It seems to me that you could benefit from working with a writer and/or an editor.

I think I'd probably benefit from the same thing.

My problem is more about losing my zeal for a given project about five pages in. It would be nice to have an equally invested teammate to prod me on, and keep me on task, as well as provide the talents necessary to make the work that much better.

Maybe you could just work on 5 page shorts.

Set yourself a concept far outside your comfort that requires you to push yourself, maybe just in a short story to push yourself.


You clearly like urban settings, but no cars or interactivity with it? lots of dead space? Angry bitter loners?

Do something about a fun and friendly main character, make her an expert in parkour so she HAS to interact with the scenery. Have someone in the story be big driver so you cant get out of it.

You are describing a lot of dystopic crime ridden cities in your influences, so without shedding everything you like, why not try some kind of false utopia. You know the kind, It all looks beautiful and clean, but those cops are going to whomp your ass for missing the trashcan. its different to what you have been doing without shedding the darker elements you seem to enjoy.


Stuff.


Or do a romance comic about cheerleaders who live inside a fly.





Also link your comic.

What he said about linking your comic. I wish I could SEE it---
There's nothing wrong with writing about misanthropic loners. If it's been done to death---well, NO genre is ever completely mined out. You can always find a new spin on it...
And it IS best to go with what you love. In webcomics, nobody's paying you ANYWAY, unless you're in the upper stratosphere of webcomic artists, so might as well do something you love....
But it sounds like YOU'RE depressed with your lack of originality.
Well, original ideas I've got, and I'm not the only one here. Let us look at your stuff so we can make more coherent suggestions.
And you could always do guest art to sort of "cleanse the palate". It sounds like you're almost obsessing on it---sometimes a change of direction does wonders.
I don't suppose---nyaahhh, I've hawked the "alternative page" idea too much.---Al

Yes, try thinking of ways your characters can interact with the environment - or ways the environment can interact with your characters. Have characters use pass through the doors, windows,... walls. Imagine a fight scene moving through the halls and rooms of an apartment complex.

Let innocent bystanders get caught up in the violence. Have the police show up and try to take control of the situation - on foot, in cars, even a helecoptor. Maybe even an armed vigilante gets involved, or the fight interrupts a mob meeting.

Having trouble drawing cars? Force yourself to do a highway battle ala Matrix II. After one fight scene you'll be an ace at vehicles.

alschroeder wrote:What he said about linking your comic. I wish I could SEE it---

I don't have a webcomic to link to. All my comics are printed on a copy machine. I joined the community because I'd like to have a webcomic,.. but I'm not going to join untill I know what I want to do here.

It's not like I'm here going,.. "I don't have any ideas waaahh!" I've got plenty of ideas. It's just that they are all too similar to each other,.. at least visually if not conceptually.

Am I taking it too seriously?

You know you can can just try one of your ideas and see how it pans out? If it doesn't work, try something new. I'm still milking my stupid comic to death, but I know people like K-Dawg did 2-3 other comics before settling into his current comic. It's all trial and error. And you aren't going to find better support for ideas, or ways to improve than through these wonderful forumites... except for me I don't know shit.

pip wrote:

bustertheclown wrote:

LibertyCabbage wrote: It seems to me that you could benefit from working with a writer and/or an editor.

I think I'd probably benefit from the same thing.

My problem is more about losing my zeal for a given project about five pages in. It would be nice to have an equally invested teammate to prod me on, and keep me on task, as well as provide the talents necessary to make the work that much better.

Maybe you could just work on 5 page shorts.

That's what I'd reduced myself to in the past, actually. It worked fine, but I just KNOW I've got the capacity to tell longer stories, if only I could find that part of me that can overcome the bored, underachieving disappointment with CADD in me. Or, better yet, kill that part of me altogether.

Blackhole wrote: Am I taking it too seriously?

A good webcomic requires a serious investment of time and effort, so it's ideal that you have enough affection for your project to stay motivated. So, I think it's a lot more appropriate and laudable to take your project seriously than to take it lightly and get disillusioned with it early on as a lot of webcartoonists seem to do.

In any case, my suggestion to work with a writer and/or editor still stands. It seems your main concern is that you feel mired in a certain writing style, so incorporating someone else's style into your work could be a breath of fresh air and, hopefully, help you learn how to be more autonomous in the future.

In lieu of finding a writer or editor, because believe me, finding one that gets you excited to draw can be a challenge, you could do what I decided to do awhile back. Graphic adaptation. Find an old text that piques your creative interest, and get to work adapting it to comic book form in some way. I've come to realize that entertainment takes quite a bit of advantage of narrative material that's in the public domain, yet comics don't really seem to be in on that little secret. It's almost as if adapting a story into the form of a comic carries a stigma with it. I'm not too sure why.

All I know is that, with all the hopeful cartoonists out there, knee-deep in the days of the "graphic novel," precious few creators work with the idea of making good comic versions of already existing literature. Still, I'd love to see the great old stories of our past come to life in the hands of a great sequential illustrator, especially if that illustrator is one who is prepared to put more into the story than just 22 pages of half-hearted artwork. I think that such activities could help to further elevate the comic form. After all, how does one create a comic version of a thousand-year-old epic poem, and have that comic do justice to the original text? That's a challenge!

Aside from the philosophical reasons why I was drawn to the idea of adaptation, I found that it naturally created a pretty nice project for me to work on. Best of all, I have a blast puzzling my way through how to do the work justice, especially when it meant that sometimes a single sentence meant three pages of sequential art. That stuff is fun as hell!

Plus, there's no cars in classic literature, and plenty of opportunity to draw cool looking characters.

Blackhole wrote: Am I taking it too seriously?

OH, yeah.
Look, Frank Miller does, for the most part (at least in stuff like SIN CITY) a style that was invented by Dashiel Hammett. In the 20s. There are always a few new riffs you can do---and I DO encourage you to be inventive---but the mean streets are a cliche because they ARE there.

If that's what your muse is screaming...introduce one or two incongruous elements (a hit man who is deathly afraid of dogs, even little poodles, though hard as nails otherwise, for instance) but never, EVER, ignore your muse.

There's nothing worse than a P.O.ed, bitchy muse. Right, guys?---Al

bustertheclown wrote:In lieu of finding a writer or editor, because believe me, finding one that gets you excited to draw can be a challenge, you could do what I decided to do awhile back. Graphic adaptation. Find an old text that piques your creative interest, and get to work adapting it to comic book form in some way. I've come to realize that entertainment takes quite a bit of advantage of narrative material that's in the public domain, yet comics don't really seem to be in on that little secret. It's almost as if adapting a story into the form of a comic carries a stigma with it. I'm not too sure why.

Then if a LOT of people do it, we can call it CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED ONLINE...actually, that's a WONDERFUL idea. Hmmm. I've got a Comics Genesis account and a Webcomicsnation account. If I was ever suicidal enough to do something with my Drunk Duck account...I wonder if Olaf Stapledon's stuff is still copyrighted? ---Al

alschroeder wrote: There's nothing worse than a P.O.ed, bitchy muse. Right, guys?---Al

Tell me about it

Lack of time is my only problem right now.

LibertyCabbage wrote: A good webcomic requires a serious investment of time and effort,

I've always thought of webcomics as a fun, light side project to do while making my books. When I originally found CG I was just planning on doing cartoony looking "improv" comics that I like to do since they are usually one page with 12 panels. I could keep that up daily.
But then I saw that there was actually an audience for actual stories with detailed art, I figured I could finally see what peoples reactions were to my "book" style material. (which I already spend serious time and effort on)