About keeping proportions and drawing style constant..

Hiye · Post by **Hiye** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 6:13 pm

Right now my comic site is down, so I can't show any examples of my work, but I would like to know if there are any good ways of keeping the proportions and basic looks of characters constant.. I've found that quite often the hair style, body structure, and eyes vary a bit between comics. But, maybe it's just my inner perfectionist. I've tried guidelines, they actually threw me even more off, but what would be another good technique to keep the characters looking exactly the same between comics? (And if there is any possible way to 'fix' a character who was poorly drawn a few comics ago without the readers noticing the change too much)?

Faub · Post by **Faub** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 7:20 pm

I don't think it's possible unless you use a computer or take your reference art VERY seriously. I know I can't do it and that's one of the reasons I put off making a comic for so long.

The idea, though, is to make the characters look enough the same that anyone thumbing through your comic can recognize them. This is difficult to be sure, especially when your characters change clothes and hair styles. I have been told that changing a character's clothes is not such a big deal as changing hair styles.

Guyara · Post by **Guyara** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 8:01 pm

Hmm... It's VERY hard to make a character look the same through a comic. I mean, my character has changed 3 times during my first 11 pages! Oh, well. I just hope people will still recognise him through the pages...

When it comes to the hair, I'll just say one thing: If you're going to change the hairstyle, make sure the readers knows he has changed it! Like, make the character go into a barbershop, or something, or else the readers will get confused, because they won't know where that certain character suddenly disappeared to.

Terotrous · Post by **Terotrous** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 8:30 pm

Unless you've been drawing these characters every day for your whole life, their appearance is going to change. Your skills will develop, and you'll find better and faster ways of drawing. That being said, these changes happen gradually, so unless someone uses the "first comic" link, the readers shouldn't be too confused.

Also, remember that important characters generally tend to have some special physical characteristic / article of clothing / catch phrase that incidental characters do not have. (Ie, in my comic, Brett is the only character to wear a backpack. Thus, even if he's in disguise, the backpack helps you identify him. This isn't really intentional, it just develops.) It's important that you keep these constant. I'd generally say that that means hairstyle changes are a no-no, unless the character has very ordinary hair to begin with.

In general, you don't really need to worry about it. I can see you're already an accomplished artist (from when your archives were still up. You can run a "full update" at http://siteadmin2.keenspace.com/cgi-bin ... /login.cgi to get them back), so you probably won't waver as much as someone like myself would.

Hiye · Post by **Hiye** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 8:59 pm

Well, they're not extremely major hairstyle changes... more like the length of his hair varying about an inch or two between comics, him being inexplicably thinner in others... and in some he has these unexplainable longer sideburns that don't show up in the comics right before or afterwards -_-. Also, the style of the eyes has changed for each of my characters at least twice. I can't fix it now because my graphic tablet is broken due to my 14-kilo cat taking a nap on it... and it would take too long to rescan each of the offending comics. My friend, who also owns a comic on keenspace, told me that these changes could distract possible readers. I don't know how the professional manga artists keep their style so consistent.. but they have been drawing for much longer.. ^_^

Prism · Post by **Prism** » Fri Dec 05, 2003 10:23 pm

hiye wrote:I don't know how the professional manga artists keep their style so consistent.. but they have been drawing for much longer.. ^_^

Bingo; drawing a character over and over and freaking OVER again and again makes you better and better.
When I can, I like to make a character sheet, especially of a main character, of a straight on view, a 3/4ths view, and a side view of them, all next to each other, with horizontal guide lines to help keep the arm lengths/etc at about the same position. Then when drawing the panels or whatever, I can quickly glance over to see about the lengths of things. I don't do this too much anymore, mainly because drawing seven heads and making sure my characters were that height drove me crazy~ But it is good to have a basic reference sheet to help sometimes.
Really though, practice is the best way to accomplish this, as it does with pretty much everything, unfortunetly. 8)

War · Post by **War** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 3:30 am

Yeah, it's been 18 months and I think my comic style is beginning to reach a plateau and no longer looks too different after a week. I don't think it's much of a problem as long as you can always easily identify the characters.

YarpsDat · Post by **YarpsDat** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 6:45 am

Well, I think using a refference sheet might be a good idea.
Draw you character from couple of angles, and use that when drawing them again.

I tried doing that for some time, but then I got lazy, and went back to relying on my memory (not a good idea, I just realized I forgot an important part of equimpent on one of the characters,

), and using a coule of last pages as refference. That is not too good an idea either, because the small changes with every "generation" might add up, and you end up with someone completly different.
If you use a character sheet you get "sibblings", and while they might not be exactly identical, at least they will never became completly different.

On the other hand, after a couple of weeks/months your drawing skills/style might change, and the sheet will became a burden.

I believe hairstyle is quite important, and couple of characteristic features (like eyes and eyebrows) help too.
But don't panic.
Make an experiment: take a comic book, and browse through it. You can recognize the characters. right?
And now compare two portraits of the same characters (prefferably seen from the same angle), look closely at their face construction. Chances are they will be quite different. I see that all the time in comicbooks. But that's only when I'm looking as an artist, when I'm reading I just don't notice that. And neither will your readers. (at least I hope so)

BTW, I noticed one trick: after character comes back after long absence, (and/or they changed clothes or hairstyle), make someone else say their name.
Like, "Hi Jorund, I never expected to see you here.", and even if "Jorund" looks almost nothing like before, readers will have no troubles recognizing him.

Guyara · Post by **Guyara** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 9:03 am

Hmm... I think I'm going to make myself some character sheets, and hang them up in front of where I work on my comic. I have been thinking of doing it, but I never got to it, and forgot about it in the end.

Hiye · Post by **Hiye** » Sat Dec 06, 2003 2:53 pm

Well, most of the time I work on my comic is during class discussions and lectures.. so it's quite hard balancing three inking pens, a rubber eraser, a pencil, and about five reference sheets on one table. I've tried using my previous comics as a reference.. but each time I did that it made me compelled to go back and fix the art on those.. I think the idea of drawing the characters from many angles is a good idea, though. If I can get them to not look deformed from odd angles. ^_^

Yeahduff · Post by **Yeahduff** » Mon Dec 08, 2003 1:04 am

Let me save you some trouble: Don't go back and fix your old cartoons. They're done. Move on. Make new comics.
Consistency is hard, but what's nice about the long process that is cartooning is that it's practice and you get better. Everyone's style changes. If you can, go look at Charlie Brown from the fifties. You'll see a radical difference from what you think of Charlie Brown. Just draw. You'll be all right.

Anvil · Post by **Anvil** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 4:49 pm

Seeing as most of my characters aer dragons and VERY different dragons, I can't offer much advice about facial features....

What I normally do though to keep things consistent is do 'shapes'. Like Moonsong (the long haired dragon)... she's almost all triangles, mostly divided into thirds. Owwie (The serpentine dragon) is rectangles and also thirds. Little Anvi is mostly circles and again, thirds.

That's also an interesting way to differentiate betwen characters... the three 'sidekicks' in disney's Mulan (Yao, Chien Po and ling). I read an article about the three and found they each had a specific 'shape' about them. Yao (shorty) was a square, Po was a circle (fat guy) andLing was a triangle (look at his head closely) (images found here: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/5082/characters.html). That may help at least help differentiate between, if not help solidify characteristics.

Platypus · Post by **Platypus** » Thu Dec 18, 2003 7:21 pm

Terotrous wrote:Unless you've been drawing these characters every day for your whole life, their appearance is going to change. Your skills will develop, and you'll find better and faster ways of drawing. That being said, these changes happen gradually, so unless someone uses the "first comic" link, the readers shouldn't be too confused.

Yeah that is true ... even syndicated stuff like garfield has changed somewhat through the years .... that said however i personally feel having staple characters in a strip is not the thing for me as I have to draw the same character day after day and I can't really do anything to his / her looks ( hair style, gait ... bla bla ) for fear my readers would be confused ( when I change the characters _really_ change )... that's why I have been doing one offs, but then again you never know

FoxHound · Post by **FoxHound** » Fri Dec 19, 2003 7:12 am

Just make mental notes to things. Compare hair toparts of the body. Once of my characters has short hair, just to about where her chin is. Another has it goes down to her shoulder blades. The girl with the longest hair has it go all the way to the small of her back.

Their height should be done the same way. One girl comes up her boyfriend's chin, to one character's cheek... You get the idea.