It's been a big week. Even though I've been making doodles, and posting web comics to my Tumblr and blog for a while, this is the week I discovered Webtoons, Tapastic, and Patreon. And now my comics-making has gone in a totally different direction.
I love comics, they're kind of my thing, in the same way some people like video games or baseball or stuffed crust pizza (which is also one of my things). I also like telling stories, and for the past few months, I've been taking the idea of being an author really seriously. That's actually the whole concept behind my blog, which if you look at it now seems kind of like a mess.
Then, about a month ago, I jumped on a metaphorical flying carpet and discovered a whole new world of webcomics. I mean, new to me. Like I mention in my creator post, webcomics help me see how the things I deal with on a day to day basis are really similar to the things other people have to deal with. I really loved going through Tumblr and seeing the different artistic styles and different senses of humor. It made me think I could draw my own comic; I'm a fairly good artist, I know a thing or two about comics, I thought, I can do this.
Since I started making my own comics about my life and all the little adventures of my imaginary characters, I have been pretty stubborn about what I thought my "style" is. I really didn't want to make digital comics, for a couple of reasons: first, the tools of the trade have been tough for me to get used to, and second, I was really determined to be unique and have a quality to my art that would make me stand out.
I sketch out all my art on really real paper with pencils and pens and markers. I like the way they look: they have a "painterly" aesthetic, and I mean that you can see the process of the art and formal elements of the art in the art. I feel like when I look at my drawings and I can see those things, I'm really looking at the several years of my life I have spent learning to make art, and the history of art in the world that have influenced me and empowered me to try different things, learn new tools, and explore. That's been very important to me, and it reinforces my belief in myself as an artist.
BUT, that's a whole bunch of sentimentality, if I'm honest, and it may be what I like to see in my art, but it's not necessarily what other people like to see. It's my true belief that when an artist creates something and then shares it, that artwork no longer belongs solely to them, but to the world. And art that is made only for the artist is really hard for the world to relate to and enjoy.
I got some gentle and encouraging criticism on my Webtoons page about the sketchy nature of my comics. At first, it hurt my feelings and I got defensive. I was like "shoot, if this fool doesn't like my work, he can just go look at other things" (I don't really talk like that, but it's how I talk when I'm quoting myself). Then I realized I really want him to look at my art, because that's the point of sharing it on the internet.
So then I tried editing my hand-drawn comics in photo editing software. I use paint.net, which is a free editing program that's a lot like Photoshop. You can see the difference in a panel from one of my hand-drawn strips here ---> It's been labor-intensive to do this because I'm still not totally skilled at the tablet, but I do admit that the finished product looks way better online than my hi-def scans of sketches.
Like I said, it's been a wild week. I'm currently going over all of my existing comic and editing them digitally to repost on my various sites. It's been like a part-time job (on top of my full time + job) getting all the sites updated and reworking my old drawings, but it's been super rewarding and it's cool to see how much better they look this way.
My hope is to finish editing all my old drawings this weekend, and have a few new ones to post throughout the week. To see the new versions as they post, check out...
Remember, kids, keep those dials tuned to things that end with -Corn!
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