Roasting Myself | Comic Tips for Newbies

For all of you who thought art was all fun and games, let the record show that there are rules! You can't just do things all willy-nilly. Or at the very least you need to learn the rules before you can break them. Then you can go all willy-nilly.

I thought it might be interesting to take a trip down memory lane and revisit one of my early homework assignments from my Principles of Cartooning class, sophomore year of college. As I roast my past self and my amateur art skills, hopefully, all you new artists can learn from my mistakes so you don't make them!

The Assignent

In this assignment, we had to loosely adapt the story of Jack and the Bean Stalk; for every assignment I received in this class, no matter how big or small the story was, we only had three pages to do it and we were not allowed to use any dialogue. This was really beneficial, albeit annoying, and because of it, I'm really good at editing stories down to the essentials. BUT, this was like assignment #2, so my talents were not yet honed as you'll soon see...

First of all, ever heard of a scanner? This looks like I took pics of it with my phone. While this may be an acceptable way to photograph art nowadays with our fancy, shmancy IPhones, my cell clearly did not do the trick back in 2014.

Tip #1

Scan all artwork in at at least 300dpi and drag that bad boy into Photoshop. Use either the Curves or Level adjustments to turn your messy art into clean, crisp black & white lineart.

Second, while the treeline angling towards the cow & man in panel 1 is a good way to draw the eye it's not super clear what just happened. Past Theresa was hoping you'd understand a business transaction just took place (magic beans for cow) but I don't think that's super obvious to the reader and maybe it would've been better off to start a few moments before the one I chose.

Tip #2

One thing I will give credit to past Theresa is that panels 4-6 are arranged in a way that the eye will know where to go. The rule is you can stack two panels on the right, but if I were to have flipped the order (where it's two stacked panels to the left and a single one of the right) the reader will probably read the panels in the wrong order.

The previous page had gutters (the space in between the panels) while this page, for whatever reason, doesn't. In the world of comics, everything you draw needs to be done with a purpose; if I had a creative reason for doing this switch up, maybe it could've worked. Maybe. But you can bet your bottom dollar past Theresa didn't have a reason, the thought of having consistent gutters probably didn't even cross my mind.

Tip #3

Gutters are pretty important for comic storytelling; having consistent gutters is the mark of a professional. However, with all comic rules, if you want to break this rule in order to accomplish something interesting or to convey a piece of visual storytelling then go for it! But do it with purpose!

My next bone to pick is with panel 6; a crime of weird cropping. Wouldn't it have been much better to zoom out just a bit so the whole doorknob was in view? I mean, I think you can get that it's a large door but you always want to be super clear in comics. This might sound a little harsh, and I'm loosely quoting my teachers so if you have a bone to pick you can pick it with them, but you want to imagine that your readers aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. If you have an inkling that something might be misunderstood, it will be. And you need to clear that up!

The reveal in Panel 8 is a little anti-climatic. The perspective ain't swell so you probably can't even tell that the feet belong to a giant.

Tip #4

We can all agree that perspective is the worst but having a basic understanding of its principles will really help to elevate your comic. Comic art is all about people/objects in relation to one another so knowing the basics is pretty important to create that illusion of a 3D space on a piece of paper. You can check out a little perspective hack here in a previous post of mine.

This page...this page is just mayhem. Go ahead, tell me in what order you're supposed to read these panels. I dare you. It was my intention that from panel one you look at the small panel on the right but the inset panel in the bottom left could easily draw your attention away from that.

Then there is the issue of a lot of the action is moving towards the left (him running, climbing, etc.) when comics, in the western world at least, are meant to go from left to right. I think if it's the very last panel on the page, you could make the argument of guiding the eye to the left, but it really should be avoided.

Tip #5

Follow the direction of conventional reading. So for the west, left to right!

Now if you listen carefully you can hear past Theresa yelling "But it's 'cause I had to cram all this stuff into three pages! I ran out of space". Listen, I get it. It is hard, learning how to efficiently tell a story in a succinct manner. But whether you're limited to three pages, or 24, or 32, learning how to work within requirements is essential. If you're hoping to do comics professionally, you're going to need to learn to work within whatever limits are given to you by clients.

Tip #6

Something I did do right! Planting! If you notice the lantern Jack uses to burn down the beanstalk was shown on the first page. If you have an object that your character is going to be using or a new person coming into frame, you need to plant that thing in previous panels. Whether you do this in an obvious manner or subtlety is up to you and what the story needs, but you can't just pull things out of your butt. You need to set it up.

Final Verdict

While this wasn't the worst thing I've ever produced and I did get some things right, this is very clearly not a good comic. It's confusing at many points and lacks a lot of technical skill. Hopefully this self-roast was helpful to new artists and entertaining to seasoned-artists.

It might be fun for other artists to review their own old work but I don't think I'm popular enough to start the next Steemit trend. But if you do decide to roast your past self, let me know!

If you want to see what my art looks like nowadays, might I suggest checking out this post.

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If you'd like to keep up with more of my work you can check me out at the following:

Instagram: @la.fumettista
Tumblr: http://la-fumettista.tumblr.com/tagged/art
Twitter: @TheresaChiechi
Website: https://www.theresachiechi.com/