that girl is a problem

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1. Pacing

A fight scene should be fast-paced and intense. Unless it's a final battle with numerous parties, a fight scene that's too long tends to take away suspense. To speed up your pacing, use active voice to describe movement and don't overdescribe your characters' thoughts. Excessive inner monologue will be unrealistic, as people usually have no room to think during intense combats.

2. Character mannerisms

Here's a point that people often overlook, but is actually super important. Through fight scenes, you should be able to reveal your characters' contrasting mannerisms and personality. A cunning character would play dirty - fighting less and making use of their opponent's weakness more. A violent character would aim to kill. A softer one would only target to disarm their enemies, using weakened attacks. A short-minded character would only rely on force and attack without thinking. This will help readers understand your characters more and decide who to root for.

3. Making use of surroundings

Not only the characters, you also need to consider the setting of your fight scene and use it to your advantage. Is it suitable for fighting, or are there dangerous slopes that make it risky? Are there scattered items that can help your characters fight (e.g. nails, shards of glass, ropes, wooden boards, or cutlery)? Is it a public place where people can easily spot the fight and call the authorities, or is it a private spot where they can fight to the death?

4. Description

The main things that you need to describe in a fight scene are :

• Characters involved in the fight

• How they initiate and dodge attacks

• Fighting styles and any weapons used

• The injuries caused

Be careful to not drag out the description for too long, because it slows down the pace.

5. Raise the stakes

By raising the stakes of the fight, your readers will be more invested in it. Just when they think it's over, introduce another worse conflict that will keep the scene going. Think of your characters' goals and motivations as well. Maybe if the MC didn't win, the world would end! Or maybe, one person in the fight is going all-out, while the other is going easy because they used to be close :"D

6. Injuries

Fights are bound to be dirty and resulting in injuries, so don't let your character walk away unscathed - show the effect of their injuries. For example, someone who had been punched in the jaw has a good chance of passing out, and someone who had been stabbed won't just remove the knife and walk away without any problem. To portray realistic injuries, research well. I have two posts about writing realistic pain and injuries back in my pink theme, check them out if you need any reference!

7. Drive the plot forward

You don't write fight scenes only to make your characters look cool - every fight needs to have a purpose and drive the plot forward. Maybe they have to fight to improve their fighting skills or escape from somewhere alive. Maybe they need to defeat the enemy in order to obtain an object or retrieve someone who had been kidnapped. The point is, every single fight scene should bring the characters one step closer (or further :D) to the climax.

8. Words to use

• Hand to hand combat :

Crush, smash, lunge, beat, punch, leap, slap, scratch, batter, pummel, whack, slam, dodge, clobber, box, shove, bruise, knock, flick, push, choke, charge, impact

• With weapon :

Trying to protect someone else puts you at a significant disadvantage.

Trying not to harm the other person too badly puts you at a disadvantage. Especially if they don't care or are actively trying to hurt you.

If you don't know how to fight, being in a fight is mostly a confusing flurry of motion that ends in you being hurt.

Serious combat is exhausting. It is sprinting across a football field levels of exhausting.

Adrenaline is a hell of a drug. Even someone who just received a mortal wound will keep coming at you, and now they have nothing to lose.

A mouth-watering fuck-ton of hand angle references.

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have fun drawing kisses now!!!!!!

if youre only planning on posting your art online, them please save it as .png ;this is also better for transparencies as well

BUT

please, if youre planning of printing your art, NEVER use png. it makes the quality of the image pretty shitty. use jpeg or pdf instead. and always set your work at 300dpi to get a better printing quality - this means, the images are crisper and sharper and theres no slight blurriness. i had a talk with my friend who is currently taking design, and pdf is much better to use when youre working with a bigger publishing company because it still has the layers intact, but if youre only planning on printing your stuff at staples or at some small publishing store, the jpeg is the way to go.

This is all utter bullshit.

I’m sorry but if your qualification is working on the school yearbook, you have no qualifications. Do not pretend otherwise. As a former professional photo manipulator for advertising brochures, I can say that you’re not comparing apples to oranges here - if anything, you’re comparing fruit to farmyard machinery:

JPEG is a lossy format. It is suitable for web imagery because it sacrifices detail for reduced file sizes, but in doing so it introduces artifacts that weren’t in the original; if you load a JPEG for editing, then save it as a different JPEG, then you’re adding more artifacts formed from those first artifacts. Do this often enough and you end up with a horrid glitchy mess that looks like a puddle’s reflection after a stone’s been thrown in. You’ve seen those memes that have 3 or 4 different “found at” tags along the bottom, that look like fingerpainted copies of the original? That’s why.

PNG is a lossless format that comes in two primary flavours, PNG-8 and PNG-24, which use 8 and 24 bit colour respectively. 8-bit colour is what you have in GIFs, a limit of just 256 different colours in a predetermined palette, usually automatically chosen by your software when saving. These files will look the same as GIFs, potentially with large patches of solid colour instead of the usual gradual shading seen in 24-bit imagery. This is usually better for small banners or pixel art, as it can yield smaller filesizes than GIF format. (There is an animated version called MNG but it has very little web support, hence the continued use of GIFs.)

PNG-24 is great for larger images where detail is as important as colour depth, as well as printable RGB images and (if supported by the client) full colour images with gradient transparencies. It most certainly does not make “the quality of the image pretty shitty,” as it preserves every nuance. File sizes can be smaller than JPEG for small images, or significantly larger for large images.

PDF is a container file, whatever you put into it will be pretty much preserved as it was, so you gain nothing but lose nothing.

TIFF is what you need to be using for archival or print-quality imagery. It has support for multiple layers, multiple colour channels (RGB as well as CMYK, which is essential for accurate print rendering), and everything is preserved exactly as it was seen on-screen when being composed. There are compressed versions available, they use similar methods to PNG in order to maintain detail without sacrifice; next to whatever your graphics program uses natively, this is the most interchangeable format available for professional use.

DPI is important only when used in combination with image dimensions; in and of itself it serves no purpose. If you make a brilliantly detailed 640x480 image & set it to 300dpi, you’ll receive a brilliantly detailed 2 inch x 1.6 inch print. This is great if you want to make a postage stamp, but not if you’re creating an A4 flyer! Determine the image’s dimension then set the DPI accordingly; 72dpi isn’t hideous especially for text-heavy work (it’s ~3 pixels per millimeter), and 150dpi can be suitable for many images. Unless you’re interested in photo realism, 300dpi is usually overkill - for our hypothetical A4 flyer, you’d need a file of 2490x3510 pixels for edge to edge printing, with a correspondingly high memory requirement and filesize even if using a compressed format.

Keeping the layers intact is utterly unimportant for print work unless you want to use a separated colour print method that requires multiple passes to lay down each ink. If you send a file with all the layers, masks, etc. off for printing you’re liable to get it sent back unactioned, as they won’t want to take responsibility for choosing the wrong elements for printing. Save your work with everything intact, then save a flattened copy especially for printing purposes - this is one of the reasons Save Copy As… is a common option in graphics manipulation software.

As a designer who’s worked a few years for a newspaper, I cannot begin to tell you how much OP’s post (edit: response, technically) made me cringe. I would have killed to get a photo as a TIFF for once instead of having to tear apart PDFs only to find a 50x100px 72dpi shitty JPEG inside for the 5 millionth time…

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk

Ever since I let myself draw from the elbow, no problems. But it’s true that most artists start out drawing from the WRIST only and that’s the road to tension and carpal tunnel.

This week I’ve prepared some tips for everyone who is confused with arms. I know that pronation and supination is confusing and I recommend to learn in by heart <3

I have also announcement!

The day is approaching when I will release ebook or Gumroad PDF with all my anatomy tips + additional lessons + commentary.

I still am thinking how I will publish this but it will be done. Anyone who’s interested finally will be able to get everything in one place and some more good content. I will post some dates soon so look for that in next few weeks !

instagram.com/manequim_art

Guide: How to Outline a Plot

The best way to write out a plot isn’t the same for everyone, and sometimes it’s even different from story to story. There are lots of different methods, and most writers use a combination of them, so you just have to try different things to see what works best for you. Here are some of the most common methods:

1. Just Write

Some writers are what’s known as “pansters” meaning that once they have a story idea in mind, they prefer to “fly by the seat of their pants” and start writing without any planning in place. The key to making this method work is to remember that you’re only writing the first draft. Nothing you’re doing is set in stone, so don’t feel the story has to be perfect in one shot. Follow your gut and write the story to the best of your ability. Worry about tightening and polishing in subsequent drafts.

2. Synopsis

Some writers prefer to start by writing beginning to end summary of the story, describing all the important details and events in the order that they unfold. Summaries can be a great way to flesh out an idea for a plot, and they can also serve as a nice guideline if you want to “just write” your story but need a bit more structure first.

3. Old-Fashioned Outline

Do they still teach outlining in school? I don’t even know… when I was a kid, we learned how to do outlines with Roman numerals for the main points, capital letters for the minor points, and numbers for sub-points. If you’re good at outlining, this can be a great way to outline your plot.

4. Timeline

Creating a timeline for your story can be a great way to map it out. All you need is a beginning event, climax event, and end event. From there you can start filling in the events that follow and precede those events. Even if you don’t know the exact date for when a scene takes place, you can still mark it down in the right general place.

5. Scene List

If you have a pretty good idea of the scenes that need to take place, or at least a good number of them, you can start by writing out a scene list. It’s nice to do them in a table if you can so you can organize important details, like chapter, scene number, date and location, who’s in it, and then a short summary. Though, how you organize it is up to you. If you prefer, you can just write the scene number and then a brief summary.

6. Story Structure Map

Some writers like to map out their story according to whatever story structure they want to follow. They’ll pull up a graphic or chart of the structure, transcribe it onto paper or into a document, and then note each relevant event for each structure “mile marker.”

7. Subway/Tube Map

This is a new one I recently heard about. I haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I think it’s fascinating. And there are even subway map creators you can use if you don’t want to draw it out. Ultimately, the goal is to map out the events of your story in the style of a subway/tube map. This method makes it easy to illustrate subplots and see how they relate to the rest of your story.

8. The Mind Map

Mind maps can be a fantastic way to get the most important parts of your story out on paper, and to start figuring out where other parts fit in and how they relate to everything else.

9. Index Cards

Some writers have luck writing out key scenes, moments, bits of dialogue (or anything else they have in mind) on individual index cards, which can then be laid out in order on a table, allowing for cards to be easily moved around, added, subtracted, etc. until a more complete story starts to emerge. Some writers even invest in giant cork boards for this purpose. Others use a dry erase board and draw out the “cards” instead. A lot of story writing software, such as Scrivener, even includes digital bulletin boards and index cards that you can use to visualize your story.

10. Method/Theory/Template

There are numerous methods/theories/templates dedicated to building/fleshing out plots. Some to look into:

- The Snowflake Method- Dramatica Theory- Save the Cat! for Novels- The Hero’s Journey

If one of the above doesn’t work for you, you’re sure to find even more ideas online. Try doing a search for “how to outline a plot” or “outlining a novel” to see what comes up. You might even try searching for your favorite author’s name plus “outlining” to see if they’ve done any posts sharing their own methods. You may also want to look into books, software, and apps/web sites that offer ways to help you plot your story.

I’ve encountered a lot of feedback over the years.

Feedback that’s good, bad, or cocktail of both — from the 15 workshops I joined in college (including my time in the MFA) to my current experiences as a copywriter.

I’ve also learned how to get the most out of all that feedback. So this week I decided to share six types of story feedback and what do with each.

The Opinion is completely subjective feedback, and its purpose is to gauge what is and isn’t working for readers on a personal level. Isolated opinions offer some insight, but in general, you’ll want to pay attention to the patterns that emerge from multiple readers’ opinions.

Focus on: doubling down on the things your readers tend to like, and consider dialing back the things they don’t like.

Ignore: suggestions for phrasings, story elements, or plot directions that are purely a matter of taste and go counter to your vision.

The Misdiagnosis is feedback where the reader has noticed something wrong in your writing, but they struggle to identify the issue — so they “misdiagnose” the problem. It’s tempting to think this is a False Alarm (#6), but this type of feedback is actually very common and well intentioned, so be on the lookout!

Focus on: reverse engineering the true problem by closely reading the feedback and the passage it applies to. After identifying the real issue, work on a solution.

Ignore: their original diagnosis and any suggestions that are now irrelevant.

The Bad Remedy gets one step further than the Misdiagnosis. Here, the reader correctly identifies the problem, but the solution they provide either doesn’t solve the issue, is overly subjective (see #1), or has a negative ripple effect that the reader didn’t expect.

Focus on: determining a new solution that works for your story and style.

Ignore: any solutions that aren’t right for your story.

The Right Cure is the best kind of feedback, because it not only properly diagnoses a problem in your story, but also provides an effective solution. This feedback is easy to identify when it hits like a lightning-strike revelation — but sometimes the accuracy of the feedback or the tone of its delivery puts us on the defensive. We might try to write it off as an Opinion or False Alarm, but it’s important to accept the Right Cure when it’s offered.

Focus on: following the feedback. You can still tweak or build upon the solution if better ideas come to you; just make sure you’re still solving the problem.

Ignore: any temptation to dismiss the feedback out of pride or a feeling of being wronged due to an uncouth delivery.

The Divination is any feedback that provides the right solution to a problem, even when the reader misdiagnoses (or doesn’t try to diagnose) the problem itself. This often arises when a reader critiques mostly by feel, and while they may struggle to articulate why something is wrong, they feel something is wrong and are able to identify an effective solution. This type of feedback can often look like an Opinion since it lacks justification, but it’s always worth considering.

Focus on: identifying whether their suggestion improves the story, and if it does, implement it.

Ignore: the feedback if you’re confident it’s just an Opinion that doesn’t align with your vision for the story.

The False Alarm is feedback that tries to solve a problem that isn’t there. This type generally comes from a reader who’s distracted, reading too quickly, or trying too hard to find things to criticize (which can occasionally happen in formal critique settings like workshops, where some feel pressure to always contribute). Note, however, that this type of feedback is rare; what you think is a False Alarm is more often than not a Misdiagnosis, a Bad Remedy, or even a poorly delivered Right Cure.

Focus on: identifying whether the feedback actually is a False Alarm or something legitimate.

Ignore: the feedback, but only if you’re absolutely confident it’s a False Alarm. (If you find yourself receiving a lot of False Alarms, reflect on whether you’re dismissing too much feedback, and if you aren’t, consider looping in some new readers.)

Some Parting Rules of Thumb

Now that you have a grasp on these different types of feedback, I want to leave you with some general rules of thumb for revision:

Assume all feedback has the potential to improve your story, even if parts of it are misguided.

Know that everyone is capable of providing helpful feedback, even if they’re less experienced than you are.

Remember your vision as a writer matters, so don’t feel obligated to follow feedback that pushes your story in a direction that contradicts what you set out to create.

Never mistake the need for feedback as a shortcoming; instead, recognize it as an opportunity. Everyone needs feedback, but not everyone is willing to seek it out.

Good luck, and good writing, everybody! I hope this helps you sift through the feedback on your next story.

— — —

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

https://youtu.be/NBE-RTFkXDk