That one crazy chick

Get some extra classes with the 11-page Clean up your Acting supplement~

This tutorial is about acting for comics! It’s not a subject people talk about a lot, at least compared to art and writing, but I’d argue that great character acting is one of the reasons we fall in love with fictional characters… and horrible character acting is why we stop believing in the characters, the story, and possibly the creator?? Fortunately, learning to spot bad acting is an easy way to correct it in your own work.

I was maybe a little snarkier in this tut than I needed to, but we’re friends here, I don’t need to pretend with you that I love every work equally. What I really do love tho, is when people learn to turn their criticism into corrections, which is the whole point of making and sharing these tuts! I hope you enjoy it :] You can also check out a bunch of human, monster, and alien crab acting in my own comics The Meek and Mare Internum.

My recent tutorials on Tumblr:

coloring with masks

writing for webcomics

researching for comics

All of my tutorials are released in lower-res format to the public 6 months after publication at the Shingworks Patreon. You can access the full tutorial archive, as well as nearly 1.5 years worth of bonus content, by becoming a Patron :] The recent tutorial is about Worldbuilding, so feel free to stop by~

One of the big tells for me that a cartoonist is a novice is when they rely too heavily on manga/anime exaggerated expressions - we see this A LOT with first-time webcomics. Even if you love manga and want to create works with that visual language, notice how those exaggerated expressions are most effectively used to enhance a moment. They aren’t there to handle the bulk of the acting or to carry a scene. If you use them constantly for every expression, it becomes visually exhausting (and reads disingenuous), and also you have nowhere left to go if you want to use a goofy expression as a visual punch.

Anywho, I back Der-shing on patreon and she always has good and insightful tips from a valid perspective with lots of experience!

Beroe Comb Jelly

TIME MANAGEMENT STUFF / TERM 7 

For anyone who doesn’t grow, grafting is a trick you can do with many plant species. Because plants have no immune system, you can cut a branch from one tree and attach it to another tree, and that branch will continue to grow. Bind the two plants at the join for long enough, and the two will grow together, giving you, basically, a Frankentree. Sometimes the plant tissues will even grow into each other, so you end up with single branches that have living tissue from both plants in them, like some kind of chimeratree.

They don’t even need to be the same species (though they do need to be compatible). A lot of plants you can buy from professional growers are actually grafted. It’s quite common to take a plant with a strong root system and graft the top half of another plant to it – this can let you grow plants in environments which wouldn’t normally support them. If you ever see chilli plants on sale, it’s quite common for them to be grafted. Look for the join, low down the stem, a few centimetres above the soil.

You can be audacious with this kind of thing, and grow fruit branches on trees that wouldn’t normally bear fruit, or you can even grow one tree with multiple types of fruit.

Yacouba Sawadogo is an exceptional man – he single-handedly managed to solve a crisis that many scientists and development organizations could not. The simple old farmer’s re-forestation and soil conservation techniques are so effective they’ve helped turn the tide in the fight against the desertification of the harsh lands in northern Burkina Faso.

Over-farming, over-grazing and over population have, over the years, resulted in heavy soil erosion and drying in this landlocked West African nation. Although national and international researchers tried to fix the grave situation, it really didn’t really make much of a difference. Until Yacouba decided to take matters into his own hands in 1980.

Yacouba’s methods were so odd that his fellow farmers ridiculed him. But when his techniques successfully regenerated the forest, they were forced to sit up and take notice. Yacouba revived an ancient African farming practice called ‘zai’, which led to forest growth and increased soil quality.

There’s been a documentary about him, too