Hello there everyone!

Oh boy, I want to avoid this because I am bad at explaining. I decided not to! Well, I do have some tips on poses. I don’t consider myself that good because my anatomy can be sometimes incorrect and correct. I will post some random poses drawing I did as examples!

I prefer to do basic poses depending on the characters personality! They are nothing special because the pose look so simple. Gesture poses counts as simple! 

Here comes my favorite thing to draw. If you like to make your characters do something wild and crazy like they are having fun. Dynamic poses you will have to draw them out. Honestly they are not too hard to do. My advice for drawing like this I usually read comics, mangas, watch anime, play fighting games and video games. I use those reference there. There are few series i am inspired that make dynamic pose so simple and easy was either my hero academia or one punch man. As for fighting games they have concept art of characters fighting style on what moves they will have. Super smash brothers push their characters more dynamic. That helps me a lot. I have seen some people take pics of the game to draw out the pose they capture it on the right moment! 

Now here comes the fun part. MONSTERS! I am going to use Darkstalkers characters as in monster pose. Monsters poses can be ridiculously fun to draw plus their anatomy are exaggerated. To be frank monsters are my favorite thing to draw because I feel free to do ‘em whatever i want to do with poses I come up with. The reason I put this one up because monster pose are pretty fun!

I highly recommend looking up poses of real life people photos and pose gesture guidebook. They are super helpful! 

Goddamnit Nero you’re a year older and you have big ass knives don’t hide behind a twelve year old jfc

DBT Self-Help Resources: Emotions List

Using an Emotions List to help Label an Emotion

Some people are more adept at labelling their emotions than others. Some people just can’t seem to name what they are currently feeling. They might say that they felt bad or upset, but pinning down what that actually means for them is more challenging. Many people walk around in this kind of emotional fog.

Unfortunately, if you don’t know what you are feeling, you can’t do much to change it. People who can name their emotions are more capable of managing them, so it is important to become more familiar with your emotions and learn to identify them.

Once you are more capable of naming your emotions, you’ll have more choices in terms of what to do with an emotion if it makes you feel uncomfortable and you would prefer to at least reduce its intensity. Many people with emotion dysregulation grow up without learning this important information, so for some people it takes a lot of time to get the hang of naming their emotions. Be patient. If you get frustrated, reframe this process as if you are learning a new language. In fact, that’s exactly what is happening: you are learning the language of emotion.

Hey guys, I’m getting a lot of asks about the same things, mostly questions about how to make comics, how to “break into comics” (haha, oh dear), working with publishers, that kind of thing. I’ve done some blogging on many of the subjects, so instead of repeatedly replying in private with links to those posts, I’m going to do a master post thingie with links to all my blogging about how I work. Hopefully some of you will find some helpful nuggets in there! I remember when I first started trying to transition into making comics for a living, and there wasn’t much information about that online. I spent a lot of time wailing about it on a locked livejournal. XD But anyway, I hope my blogs help a wee bit.

Disclaimer: these blog posts are all based on my own personal experiences as a cartoonist, and the advice therein might not work for everyone. The most awesome thing about comics is that there is no one way to make them, nor is there one direct route into becoming a full-time cartoonist. The more pro cartoonists I meet, the more it drives home how different our methods and origin stories are. 

Anyway, here you are! (With all of these, scroll past the placeholder image at the top of the post.)

1) How I make my comics, start to finish (traditional penciling)

1A) How I make my comics start to finish, now with digital penciling!

2) Finding the art tools that are right for you.

3) Working with collaborators.

4) Acting in comics. 

5) The financial reality of a full time cartoonist. 

6) Making a successful graphic novel pitch. 

7) Adapting a prose novel to comics, part 1.

8) Adapting a prose novel to comics, part 2.

9) Very simple tips for drawing a comic that will be published.

10) Working with editors from a cartoonist’s perspective.

10) b) Working with editors from an editor’s perspective (by my First Second editor, Calista Brill).

11) On “Drawing Styles.”

12) Dealing with discouragement (this is probably the most popular thing I’ve ever written XD).

13) On Comic Conventions. 

14) On Being a Pro and Finishing that Comic When You Don’t Want To

15) How I Write My Comics

Okay, I think that’s it! Whew! The remainder of the Friends With Boys blogging archive is here. It has some other bloggings that aren’t advice-related (mostly ramblings about comics I like), if you’re interested. If you have any other comic-related subjects you’d like me to blog about, feel free to drop a suggestion in the ask box.

I hope this was helpful. Share and enjoy! 

So I was asked a while ago how I did body horror/gore. This is less a tutorial and more… notes? Or observations on some common stuff I use in a lot of my horror art. I was really kind of stuck at how to draw a “how to” to any of this, which is why a lot of it is mostly… words and some pictures. Sorry.

Though honestly like I dunno I don’t find the stuff I do that horror-ish. Horror lite?

Either way, the kind of huge takeaway from this is – RESEARCH. Research the shit out of everything you do. If you can, find out why certain things disturb you and why certain things disturb other people. Here’s a pretty good intro to creepiness.

Sources under the cut.

“All my life, been hustling and tonight is my appraisal ‘cause I’m a hooker sellin’ songs and my pimp’s a record label.”

“This world if full demons, stocks and bible traitors so I do the deed get up and leave I climber and a sadist. Friends are happy for me… ”

“Or they’re honey-suckle phonies. Then they celebrate my medals or they wanna take my trophies Some are loyal soldiers. All the thrones are rosy.”

“And if you never know who you can trust, Then trust me you’ll be lonely, oh.”

“Are you ready for the sequel? Ain’t you ready for the latest? Ain’t got enough evil I’m gonna be the greatest In a golden cathedral I’ll be praying for the faithless.”

“And if you lose, boo-huu.”

“Hey look ma, I made it hey look ma, I made it everything’s comin’ up aces, aces!”

“If it’s a dream, dₒn'ₜ wₐₖₑ ₘₑ, dₒₙ'ₜ wₐₖₑ ₘₑ…”

Skull-Kidz! [Dex Chapter ] Pg.1 - 9 

Ok here is a compilation of all the software and useful tools I’ve come across whilst writing. Some of them I’ve reviewed on here already, more coming soon. 

Got an idea? Well get planning! Here’s some useful outlining, brainstorming and mind- mapping software:

Coggle 

Lucidchart

Mural.ly

Blumind

MindMeister

Mindmaple

Mindomo

NovaMind

Popplet

Scapple

Tree Sheets

Visual Understanding Environment (VUE)

XMind

FreeMind

Oak Outliner

Work Flowy

The Outliner of Giants

Just want to get writing? You want a word processor:

Gedit

Google Docs

Kate

LibreOffice

Microsoft Word

My Writing Spot

NoteTab

Open Office

Quabel

Ted

Vim

yEdit

Making notes? Here you go:

CintaNotes

Evernote

KeepNote

Memonic

MS OneNote

Scribe

SuperNotecard

Tomboy

Timelines giving you a headache? Try these:

Aeon Timeline 

Dipity

Preceden

Tiki-Toki

Timeglider

Timeline

TimelineJS

TimeToast

Now perhaps you want to organise those notes. Got a lot of research? Character sheets? Images? Well here’s some tools to keep all that together:

Liquid Story Binder XE

LitLift

PangurPad

Scriptito

Scrivener

Writer’s Café

Yarny

yWriter

Are you easily distracted? The following tools will keep you on track:

Dark Room 

FocusWriter

JDarkRoom

Momentum Writer

OmmWriter

Q10

Writemonkey

Zen Writer 

Even more productivity tools to help keep you focussed on your task:

Cold Turkey 

FocalFilter

Freedom

InternetOff

Keepmeout

Nanny

Productivity Owl

RescueTime

SelfControl

SelfRestraint

Simple Blocker

StayFocusd

Strict Workflow

Time Doctor

Waste No Time

Website Blocker

So you’ve got something down? Need to edit? 

AutoCrit

EditMinion

Grammarly

LyX

SlickWrite

SmartEdit

After the Deadline

All done? Perhaps you’d like some e-publishing tools:

Acrobat

InDesign

Calibre

CutePDF

Jutoh

Mobipocket Creator

PagePlus

PageStream

PDFCreator

Scribus

Sigil

I’m feeling generous, have some more cool stuff:

750 Words

One Page per Day

Oneword

Penzu

Write or Die

Written Kitten

Focus Booster

Spaaze

AutoREALM (Map building software)