What, you egg?

There's not a lot of content of fat men, but there is some. There are also pictures of queer couples, drag queens, historical photos, etc.

Another art reference for poses with fat bodies is the website FatPhotoRef run by @lawlesslagomorph who carefully vets the people who ask for access to the website in order to ensure that none of the fat people who have volunteered photos of themselves will be abused. Donations help keep the website running too!

The three worst people you know just got together

Check it out at afroindex.org! 💛✨

Cooked Eggs - Dominique Warren , 2021.

British , b. 1998 -

If you're looking for a good, centralized collection of fundraisers for people and organizations doing on-the-ground work in Minnesota right now, someone on Bluesky put together a great resource hub for things like food support, rent relief, mutual aid, and immigrants' rights centers that I'd really love to see spread around.

And if you're local to the Twin Cities, there's a "Take Action" section with links to ways to get active, as well as some resource guides for legal observers, etc.

comics is a storytelling medium, which means that it's also a medium for conveying information. you are conveying information about the scene to me.

what information is your shading conveying, and what does that contribute to the scene? i mean, ideally you're telling me where the light is coming from, but...do i actually have to care about that? if the lighting isn't key to the mood of the scene...does it need to be there?

we're outside. things would have shadows, because there's a light source (The Sun) but don't you understand that just from the fact the characters are clearly drawn outside? does putting soft shadows under their arms and at the bottoms of their shirts convey that better? or is it already clear without that?

we're inside. there's probably some light coming in from the window, or maybe from a bulb in the ceiling. is there a mood you want to convey with the scene? is the light source contributing to the mood? is the light only coming in from the window, to remind us the room is dark? is there a spotlight on someone? is the lighting significant? if it's not, what is the shading telling me that i couldn't otherwise guess?

and in the same realm of that previous comic example i just used, and this one i will be explicitly prescriptivist about--if you MUST include shading, please don't put it on the panels where the characters are doing the big cartoonish expressions. it doesn't look good. it Just doesn't look good. you're turning a 2 dimensional shape into a 3 dimensional object for no reason other than 'well i did it to the rest of the comic' and it looks bad. it draws attention to itself, it makes everything stiff and constructed, you lose the animation inherent to the gesture. you are doing disney vhs cover shit to me.

but this all isn't to say that you should never ever involve shading in your comics. but it's more that you need to use it intelligently, not just because you think it 'would' be there. there 'would' be one million more wrinkles in everybody's shirts than we ever want to draw and nobody's advising you to do that in comics. but if there should be one million wrinkles in a shirt, to draw attention to the fact that it's wrinkled, that's a different story.

and comics are about telling a story.

start now. now. now now now. or else you'll never draw this damn thing

it's fine if you don't have the entire story figured out yet, it'll happen naturally

draw what you want to draw!! webcomics often run for years, so you better work with something you like

don't overcomplicate things. a simple, efficient work flow is your top priority in order to stay consistent

bullshit some things. trace background refs. reuse poses. draw your character's face from different angles and just copy paste it in to save time. be smart about your work baby

take breaks if needed. webcomic burnout is real

sometimes, a panel or a page looks bad. shit happens. move on

lettering is actually really important and super hard to pull off

it's your comic. do what you want forever!!!

I'm begging you again to work smart, not hard. reuse backgrounds. use brush sets for webcomic artists. trace 3D objects. use 3D models to pose your characters

you may need hours or days to draw one panel, but people will look at it for 5-8 seconds. keep that in mind

a simple background is better than no background at all (avoiding the white void increases the quality of your work by a ton!)

sometimes the anatomy needs to be a little off to make an interesting shot/panel. that's fine, don't worry about it too much

at least 2000px canvas and 300 dpi for good quality results