Ask Psyche the (Wannabe) Storyteller

I wanted to make a formal post of all the contest winners! You can also see Degica’s announcement here

Due to an overwhelming number of (very good, I’m in tears, why are ya’ll so perfect….) contest entries, we JUST had to add 5 additional runner-up winners! These positions will receive a signed small print, as well as the vinyl sticker and button (and a surprise!) I’ll prepare and ship the prizes within the next few weeks :)

lightbulb died, and while changing it, I noticed it made a cool sound

so of course I grabbed my mic and made a beat with it.

I want to introduce all of you to this amazing place called the ukhairdressers style gallery.

It’s basically a massive database full of high-quality images of different hairstyles. I mean, look at all the options in that sidebar (and part of it’s cut off):

In total they have 976 pages of hairstyles with about 17 styles each, that’s about 16592 hairstyles to look at. 

Look at all the stuff they’ve got! Long hair:

Short hair:

Straight hair:

Curly hair:

Afro hair:

Men’s hair:

Hair on older models:

Extra-fancy hair:

Even crazy avant-garde hair:

I’m by no means an expert on drawing comic environments, but I’ve been using a few specific methods to get them done which I’d like to share! These tips did pretty well on Twitter so I figured I might share them on Tumblr as well [example panels from my webcomic Shaderunners]:

First, if you’re drawing backgrounds while using straight lines/a ruler and you’re struggling with your environments looking stiff, FREEHAND! It makes everything looks more natural, even if it’s not technically always “accurate”. Here’s a comparison (old/recent):

In general environments look more real the more “imperfect” they are, This isn’t a hard and fast rule of course, and I’m sure there’s cases where a stiff quality is HELPFUL to your story - so I think being aware of the difference in effect is key!

Second, for environments there’s a little trick I like to use, and this kinda depends on your style and how rough the place you’re drawing is, but I like to add little marks and dirt to the walls, the floor, everything. It makes things feel more real/lived in.

Third, get SketchUp or a similar 3D modeling software. Drawing a comic is hard work and if you’re doing it alone some shortcuts will have to be taken - that is NOT to say that it’s cheating if you take them. It’s simply helpful.

A thing I never see talked about is how 3D modeling is a SKILL, not a magic hack. I had to get BETTER at creating environments in SketchUp and incorporating them into the comic organically. Here’s an example of an old background done with the help of SketchUp above a recent one:

There’s No Need To Colour Everything. See how in the first pic below I coloured (er, you know) every object on the shelves? Waste of time - if anything it takes away focus from the characters. Nowadays when things are small, faraway or unimportant I let them blend into the background.

Similarly, in crowd scenes I used to draw every single person and detail, thinking that it would look impressive. The result was spending hours on a panel readers would look at for two seconds. Plus, after all that work it didn’t actually end up looking like that big a crowd.

Compare that to crowd scenes I draw now – by no means perfect but I feel that leaving out details in the faraway figures makes the scene look fuller; it leaves room for the reader’s mind to fill in the gaps and imagine the crowd being bigger than is shown.

And uhh that’s it? Basically this advice is mostly little tips that can be helpful, rather than a guideline/rule. Environments in comics (to me at least) are an efficiency game, and I’m constantly thinking of ways to be economical when I work on them while also having fun!

your condom breaks

you feel a lump on your breast

your friends are ignoring you

you’re stranded on an island 

you got rejected by a crush

you get into a car accident

you got stung by a bee/wasp

you got fired from your job

you’re in an earthquake

your tattoo gets infected

your house is on fire

you’re lost in the woods

you get arrested abroad

you get robbed

your partner cheated on you

you’re on a ship that’s sinking

you fall into ice

you’re stuck in an elevator

you hit a deer with your car

you have food poisoning

your pet passed away

you fall off of a horse

you or your friend has alcohol poisoning

you have toxic shock syndrome

We had to do a hands and feet portfolio for life drawing class!

Do you design a lot of characters living in not-modern eras and you’re tired of combing through google for the perfect outfit references? Well I got good news for you kiddo, this website has you covered! Originally @modmad made a post about it, but her link stopped working and I managed to fix it, so here’s a new post. Basically, this is a costume rental website for plays and stage shows and what not, they have outfits for several different decades from medieval to the 1980s. LOOK AT THIS SELECTION:

OPEN ANY CATEGORY AND OH LORDY–