I started reading the "Ghost in the Shell" manga and later the "The Boys" comic.I analyzed their art in detail, and both, despite their clear differences, have something in common: their art isn't very elaborate, and is even somewhat questionable aesthetically, but they boast very good stories.Which led me to think: Perhaps the path to success as a freelance cartoonist isn't drawing naked anime girls to attract the attention of degenerate clients eager to see their underage characters doing whatever perverse things they can imagine.Perhaps success, and consequently money, lies in creating works that captivate an audience and spark their interest to the point that they're willing to pay for access to the next chapter of your comic/manga.It's about telling stories, stupid.
>>7992901>Perhaps success, and consequently money, lies in creating works that captivate an audience and spark their interest to the point that they're willing to pay for access to the next chapter of your comic/manga.well duh. the problem is that this is obscenely difficult to do intentionally. there's many people who try and fail, and there's many many more who don't try and just go for what they perceive as the lower hanging fruit.you have any idea how many people i've told directly to go draw their comic? wanna guess how many people did it? or how many stuck with it for more than a month?
>>7992920I know it's not easy. But I can tell you, from my own experience, that the main reason many cartoonists don't dare to try is precisely the fear of failure, and secondly, unrealistic expectations.I mean, you have to pick up the damn pencil and write a short story to start. Seriously, even if you're a pervert, stop drawing naked women on a white background and start creating a story where Shuma-Gorath rapes Storm. But the point is to grab people's attention.But also, we have to be sensible enough to accept that we're not going to be Marvel's next big thing and that our comic isn't going to be adapted by Amazon Prime. Just getting $300 or $500 on Patreon is incentive enough to keep going.I know, I know; it's not much. Go and ask a complete stranger to give you $500, just because.
>>7992901>It's about telling storiesyes, but today, not before you were bornmight as well look at cave paintings for the bar
In other news, the grass is green and the sky is blue
Do some people really believe comics are made to be a masterwork of art in every fucking panel?
>>7992958Alex Ross made me believe that.
>>7992901and of corse, that has nothing to do with them already being household names that could sell on their name alone by that point
>>7992901you're right but what's questionable about the art in that OP pic?
>>7992994They don't all have the exact same modern anime face obviously
>>7992932>But I can tell you, from my own experience, that the main reason many cartoonists don't dare to try is precisely the fear of failure, and secondly, unrealistic expectations.And you'd be wrong. Plenty try, and even have rather realistic expectations. The killer is just boring stories, which is like 99% of all comics on the web
>>7992998how does one avoid writing a boring story. I've created a couple of small stories but not a bigger captivating one, its hard because I have lots and lots of ideas
>>7993002>how does one avoid writing a boring storyHow to pet a dog/question
>>7993002Make a project for teaching yourself how to make projects.An idea expanded to a simple 4 page comic. Start by roughing out the panels, seeing where things go,and how the pacing and plot flow. Next, design your elements of panels and start making the comic. Know you are not looking for perfection, but to stumble upon a methodology that works for you. And approach every other project the same way.
I am by no means a good writer. I have outbursts of an idea. Episodic moments that pop into my head, and even ellaborate, worldbuilding stuff. Concepts, music, vibes that inspire me into outbursts of things, that i just need to depict their thingyness. But my brain dries up the moment i need to connect these snapshots of a story
>>7993055Like i have the idea of the bloodless, that these two women are the same woman who died of diabetes some time in the 20th century, that the world is governed by massive post-human creatures called viceroys, that those little pearls in their collars carry their consciousness, and that one of the viceroy split her mind into two, one who is extremely impulsive but quiet and the other whose more cowardly and slow to act, but they're both the same person experiencing the same self-loathing and hopelessness about this world several million years in the future where they die and are remade through their pearls repeatedly. And the next idea i have is how black hair got brutally mauled and blonde hair was killed again, and black hair was sulking on a pool of regeneration piss. But without a proper storyline to glue it all coherently it's just lame and uninteresting
>>7992901there's way more successful artists drawing naked anime girls than making webcomics
>>7993002You have to read. A lot. Going over a bunch of literary criticism and the like doesn't hurt, but isn't strictly speaking necessary. You want tot understand the conventions of whatever genre you're writing it, because that's going to color the expectations of your readers. There's also the trap of not being aware of those conventions and going in with little knowledge and producing something really trite by trying to bring "not like the other girls" attitude.I could go on for a while but really, reading will teach you most of it.
>>7993070What if i lean on the caveman instict of "i saw that i retell that" rather than any specific style for my story? How much will it upset people, to have no real format beyond telling things as they come into my head, like a conversation? What if i just show whatever i feel like me and my audience would enjoy or feel the urge to see, and rely on random people to cut down the more incomprehensible or pretentious parts?
>>7993044>>7993002I think thats definitely the path, just make a short comic, or issue and set it in your world, so you understand comics. But writing short stories however, is different to writing long stories, maybe just make an issue or 2 of a longer story, without the certainty of finishing it. Try and consciously set up character goals, and foreshadow upcomiing events, that you may never get to writing.I've basically done this, I basically decided to take one of my comic ideas, and make an opening chapter for it, and I've improved alot on the way. Problem I'm facing now, is that my current art I think is ok, but the first 40 pages, are no where near publishable. (Its 112 pages long lol)Probably the best approach, and what I probably shoulda done, is just writing a like 40 page comic that ends. Best of both worlds>>7993065Also thats probably true, its definitely easier to do that. I've posted a couple short comics on reddit a while ago, and theyve got thousands of likes, it isnt too dificult of your artstyle is ok
>>7992901Naked anime girls captivate me.
>>7992901Shirow's an interesting case, since his industry success started with a self published doujinshi collab he joined as a kind of fan zine when he was in college. The story he contributed, Black Magic M-66, he'd later go on to republish with a series of other stories in a release called Black Magic. Some manga exec got the original copy of the doujinshi and decided to hire him for another manga, which went on to be Appleseed, which was a huge hit in the later half of the 80s. The success of Black Magic M-66 is an interesting case study in making it from indie to industry tho, since the plot of the story is essentially >A high tech android assassin is hunting down a scared young girl >The android is a relentless killing machine that slowly and methodically stalks its prey, and no amount of military hardware can seem to stop it in its tracks>Compelled by cold programming, the story is a chase sequence with a feisty and scrappy tomboy stepping in to try get the girl to safety, doing what little she can to barely slow it down before it finally catches up and murders them. It's basically Terminator, but published in 1983, a year before the film was released. So when some publisher came across it, he realized he could acquire the rights to an anime version of one of the hottest films of the 80s thanks to Shirow having such a good grasp of the zeitgeist and beating James Cameron over the publishing finish line of his breakout success. I guess if you can make a comic that's essentially another version of a world wide hit that's not released yet...and then release it ahead of schedule...and then follow that up with banger after banger after banger you can take the Shirow route to greatness.
>>7992958Most of /ic/ does. Go and work on a comic and then post a throwaway panel that very clearly is not meant to be a moneyshot. Even if you have already shown that you can draw at a higher level elsewhere, /ic/ will purposely act like you're a perma-pre-/beg/ and get mad that the panel wasn't a masterclass in fundamentals. Anytime a comic making anon posts stuff, these other anons come out of the woodwork like termites.
>ghost in the shell manga>good The art is amazing but the history is boring and convoluted as hell.
>>7992901>It's about telling stories, stupidGood luck with being to do that well and at the same time also being able to draw very well. That's what makes comics so difficult. You have to learn 2 very difficult skills at once and be able to combine them.
>>7993074Like I said, if you go in without awareness of genre and convention it'll just come off as trite. But you're going to ignore me anyways, so do as you please.
>>7993539>awareness of genre and convention it'll just come off as triteIs there a book of the "fundamentals of comic books" or do i have to consume media to make it? I am too retarded to find pirated comic books
Like i know there must be a long list of fuckups that the industry has through trial and error learnt not to do, but there must also be an author or teacher like richard Williams that has registered these
>>7993707it doesn't really matter if there is, you have to make those mistakes yourself to know how to avoid them. you can't study your way into being the perfect author. just make stuff and try to do better each time.
This thread really shows why any writing related conversations on this board are completely useless, not a single person here has said one thing related to the fundamentals of writingAnd yes, there is a theory for storywriting that works and you can just look it upIf you have an idea and you want to draw it you inow that is has no value as an idea alone and to give value to that idea you need to know fundamentals to illustrate it properly, writing is no different.Writing isn't just having a bunch of ideas and just lazily connecting them with some half assed surface level plotline>>7992932>the main reason many cartoonists don't dare to try is precisely the fear of failure, and secondly, unrealistic expectations.Bullshit, people quit either because they keep writing without applying any theory to it and they keep doing that over and over again pumping out worthless garbage that's just a bunch of ideas lazily connecting them with some half assed surface level plotline so they never actually make any progress and think writing is just intuitive magic writers develop with no effortOrThey look up the theory, realize that writing is actually harder and more complex than drawing o ntechnical level and they just give up because it requires even the most skilled illustrator to start from zero in a separate art journey>>7993044>Make a project for teaching yourself how to make projectsMaking a visual story isn't "just another drawing project", it's a completely different form of art>>7993058>>7993055No writing here, just raw ideas and don't think that just by conencting them together with a plot is how you turn it into a story>>7993070Your ability to analyze art depends on your level of understanding.Tarantino made a shitty mvoie after watching thousands of movies while working at a video story and that did nothing to help him make a good story, it was only once he learnt the theory that he was able to turn that inspiration into good movies.Stupid advice
>>7993296sorry about your iq
>>7994073>not a single person here has said one thing related to the fundamentals of writingBecause the thread isn't about le fundamentals of writing or even asking for writing advice, it's the monthly "art doesn't matter for comics" cope we see all the time, redditspacing retard
>>7993100This is a working path, not a learning path and both are required to actually make something good>>7993173A well drawn page can still be a shit page, in fact most of you only draw figures floating in a void and once you actually draw environments and scenes the imbalance of skills starts to show.I've seen some very well drawn pages here that are not good as comic pages at all>>7993530Which is why most professional illustrators work with a writer>>7993705Takes you less than a minute to answer that question yourself
>>7994089You completely missed the point, I basically said it's an indication of total incompetence about the subject as a whole
>>7994093No, retard, it's a sign you're the only newfag here dumb enough to engage this shitty thread seriously
>>7994095I've been lurking for years and I have never seen anyone show any level of basic understanding about writing on this board in any thread ever
>>7994097You apparently haven't seen this spammed thread either, so who gives a fuck what you think you've seen
>>7994100Just keep making those soulless commissions while flipping burgers, don't bother with real art
>>7994103kek you're mad as fuck
>>7994105This level of incompetence and deception by figure illustrators as wannabe writers is frustrating, I actually think that the ability to freely express nonsense has degraded art learning to a point where a lot of potential artists are caught in a whirlpool of talentless hacks keeping them away from legitimate art knowledgeIt's bad, it's really bad and I take it personally and have no shame in admitting it
>>7994107>the ability to freely express nonsenseIn other words internet has degraded art learning which is arguably beneficial for good creative artists because there's less competition but anyone who puts artistry before personal ambition would see it as a tragedy
>>7994073>No writing here, just raw ideas and don't think that just by conencting them together with a plot is how you turn it into a storyWell then, it seems im too retarded to write stories by myself so i must lean on a fellow retard like >>7992920 described who cant draw but can write . That and pick up a book on comic fundamentals
>>7992901I wouldn't even be able to draw a page like that if you gave me a month. I'll worry about storytelling once I can crank out decent pages at a decent rate.
>>7994073>bla bla bla not a single person here has said one thing related to the fundamentals of writing bla bla blaBecause this is a drawing board, most of us don't plan on becoming successful comic artists any time soon, and OP is a homosexual. >theory for storywritingI don't know if it's different for comic artists, but most literature writers don't give a shit about underlying theory. "Read a lot of books" is by far their most common advice.
>>7992901I agree about the storytelling. but this art is really very good.
>>7994479that writing schizo has been here for a while posting on threads like /mmg/.I think people who try to paint writing as this learnable science are talentless. They need to grind and study the "fundamentals" of just talking to human beings, which is what storytelling boils down to. All these terms and definitions and systems in writing were created AFTER people were naturally doing them, someone who has to study and learn from scratch is talentless. But they have to make it look like an advanced science they spent a lot of effort learning, because they tried learning drawing and realized it was hard, so they need to justify their current skills but they cant' say they naturally enjoy writing and learn just by doing, because then the same logic has to apply to drawing.
>>7994073Nobody praises Shirow for his writing because he writes like this anon. The story in this one page alone is so dense there's like 4 plot points going on in this room all fighting for space. This one guy who's like a broker has decided to keep a stooge alive while this other guy who's like an exiled general wants him killed to cover his tracks, this third guy who's a federal agent pretending to be an undercover on a sting operation but is actually on the take as well is annoyed because the information he leaked was so hard to get and the broker (who isn't a broker at all, and turns out to be a robot) is NOW worried about a breach of HIS contract. And that's not even the main story, this whole wall of text is just set dressing for a larger plotline about garbage men being used as stooges by a brainwashed assassin who's trying to hack into the brain of a secretary to a diplomat so she can be brainwashed and assinate a delegation and interrupt the trade relations between two countries, strengthening the position of a military dictatorship who's been outed from power by a Democratic revolution in a country rich in Platinum deposits. BUT EVEN THAT is actually a sideshow to what's actually going on, that you learn about in later chapters. Now I really like Shirow's political conspiracy/philosophically/hard science dense writing, but I can see how this filters the majority of people because this shit is like digging through a concrete floor with a plastic spoon. He's one of the best examples we have of a mangaka who fails gracefully at half of the comics medium, but exceeds so strongly in the other half that it doesn't actually hold him back.
>>7994073A project is a project, constructed for the conveyance of ideas, in any and all mediums. And I favor a single approach to producing them : starting with the barest of skeletons for structure then refining their elements into an organized whole. And one need not create linearly when fleshing out a plot with scenes, better to get stuff on paper first then think about where it should go afterwards. My longest story was 180+ strips and its only two thirds told, and was born from a random drawing of a demon head in a new sketchbook. It came out good enough to try explaining what it meant in my ficdom,and I created another character to talk with the demon, and a plot materialized. Then I did another strip, then a third. The strips began accruing details once circumstances transformed this whim into vocation as I pursued the story for over a decade, a stumbling headlong charge into spontaneous construction of strips. It began in the middle of the story, and I had to think up the beginning. So what aspects of writing do you wish to explore?
>>7993173I mean, if there’s any individual panel in your comic that looks /beg/ then that’s a problem. They don’t all have to be fantastic, but they all have to be at least passable.Yes mangaka get away with it all the time, but people meme on those Togashi panels for a reason. It’s an embarrassment, not a model to emulate.
Thread full of crybabies pretending they're incapable of learning two skillsets news at 11 lmao
>>7995777>being so good you can scribble some shit and people will still read it is an embarrassment kek ok, troon
>>7995915Examples?
>>7995918examples of... what exactly?
>>7995923crybabies pretending they're incapable of learning two skillsets
>>7993530This one.>>7994891Honestly that's my favorite chapter of the whole damn manga. I love just how willing he is to just shove you directly into the complex space of the world here and just keep trucking (literally in this case lmao) the final punchline of the garbage truck driver really sells the whole thing for me, showing that even the smallest guy is affected by it all, but can't do anything about what he's gone through and has to live his life, much like the kid stuck running the facility in the first major story.You can see all of this as well in Appleseed, but to a lesser degree of heady topics and more of an interest in creating an interesting world with cool characters.
>>7995935>This one.That's just one example and calling him a crybaby isn't an argument. The truth is that good writing is very hard to learn, but comic artists can get away with bad writing.
>>7995916this is the problem with /ic/. Too many people here think drawing is a way to assert dominance or show power over people. If someone looks at your art, you beat them. You won. If you look at someone elses art, you're losing, they're taking something from you. There's no desire to be good in order to evoke emotion in people, its just to get more eyes and waste peoples time because if make someone think about you then you're winning in the purest sense of the word. You are in their mind, that's the most amount of power you can have as a human being.
>>7995978what the fuck are you even talking about, you fucking retard, the point was that togashi puts out worthwhile, appreciated work even at a fraction of efforttake your fucking med, you utter fucking mongoloid
>>7995978>Too many people here think drawing is a way to assert dominance or show power over people. Yes, by being on top of some imaginary ladder, looking down on and spitting on the /beg/s, pretending to be better than accomplished artists without daring to show your own work.
