A Cartoonist's
Playground
In this blog I'll share my
experiences navigating digital art and cartoons. |
In this blog I'll share my
experiences navigating digital art and cartoons. |
One year ago today, March 22nd, 2020, I sent an email to two friends with a lengthy body and one image attached. The subject line read "Comics!" The email started: "Here is the first one!" It was followed by a long description of who the characters are and what superpowers they have. The characters listed are only a half of the ones in the story now, and those are only the ones who are based off of my friends. There are also tons of characters I created (villains and allies alike) to aid in the story lines. Size isn't the only thing that's changed. My artwork has improved immensely over the year. If you look at that first comic I made compared with the one released today, you can see an big difference. I've also improved the plots of the stories of my comic strip a lot over the years. I've gotten a lot better at planning out storylines and plot moments than I was when I first started. Often I would have to reroute an entire storyline because I forgot it was one of the character's birthdays and I wanted to make a birthday special for them. I've also over time created much more complicated story threads. While in the first one I wrote there was just the main plot (even if it did have a twist at the end with a mind controller being behind all the bank robberies) while now I have many threads weaving together, some even over multiple stories. (I may write more about plot later, let me know in the comments if that sounds interesting!) I think it's interesting to look back on what I created so long ago. Below I put the first 20 editions of this comic strip! While the art wasn't so great, I still think they were actually pretty funny! Enjoy!
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For my birthday, my Aunt and Uncle got me several art books by Christopher Hart as they knew I loved to draw! I was so happy and started looking through them instantly! In fact, those books marked the start of a sharp increase in my skills as an artist.
The most valuable things in guide books for me is looking at how other artists draw people, which these books have plenty of! When I started to follow the underlying shapes of bodies and poses, I made my art more dynamic and realistic. I also learned a lot about using dramatic angles and organizing frames for comic strips and books. Image Credit1: https://www.bookdepository.com/Figure-it-Out-Chris-Hart/9781933027807
2: http://amazon.co.uk/figure-human-proportions-christopher-hart/dp/1936096730 3: https://www.ebay.com/p/72421356?iid=113386030596 There are three types of shadows I'm going to cover in this piece: long shadows cast on the ground, shadows cast on the face from different light sources, and dark, dramatic shadows. Long ShadowsTricks for drawing long shadows Because it can take a while to redraw the subject to give them long shadows (or reflections), I often use a shortcut. I use the layers feature of many digital art softwares.
Step 5: You can also add the light source This is not necessary, but adding a light source or other shadows can make a scene look more realistic. Another way to show this is to add more long shadows from other objects. Shadows on Faces
Dark Shadows |
Art: Comics; created by me
My name is Loren SinclairI am an artist and amateur cartoonist. I have been drawing my own comic strips (the biggest one about superheroes) and improving my art along the way. Archives
November 2021
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