#here in ratt comics YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN

[goldenshrikecomic]

Hello! GS is one of my favorite comics right now and a huge inspiration in my own journey of working on a comic. One of the things I find the most impressive is your paneling. Visually each of them are laid out in a way that gives this great flow, it feels really natural to imagine the pages in motion.

Would it be okay to ask what your thought process is on panelling, or just general advice/thoughts on setting up/laying out pages? I hope this makes sense

When I think about page layout, my number one question is what kind of panel I want the page to end with. It shouldn't cut the conversation or motion awkwardly, and ideally it should be something that acts like a hook that makes you want to click to the next page, like here:

It's all about getting from part A to part B. Part A, you're here. Where's the part B? The cutting point, the point where the page ends, where the chapter ends, and ultimately where the story ends.

What kind of story you want to make?

What kind of plot points you want to cover in your chapter?

How much content there is in this one page, does it forward the plot, relationships, or just show a side of someone you want seen?

You can go even smaller. Is this panel important? Does it need a full background? Could these three small panels of characters talking be one big panel? It'll save you time and look nicer.

You'll get it with practice! The old first pages of my comic wasted a lot of space, sometimes they still do. Don't stuff it full but don't get too loose! Don't be afraid of small panels, reserve big ones for big moments, like mother saying goodbye to her kid, or a yellow deer meeting a god. I see many starting comicers use very few panels per page, but this is a LOT of unnecessary work that builds up versus you including more panels per page. It's all about the bubbles. Bubbles lead everything. It's the silent pages that are the hardest.

Again, this is just how I do it. I bet there's tons of different approaches that work for the right people. Hope you find what works the best for you, best of luck with your project!

#technical stuff #ask #skullrotte #answering these technical questions makes me realize I'm absolutely the person who can solve a math problem but can't for the- #life of me write down the steps to explain how i came to the conclusion #I think it happens with my stories too #someone asks why this is happening and how does this work #i know why it happened and why it works but i only ever clown-beamed the knowledge into myself so I'm not prepared to put it in words #so I'm just.. “........ uhh i don't wanna spoonfeed my comic to readers 🕶” #but in truth i'm just so bad at explaining i wouldn't do my original concepts justice #here in ratt comics YOU'RE ON YOUR OWN #jk i'll still try to help if it's flying over everyone's heads #badly

[goldenshrikecomic]

Hey Ratt! Do you have any advice for someone also looking to make an original comic? I really want to do it for a living, but a lot of what I see and love are based on existing media. How'd you start getting a following/supporters?

Here's a link to some of my general comic starting thoughts and experiences if you wanna read.

As for growing an audience, I'd love to help but I'm still dumbfounded over how much attention GS got. I never knowingly built an audience, but long before GS I had some dA watchers invested in everything deer and it just steadily grew from there. My only platform was dA for the longest time.

In this day and age where every art and social site is busy breaking its own knees, I really don't know how people grow their audiences. Maybe someone could reply this post with advice? Otherwise I'd just advice new comicers to put out pages in set schedule so readers know you're into it, and be passionate about your creation so you won't abandon it. Reach out to other comicers, make panel swaps for fun and visibility, upload your comic on a proper site like ComicFury which makes reading it way easier than the mess like dA...

I've seen discussions about people being sad their oc art gets way less views as fanart for existing media. It's really understandable, but my experience is that when you build a setting for those characters and give people a chance to see and experience them, they'll want to see more.

#ask #technical stuff