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ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 4 years

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In these apparently trying times of "lack of content" I was wondering if we could get a glimpse behind the tablet and see how you write! Could you talk about your process and how you keep track of things and parse out your story? Do you storyboard or write rigorous notes? Is it all in your head? I am super curious about your system.

Oh yikes I’m about to disappoint a lot of people.

Okay, here’s the thing - I cannot physically keep notes because I get distracted and forget to write things down. I’ve tried keeping notebooks for WD!Steven stuff and I have come to accept that it’s only for show. I barely use it. I cannot use my memory on the effort of writing notes - I’d much rather use that energy to remember things in my head.

I brute-force everything through my mind palace. My mind... house... mindshack.

My process is simple:

Step 1) THINK

I constantly get asks that I feel might be good for the comics. I’ve made posts on this before but the main way I decide if I’ll use an ask is:

Is the ask addressed explicitly to Steven (or another character?)

Is the ask not giving away any fourth-wall-breaking information?

Is the ask actually ASKING Steven an open-ended question or TELLING Steven to do something?

If the ask is too vague (”so what do u like”) or gives away too much (“Steven don’t u think ur actually half-human? If Rose had a baby it would be half gem half human. Wouldn’t that be the same as u? You should ask Rose about a gem named Spinel I bet she would freak out!!!!!”) or if the ask is just pushing for Steven to do something instead of asking (”go to the moon base!”) then I almost always ignore it.

Step 2) Storyboard!

After choosing a question, I’ll sit and… stare at my desk/the wall/twitter without seeing it and instead storyboard the entire comic in my head. Sometimes this happens in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I’ll work it over in my mind’s eye for days before I like it. This includes the dialogue.

Yes, I do this while driving. I have an hour drive to work. No, I have never been in an accident. My autopilot works really well. I guess. Probably. I often have no memory of the actual drive itself but the comic gets written.

Step 3) Sketch!

Afterwards I go into my drawing program (MediBang Paint) and sketch out each individual panel on a layer. Sometimes the sketches are detailed. Sometimes they are just sloppy action lines to remind me what I’m going for.

I script in my head WHILE I’m drawing the sketches. I try out different lines as I go through each panel and see what fits the most. This sketching process takes about 3-5 minutes per panel.

Step 4) Lineart!

After I’ve sketched at least 50% of the comic, I go back in and start doing lineart. I will do this mindlessly - it is only at this point that I allow myself to listen to a podcast, or music, or have a YouTube video running while I draw. (I cannot sketch/storyboard/script with any sort of noise on. Has to be dead silent.)

The initial lineart process takes about 10 minutes per panel if the panel is simple like the one above. If I go through the process of adding necessary details, patterns, or have to create phone background detail, or draw a background in general, then it will obviously take longer.

If I do color comics, it takes 3 times as long which is why I hate coloring.

For the Lapis arc I also added tones. It was not as annoying as coloring, but it still took me twice as long as an average panel because there was so much layering to be done between the water/lapis’ wings/backgrounds. It was not fun.

Step 5) Dialogue

After I finish the lines for ALL the panels, or at least 50%, I start going back in and finally adding dialogue and details. I do the dialogue all at once because it allows me to view the flow more naturally. I end up reading and re-reading the panels several times to make sure there are no repeating words and that it flows more or less like a normal conversation would.

This takes about… eh… an hour or so for an average 20-panel comic?

The bulk of my editing is done at this stage. I will go back through and re-read the finished comic several times and try to weed out weird details or typos.

If I find none, I post it to Patreon, because it’s a guarantee that I will find 3 more immediately afterwards. That’s how posting art to social media works. Also, many of my Patreon patrons are usually kind enough to point out any typos I’ve missed. (MediBang doesn’t have a spellcheck so don’t judge me too harshly…)

And that’s….. it. I post to Patreon, make any last-minute fixes if I have to, and then queue everything to tapas and tumblr.

And then I immediately begin to worry about the next comic. Because… that’s how it works.

I understand it’s not exactly a professional process. That’s because I’m not a professional! I’m self-taught, and this comic is meant to be for fun, not for profit. If I make a Season-finale comic or a season-start comic, I typically go through the same steps, except I add thumbnailing to the mix (drawing tiny copies of the pages on post-it notes to see how many pages I can fix it to.)

Hope that was… educational? I don’t know. Either way…

#Anonymous #chekhov answers #process #how to #faq

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tyrantisterror · 3 years

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THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE SAFE! YOU THOUGHT THAT THE TIME OF MONSTERS WAS AT AN END! BUT YOU WERE WRONG, FOR NOW YOU MUST WITNESS…

THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST 3-D!!!

That’s right, it’s back! Celebrating the publication of The Atomic Time of Monsters Volume 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth! (which in turn completes The Ballad of Tyrantis arc for this series), I’m holding another monster design jam. The third of such jams, in fact!

Like the first A.T.O.M. Create a Kaiju Contest, the aim of this contest is to create kaiju that would fit within the setting of my big kaiju story series, The Atomic Time of Monsters. Think of it as me letting you into my sandbox to play with my toys for a bit, or like you’re being put in the director’s chair of a new ATOM-verse kaiju movie. That means your entry does have to fit into ATOM’s world, which in turn means that yes, there are limitations to your creativity here. But limitations can be good sometimes - they can make us explore options we wouldn’t consider when given completely free rein to do what we want!

(also you don’t have to make a three dimensional image or anything, the title’s just a pun on how the third movie in a monster movie franchise will often be a 3-D film)

Read below the cut to learn the rules and whatnot:

THE RULES:

1. You are limited to one entry per person. Work hard and make your entry count!

2. Your kaiju must have some sort of description of its physical appearance and its personality - you can submit a drawing or a written description (or both!) for the physical appearance depending on what you’re most comfortable with. Using the same template/format as my official ATOM Kaiju Files (https://horrorflora.com/monster-menageries/atom-kaiju-files/) isn’t required, but it was cool when people did it in the last contest, so feel free to do so this time too!

3. The kaiju you create must specifically be created for this contest - no repurposing characters you made for other, wildly different stories. This is not “trick TT into drawing/canonizing my main OC” time.

4. The kaiju must fit the setting and aesthetics of ATOM. I’ll explain this in more detail down below.

5. The kaiju should add something meaningful to the world of ATOM. The more unique and interesting your kaiju is, the more likely you will win the contest.

6. Don’t make your kaiju too dependent on pre-existing ATOM characters - no “Tyrantis’s long lost evil brother who’s the strongest kaiju in the world.” These should be to Tyrantis’s story what War of the Gargantuas is to Godzilla’s movies – heroes (well, monsters) of another story in the same world.

THE REWARDS:

I will make pencil sketches of the top 5 entries in the contest.

I will then make fully rendered illustrations (lineart, colors, & shading) of the top three entries.

The winning entry will be made into a model ala the ones I’ve been making for ATOM’s core 50 monsters, which can then be shipped to the person who created it (should they be able to cover the shipping costs). That’s right, your kaiju could be brought to life in THREE GLORIOUS TECHNICOLOR DIMENSIONS! (Hey, we worked the gag title in to the prizes!)

THE DEADLINE: All entries must be submitted by July 3rd, 2021. You can submit it here on tumblr, via the horror flora e-mail, or any other channel you know how to reach me through. I’m in a lot of places.

THE GUIDELINES (TO HELP YOUR ENTRY FIT THE RULES AND WIN):

The smartest thing you could do if you want to win this contest is familiarize yourself with the world of ATOM by, y’know, reading all the material I’ve published on the subject. In addition to the many kaiju files that are free to read on horrorflora.com, there are now TWO, count ‘em, TWO novels in this series for you to peruse, both of which establish many of the rules of the setting as well as its general themes and tone! You can get them in either paperback or e-book formatting (I’d recommend the former over the latter since I lack the technology to make a really nice ebook, but if money is an object, the kindle version is only $1). Here’s the links again if you missed them:

Vol. 1: Tyrantis Walks Among Us!

Vol. 2: Tyrantis Roams the Earth!

However, since I know reading a bunch of stuff is, y’know, not something everyone is inclined to do, I’ll jot some good bullet points for you in an attempt to outline how ATOM works in a brief, easily digested way:

ATOM is an homage to the monster fiction of the 1950’s and 60’s (i.e. the Atomic Age), and is set in those two decades, albeit an alternate universe version of them where, y’know, monsters and space aliens exist. If you aren’t familiar with the monster fiction I’m referring to, there will be some reference material provided at the end of this post along with some recommendations for further research.

Kaiju/giant monsters in ATOM work under very specific rules. There’s a full description of those rules at this link, but here’s the jist:

ATOM Kaiju are created created by the radiation of a mineral called Yamaneon, which naturally converts harmful radiation into its own unique energy. In natural circumstances, it takes hundreds of years of exposure to Yamaneon radiation for a creature to become fully transform into a kaiju (luckily, Yamaneon radiation slows the aging process while speeding up the healing process). However, an explosive burst of energy - such as the geothermal and kinetic energy released by an earthquake, or the blast of a nuclear weapon - can speed up the process, turning a normal animal into a kaiju within a matter of seconds.

All ATOM kaiju can heal grievous wounds within minutes or even seconds, are supernaturally strong and durable, and can convert harmful radiation to harmless energy that they then feed off of. Kaiju do not have an equivalent of old age, and can theoretically live forever (though their violent lifestyle means that few do).

ATOM Kaiju generally don’t need to eat unless they are severely injured, getting most of the energy they need from solar or geothermal radiation - but many still have instincts that drive them to seek out food from time to time.

Most ATOM kaiju stand roughly 100 feet tall (depending on their body shape), i.e. smaller than the original 1954 Godzilla. There are exceptions to this rule - younger kaiju can be smaller, while exceedingly old kaiju can be significantly larger, but these are rare.

In general, ATOM kaiju are significantly more intelligent and emotionally complex than people expect animals to be, though most are incapable of speech or complex tool use. There’s a reason ATOM Kaiju Files have a “personality” section.

Most ATOM Kaiju are tooth and claw fighters - ranged weapons are a rarity in this setting.

While the terrestrial monsters in ATOM look strange, they are intended to fit within the taxonomy of animals in reality - reptiles, mammals, fish, arthropods, molluscs, etc.

ATOM’s mesozoic era was dominated by a fictional clade of crocodile-relatives called retrosaurs, which are based on the outdated paleoart that one would find in the 1950’s/60’s fiction - i.e. when dinosaurs were viewed as trail dragging lizards instead of strange birds. You can learn more about retrosaurs here (https://horrorflora.com/2016/11/15/atom-kaiju-file-bonus-a-guide-to-retrosaurs/).

Kaiju appear on every continent in ATOM, but certain areas tend to be dominated by different types.

North America is mainly besieged by retrosaur kaiju and giant arthropods.

East Asia is technically also mainly plagued by retrosaurs and big arthropods, though they tend to look more fantastical and mythic - and, often, oddly well suited to being portrayed by a person wearing a monster suit.

Russia is beset by prehistoric monsters that seem to come from the Cenozoic, particularly the Ice Age.

Western Europe is plagued by creatures that vaguely resemble creatures from myth, if they were also prehistoric. Dragon-y lizards, fiery birds, etc.

Towards the mid-way point of ATOM’s timeline, earth is invaded by a coalition of aliens from different solar systems called the Beyonder Alliance, and as a result a bunch of alien monsters can be found on earth.

Mars and Venus both host (or hosted in Mars’s case) animal life. The surviving Martians colonized Venus, and sent some of their kaiju guardians to earth to help us fend off the Beyonders (who are responsible for the destruction of Mars’s ecosystem). Martian and Venusian kaiju have specific anatomical quirks, which you can see by looking at these kaiju files:

Venusians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/03/atom-kaiju-file-29-karamtor/

Martians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-39-kemlasulla/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-40-podritak/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-41-sombarvot/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-38-ullawdra/

Giant robots exist in ATOM, but are big, bulky, and incredibly expensive. Fancy beam weapons also exist, but are similarly clunky - there are no sleek, elegant machines in ATOM.

Since the fiction ATOM takes inspiration from was made at a time when interplanetary travel was only just beginning to be possible, its scope is significantly smaller than modern sci-fi. Alternate universes/dimensions were pretty uncommon because the idea of alien planets still held a lot of wonder to it. So, as a general rule, don’t try to go farther than the one galaxy.

ATOM is a setting for stories that are focused on humanity learning to coexist with monsters, rather than humanity destroying them. A certain level of sympathy is put into almost every creature of its canon, even the ones that are meant to be villains.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Here is a playlist of 1950′s monster movie trailers.

Here is some reference material from various monster comics of the 50′s and 60′s.

Good movies to track down to understand ATOM’s inspiration and tone include Ghidorah the 3 Headed Monster, Son of Godzilla, Destroy All Monsters, Them!, The Black Scorpion, 20 Million Miles to Earth, Gamera, The Giant Claw, and The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra.

And here’s the intro cutscenes for all the different giant monsters in the PS2 videogame War of the Monsters.

#The Atomic Time of Monsters #The ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest 3D

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comicaurora · 4 years

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How do you perspective? All of your fight scenes (as well as, notably, Kendal's little parkour across Windscrest) show the characters at the coolest angles. I've tried working with action figures (and goodness knows how often I've just contorted my hands in front of myself or run to a mirror), but foreshortening does NOT like to play nice.

Oh man, drawing figures at weird angles is always a major trial.

I don’t tend to use action figures because their range of motion doesn’t tend to actually accurately portray a human body’s flexibility. Instead, I get a lot of mileage out of the scribbly storyboarding phase. If you’re initially sketching a character as a loose collection of lines and oblongs, it can really help you sort out how an actual complex human body would look following the same arrangement.

This is what the storyboard for today’s page looked like:

Super scribbly, not very nice, some characters out of proportion, etc. But this is the phase where I figure out the complicated poses - you can see in the middle section, Alinua’s pose is fully sketched, even the parts that’d be outside the panel. This let me make sure her movement was overall coherent. It also lets me see where I’ll be dealing with foreshortening - her right arm and leg will need to be drawn in perspective.

The most complicated pose, of course, is the flip in panel 3. I actually drew most of that pose upside down because it made more sense to my eyes from that angle and I could better see what was and wasn’t making sense.

It gets across the general arc of movement, but you can see I had some trouble with his right arm - it’s hunched up and pulled back, putting a lot of torque on his torso, so his shoulders are twisted away from his hips. Some artists draw from a “skeleton” of simple lines and ball joints, and while I don’t tend to do that, it does help clarify the motion:

Like this, kinda. From here we can see how curved the pose is. This pose doesn’t have much foreshortening in it, except for the right leg, so when I start in on the lineart, that’s the only region I’ll need to really watch out for.

tadah! mostly follows the sketch, with a few adjustments for proper scaling and fluidity of motion.

But for how complicated this pose is, it doesn’t really deal with much foreshortening. He’s pretty stretched out, and the angle’s not too complex. That parkour page you mentioned was a MUCH bigger pain in the ass. Here’s what some of the storyboard looked like for THAT page:

Yikes. But some of these actually demonstrate a foreshortening trick I’ve learned, most notably this mess:

Notice the spiraling squiggles on the arm and leg? Sometimes when you’re drawing a limb foreshortened by the camera, it helps to think of it like a cylinder you’re drawing circles or spirals around the outside of. From a side view, those circles or spirals would be kinda far apart, but if you’re looking at it head-on, they’ll appear much closer together. Then, once you squiggle something that looks vaguely right, you can draw the actual lineart over it, using that squiggly cylinder approach as a guideline:

Doesn’t FULLY line up to the storyboard because I had to use proper anatomical proportions in this stage, but it helped keep the pose nominally coherent.

By the way, some of these poses actually changed when I went in to do the lineart. For instance, the one in panel 2 looks really cool in the storyboarding stage, but when I started lining it I realized the legs were angled way too far forward for how the torso was oriented. It would’ve looked cool, but it wouldn’t have felt right.

Overall, when building this skillset, I’d recommend starting with life-drawing and going from there, since that’ll give you a more intuitive feel for human anatomy and flexibility. That way, when you’re doing the storyboarding phase, you’ll be able to tell what does and doesn’t feel right when you’re laying out the pose. At that point, the lineart is just icing - you’ve already sketched out the movement you need.

#aurora #asks #art

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dirtreally · 5 years

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top 5 manga/doujins

okay i spent a lot of time thinking about this and i don’t think i can really rank them in any significant way other than the order that they popped into my head after reading this and hopefully that will speak for itself

1. Fukaboku

its fuckiiiiiiiiin fukaboku babeyyyyyyyy!!!! the first chapter of this dropped a couple of months after i began understanding myself as nb and it just continued to kill it for like 8-ish chapters afterwards, during which i ended up finding the courage to actually think of myself as an nb person rather than [assigned gender]. i feel really weird about putting this as #1 cuz as the months go on, it’s becoming increasingly clear that what i want from fukaboku and what it wants to do with its premise are gonna become harder and harder to resolve with each other, but it’ll always have a special hold over me cuz it was the #1 thing i was looking forward to reading every day for like 6-ish months www

2. My story of being loved

yeah this kinda sucks. i reread it just now and one of the dramatic plot twists actually made me burst out laughing. but there’s something really sincere and sweet about it?? i don’t like reading into works in this way but it really does feel like the author just wrote this to communicate something to a specific type of person in the most blunt way possible aka a thinly-veiled author insert character who spends most of the oneshot reacting to the other girl. i think a lot of why i like this one so much is cuz even all of its’ weird writing decisions feel like the manga tripping over its own balls because it’s so excited to sell you this specific story

3. Her Pet

this one’s a little rough because while it’s not overtly horny about its high school-aged cast there’s definitely a lot of horny undertones to it and i dont want to eat my own ass for her pet because its absolutely written and marketed with that in mind but it’s also the only story about bullying that i’ve ever actually connected to specifically because of this, because of how it shows how bullying fucks up your ideas of romance, intimacy, and sexuality, because of how it showed a character who got abused for so long that she was unable to create an intimate relationship with an entirely different person without recreating aspects of that abuse, because of how even the happy ending where she gets over all of this has her relapse into this sort of thinking (its played off as kind of a joke but it still sticks out in my mind a lot because MAN). it’s genuinely a really dense piece of work, narratively, but it’s really worth it and imo it’s one of the best manga/comic/manhwa out there about abuse because even though it’s steeped in melodrama all of the neat narrative choices about the aftereffects of gayoon’s shitty school life bleed into the text in a bunch of really subtle ways? there’s definitely some narrative tension into Wanting To Do A Melodrama With A Whacky Slightly Horny Marketable Hook and Wanting To Be Tasteful And Frank About It(which, to its credit, is the one that wins out most of the time) but it gets resolved really well by the time the whole thing ends off.

4. Girl’s last tour

If girl’s last tour didn’t exist i absolutely wouldn’t be doing art right now. I spent 2 years feeling extremely exhausted with contemporary pop art (both in anime/manga and broader pop culture) and images in general because i felt like i was looking at the same images repeated ad infinitum reduced into the barest of shapes like some night in the woods type thing. artistically, girl’s last tour felt like the one thing that actually understood what i was going through. reading the manga, yuuri and chiito are both drawn as these vague shapes that are definitely meant to be people but feel like they are animated by the wind rather than by like, muscles, or something. their shapes bleed into each other, and into their surroundings, and it feels like if you poked a spoon into any page of the manga you could stir it around and see these shapes swirl into each other before slowly becoming even more indecipherable. even the architecture feels vague, meant to give off the IMPRESSION of a building/monolith in such a way that it sometimes feels like the drawings are barely holding themselves together. like if you looked at a road too hard it would break in half. this is a really hard thing to communicate but i hope that you get what i am saying. the art of GLT felt like it embodied the same feeling i had for years at that point, where i felt like my lineart was barely holding myself together, and if i let my guard down for a second i would spill into the floors and drains of the buildings around me and only be able to exist by being acted upon. with that in mind, it was absolutely lifechanging that the actual narrative content of glt is about two people who are alienated from their environment in every meaningful way and no doubt have the same variety of brain shit i do, but are still able to find happiness even just by being alive. There’s a longer version of this part where i go on to talk about what the narrative actually does and the larger tkmiz mythos surrounding it, and how THAT became it’s own obsession that used to be an extension of my love for glt but now exists as the main thing and w glt as an extension of THAT. but this is maybe getting too long and i think you probably get the idea now. i know this is a lot coming from someone who only does one okay art thing every other month but like even though it makes me feel like shit 90% of the time drawing stuff is the one part of my life i feel like i actually have some Ws in, and without glt and without tkmiz’s larger work in general, i wouldn’t even have that much going on

5. vector spectacle

to be honest, vector spectacle isn’t nearly my favourite touhou doujin(at chirei no contest), but it feels so special just because of how unlike anything else i’ve read it is. There’s so much energy in the pages, it’s basically a pop-up book. i can feel the almost nauseating, manic, energy bouncing from page to page, that itself feels directed at nothing and everything all at once; at whatever point in time this was drawn, wherever in the world it was drawn, the person who drew this felt this exact emotion

#wickedhermit

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nom-the-skel · 5 years

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Sans Tutorial?

Last year someone sent an ask for a tutorial about how I draw Sans, but I have been pretty busy and not gotten around to making it! I don’t know how helpful this will be, because it turns out my technique is basically:

1. draw a circle

2. draw the rest of the skeleton

But anyway, I’ll post the steps for this picture here :3

I have picked up some good tips from tutorials but I don’t use them very much because some are too basic, some are too advanced, some are written too proscriptively, and usually the example art looks way better than what I’m doing if I follow along. So my tips may be a mix of too-obvious and not-adequately-explained, but perhaps a few beginner or intermediate level artists will find something useful here :3 I will assume you know what layers are and have software that can do layers. I use Paint Tool SAI, which is pretty affordable, and there are other programs that are free.

First I draw a circle where I want the skull to be. I don’t necessarily stick with this circle as I continue sketching. And one of the advantages of drawing digitally is that I can move parts around if it’s not working. If I’m planning out a complex picture, Sans will be a circle with two more circles for eyes and a vague cylinder/blob as a body, at first.

Then sketch in more detail. Fingers are important, and I often have to go back and refine the sketch of the hands in the middle of doing the lineart.

There are many different and valid styles for drawing Sans. I always draw his eyes as this sort of arch-like shape, like a half circle that’s stretched out vertically. Even if they’re half-lidded, I start with the whole eye shape (and if they’re half closed they tend to end up pretty rectangular).

In this picture, I made his legs too short, then too long, and you can see some artifacts of how they got moved around and adjusted. (I pretty much never draw him just standing there in full-body, I guess owo) It’s much easier to adjust things in a sketch than after it’s been lined, so take your time. If I wasn’t feeling confident, or if I wanted to make the linework easier, or if I wanted someone to approve the picture before I did lines, I would do another, more-refined sketch on top of this one. But I’ve been drawing a lot of Sanses over the past few years so I didn’t :3 I do have a brush for sketches that is not totally opaque.

(Beginner tip: If you’re using a serious art program, you can reduce the opacity of the sketch layer and draw the next sketch in a new layer on top. This is how you’ll do the linework too. I also put Sans’s legs on a separate layer when I was adjusting them in this pic. This is also a good time to adjust the framing of the picture; I usually drew it too small and off-center. This pic is a bit off-center because I thought I might add text on the right side about the steps. But then I didn’t.)

Next is lines. In Paint Tool SAI, I can have multiple layers in a folder and select the whole folder as “selection source” (so I can fill in the colors later). This makes it easy to use a Lineart layer for the smooth curve of Sans’s skull, and a regular Raster layer for the rest of the lines. Of course, make sure the line width is similar. (Being able to choose a selection source other than “current layer” or “whole image” is one of the advantages of SAI in my experience.)

I used thin lines here. I don’t always, but sometimes I try to use thin lines and add plenty of detail and I’m pretty pleased with it. (Often if I want to save some energy I use thicker, rough-textured lines, so that you won’t be able to tell so much where I got the curve of the skull wrong and then adjusted it.) When I first started drawing Sans, I gave him too many teeth. Then I overcompensated and gave him too few teeth. Now I’ve settled on about this many teeth. I like to draw bony, skeletal hands. For any bones, Google image search is your friend. You don’t need to know the proper name of the bone; just search for the body area + bones. I usually draw the nose hole a bit more simplified. I don’t always bother with the drawstring. Sometimes I give him a turtleneck sweater so I don’t have to draw a glimpse of collarbone, ribs, spine inside his shirt. Idk why his tibiae are so thick today owo

Flat colors and cel shading. I like to put a bright color that contrasts with the colors I’m using in the background, so I can easily see corners that got missed by the fill tool. Usually, I do multiple layers of the base colors, so that I won’t have to worry about the edges when shading. (All the color layers are collected in a folder. Not the bg though; if it’s complex it will have its own folder.) Here, I used a shading layer for each base color layer (the shading layer is a clipping layer, so the shade color won’t be visible unless it’s overlapping its correct base color). I don’t like to be organized and label my layers, so I do the shading right after the base color, while I still remember what layer it’s on :3 You can also do the flat colors on one layer (or just in one folder) and then put a multiply or shading layer as a clipping layer over that for the shading (many fewer layers to deal with but you must pay more attention to the staying inside the lines). Aside from the sketches, I still haven’t used any brush other than the default pen. You can of course use more layers and more colors for fancier cel shading. I have used a few extra darker shades on Sans’s neck.

More shading. I usually choose between cel-shading and more shading, but I tried adding a little bit more here since it’s a tutorial. It doesn’t make a huge difference though; if I hadn’t done cel-shading, I would have made the blendy shading stand out more. You can do each color individually (here’s a tutorial about that), but you can also make a clipping layer over all the colors (flat colors on one layer or all the color layers in a folder) and make it a multiply or shade layer, and shading for all the colors there. I like to fill in this shading layer with white so it blends more between the light and dark. This is also a great technique for adding shading to something that has a pattern on its surface (e.g. you can add fur texture to your rainbow cat without painting the texture in every color of the rainbow). This is where I use brushes I adapted myself or stole from other artists :3 and another place where SAI has an advantage because it’s specifically designed to be good at painting. I lightened the background and added a little shadow (blurred with the watercolor brush).

Extra cross-hatchy lines. When I do thin lines, I like to add these lines as a little extra shading/detail. I usually do them before color, and on a separate layer so I can keep them out of the “selection source” when filling in flat colors. This time I did them at the end. They add a little texture to everything and I think they work well on the hand bones.

#nomtheskel art

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unproduciblesmackdown · 6 years

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hey man your comic stuff?? fucking amazing do you have any tips for a novice child artist such as myself

hmm!!! thats a good question if i have any advice at all…i dont really draw things in comic form that often because of how slow i am…its a whole project for me lol

also natch im just an amateur at all of this vs people who like…pay attention to how to do things really well and/or draw comics on a regular schedule &/or get paid for it and all. so seeing this i was immediately trying to think of like, advice ive seen from random professionals on twitter & stuff & i’ve tried to moreso shake it down to the stuff I’M actually doing when i draw a comic. which is a bit tricky because of my small sample size & the fact that i dont have any kind of consistent process or technique unifying all the comic-type stuff i draw

like sometimes its just a few floating sequential drawings and other times is definitely more like, really thinking of it in terms of how i’m going to structure it in Comic Form & use the format to adjust my presentation of whatever idea i have

like i know ppl whose Job (officially or just by their own standards) to do a bunch of comics pages will do a script of scenes to decide what goes on what page and sort dialogue / action into panels & describe how things will look etc…and then do like maybe really rough layout pre-sketches, then the first rough sketch for a page, an optional more cleaned up sketch layer on top of that, and then the final lineart

i sorrrt of do a version of that, in that i am generally sitting on a Comic Idea for a while before i even start getting into the business of thinking through how it’ll actually work. i have to make sure that im “committed” enough to the idea to wanna make more than one drawing for it, and that i think i have at least a vague notion of how i could put it into a comic. sometimes i DO end up just putting the notion into a single drawing or condensing it into like, 2-3 lil floating drawings or w/e. coz a lot of the times the idea starts out really vague, often with one “moment” that serves as the whole inspiration & that i then try to build a scene/sequence around….a lot of the details beyond that can be really vague in my mind, like the setting or dialogue or who’s involved or what happens or the pacing or extra events or etc…basically Everything is real amorphous for a while

so yea step 1 is me having this one idea and trying to decide if building a scene around it would be a better way to present it vs just having one drawing, & if i think i can actually effectively carry it out….which is in reality even less fancy than it sounds…i just sit on an idea for a while & never get around to actually focusing on it / putting down any of the thoughts abt it that im formulating. but the upshot of me putting it off for forever is that i do end up with a kind of mental script / layout for a comic before i start it…..but even the extensiveness / format of these unwritten scripts varies a lot for me

like, a few times when i have made something that’s maybe longer than just one page &/or something ive been mulling over for an extra long amt of time (which tends to be stuff that is starting out w/ heavier than usual ideas) i’ll like, actually write down what happens page by page, even plan out specific panels, maybe even put down a few rough sketches of certain parts. i’ll have the Main Moment which is the idea that started the whole thing in the first place, but what tends to happen is i’ll come up w other moments that i think could lead up to / frame / follow the main moment, and i pretty much just decide how they all fit into one cohesive piece. so what my “rough drafts” look like for these more extensively planned ones—still really not that exhaustive, i only put things to paper when im basically done enough w my ideas to be just about ready to start actually making them—can vary in their actual formats (e.g. simple chronological bullet points of events, a few drawings, a rough sketch of how the whole thing might look), the core of it is basically just me finding a way to nail down how i’m going to arrange the Moments i have and how i’m going to lead one into the other…….like for things with enough pages / panels, i’ll tend to focus on which Moment will end each page &/or each line of panels, then have an idea of which other Moments i’ll need to put on which of those pages, and kinda figure out how to pace things

again that all sounds like maybe i have a real process…..I Do Not

im kinda lucky in that i think i have a decent sense for composition without having to struggle over it too much. so a lot of times i can leave a lot of that up to be felt out as im actually doing the rough lineart for the first time. i also often don’t nail down panel arrangement that carefully & also make it up as i go along a bit, which is probably not something anyone should emulate. someone was saying something about how some certain page layout of like, 3-something-something panel rows looks best, i dont know. i’m guessing, as with all things, nobody can say “always do this / never do that,” but i think staggering odd/even numbers of panels in each row is always a good guess. just makes it easier for them to read more distinctly at least, surely

sometimes i DO think about certain panels when i wanna frame a certain “shot” in a very specific way. but im just kind of doing whatever. i know vague rules like that wide shots / negative space slows down the pace, vs tightly cropped / small panels / packed w a lot of visual info tends to read as a faster pace, more chaotic. i dont quite go too wild about that sort of thing tho, because for me as a reader, a lot of times really tight shots that are like cutting between 5000 different angles rly fast all in a row, sometimes it is absolutely unreadable to me, as in i do not understand the visual info at all. it feels like the equivalent of how action movie editing keeps hanging on to the “incoherency = intensity” vs just me tuning out until the scene is over & missing details b/c i just am not getting anything out of it

thats not much of a factor for me coz i dont really ever do things with extended sequences of movement / action or whatever. i’ll keep things in one place. i’ll like to do smaller, “quicker” panels moreso to like, show simultaneousish details / to extend one moment…..occasionally i do Big Panels for a moment of higher intensity / impact too. btw putting a High Intensity moment in a super tiny panel is always really funny for the contrast of it all. i dont think ive ever done it, but it is

ummm…….also planning where your speech bubbles will go is good. i dont do that enough, but i should. most of the reason i dont have a more proper, organized process to anything i draw is that i just dont have the focus / patience to slow down for More Planning vs just going ahead and drawing it. jokes on me, since some quick vague planning can make it a lot easier on yourself vs just diving in and struggling w something for ages

uhhh also since im not that fantastic or mindful of panel layout? sometimes i’ll make a point of just having uniform rectangle panels of the same size/shape, so i only have to really worry about the layout within the frame. this is mostly good obv for things with not that much shift in pacing throughout it or action or whatever…you lose the advantage of how panel sizes can affect the tone of a shot or something & probably cant get that detailed in ur drawings but that is often Fine By Me

when i do use the uniform rectangle structure though, i kinda have to focus more on each individual panel, vs like, knowing ok, these three moments are going on this page, i have a vague idea of what’ll connect them, just make up the individual panels as you go along. this does mean that i have to kinda think more about what justifies each panel….how its different from the ones before & after it or how i might want it to be similar to “hold” a shot for a beat or w/e or draw focus to a small movement, what’s actually going into each panel, if i can/should condense two panels into one, etc. its still a lot of playing it by ear, i dont have solid rules of how i think i should do it each time

even when i do have a like whole plan for something im drawing i’ll often make more changes as im actually making it. sometimes its deciding something would be more effective, sometimes it’s just “hey this would work too & be easier,” and thats definitely fine. nobody knows the change you made, and Easier isn’t necessarily Worse anyways. convenience is good where you can get it

ive also definitely had specific comic artists formatting/framing styles in mind when i specifically wanted to use that while drawing my own stuff. like the way i’ll draw maybe a kind of horror vibe (more diagonal lines / “fractured” panels than i’d normally use, quick tiny shots of different smaller details, that kinda stuff) is gonna be different from when its a calm & quiet tone. where i dont really get too creative with the panels really & keep them pretty steady

and then that one time i did a largely nonsequential sort of panel collage b/c the marge simpson anime gave me great inspiration for how to combine & present a bunch of vague notions i had floating around all into one page. it was a good accomplishment & thats unsurprising because the inspiration i was using was That Good. thank god we can all benefit from each others good ideas and knowledge & work & all that. it does help to jump on a feeling of “wow what a cool comic i wish i could make something like that.” just go ahead and make something like that…

ummm this is all on the technical side-ish still but i dont really know what to say abt the kind of stuff that makes me wanna draw a comic in the first place vs just putting the idea into a regular single drawing…usually it Is kind of a more nuanced moment that i think would be better presented within some amount of context and buildup and all that. i basically exclusively draw emotions….and sometimes theyre better shown with some amount of action/dialogue, or at least a few different shots or something. i dont know if this area is helpful information or anything anyone would benefit from knowing about, or even if i have anything to say about it…is it all self evident maybe? idk! i do think i communicate emotions best through comics…not that each one is “here is my mood!” or talking about me at all, but i was for example trying to communicate about an abstract emotion, i think i can draw about it better than talk or write about it or anything. i DO sometimes draw more directly from my own specific feelings/experiences for things, but mostly when i think it can be relevant…i cant really do anything all that directly autobiographical, even casual diary comics or whatever. thats what my text posts are for… but i have been interested in how to convert these huge emotional issues that i’ve been v familiar with into a few pages or panels and how to present its impact in the simplest, straightforward ways i can manage…sometimes i think its worked for sure…..i feel like i gave a more Relatable sense to a certain experience by putting it in comic form than any of the times ive discussed it as a personal thing at length via text. like i said i communicate best via comics probably, despite not drawing them all that much coz im too damn slow lmao

speaking of, i’ve kind of been like “what a waste” abt the fact that i dont have like, a proper approach or regular strategy to thinking up comics before i draw them, but i think theres something actually okay to be taken from that lol……just that i know if i got too caught up in trying to plan it all out perfectly before getting into actually drawing it, i’d be making it into a bigger project and slowing myself down even more & i’d risk dropping it partway through or just never getting started at all. so if i have a less than perfect end result, at least i have an end result, and ive finally got that one idea out of my head in some way. and i feel like some of my comics do work out decently enough….a good handful of times ive been surprised w how well some ppl receive them

so i think it is good to just go ahead and dive in. i did that once w an idea i’d been sitting on for like half a year, and i think it turned out good enough. i just knew i could easily spend months and months more turning over all the details, which might make it Better, but would also mean that yknow, i’d never actually get around to making it b/c of feeling like it had to be ideal. so i simplified it a bit, used a uniform panel layout, did little drawings, and just got it drawn out in an afternoon or two. and now at least it exists lol. and ive sort of come back to the same idea in a way…if i feel like it turns out i wanna elaborate on something more, i can just make another pic/comic built on the same theme, who’s gonna care or stop me

i also try to focus on what lines are/aren’t necessary to avoid things being confusing or just pointlessly cluttery….this isnt a big issue b/c i dont often bother w bgs. dont emulate that either lol…….but im not doing any Serious art so its no big deal to me if im not “good” or not progressing as spectacularly as i might. i dont need my drawing abilities to be that amazing here. but bgs still serve a purpose beyond being a “skill” or whatever so im trying to include them more, aka occasionally, at all. still hardly ever. but sometimes you at least need like one halfassed establishing shot yknow. anyways

mmm this has all been kinda vague and i’m trying to think if there’s anything more specific i could/should talk about!! i dont know. i dont have a good perspective on what its like to look at my art while not being me lol & what ppl might think or what stands out to them or whatever. rip

sorry this is so long, i dont really have ppl wanting to know abt my Processes or drawing thoughts or whatever so i’m kinda jumping at the chance to talk about this sort of stuff after having been actually prompted to. but i dont know if i’ve said anything at all!! i dont know if any of it has been helpful

“tldr; i dont really know what im doing, but go ahead and jump into actually making them as opposed to feeling like youre ready / you know the best way to make a page, because nobodys ever ready or can say This Is The Best Possible Version so just go ahead and use whatever process feels like it makes your life easier, while still actually making the damn comic” is my whole thing, i guess

i dunno, if there was some specific thing you wanted to know abt that i didnt talk about / talk about well here, feel free to ask me to specify because i totally will, which is both an invitation and a warning obviously

sorry this is so long everybody…….writing an essay & by the end of it not being sure if ive given any info at all is part of my whole Thing

#long post //#jfc this is even longer than i thought #i dont know if theres anytning helpful about this at all #maybe its that ‘’if you think i’m good its good news for you b/c you probably know what youre doing just as much if not more than i know #what i’m doing’’

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comicteaparty · 5 years

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August 10th-August 16th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from August 10th, 2019 to August 16th, 2019. The chat focused on the following question:

What is your process for planning out the paneling/layout of each comic page?

kayotics

I’ve finally gotten my process down to a process that works for me. For Ingress Adventuring Company https://www.ingress-comic.com/ I start with scripting the whole chapter out. Step two is thumbnailing the whole chapter out, so I can figure out pacing and paneling. I started to do thumbnailing on sheets of printer paper, which has been easier to figure out my drawings and to see how the comic flows on paper. Once that’s done it’s pretty straight forward. Panel borders in pencils > rough sketch & balloon placement > letters and tight sketch in pencils > ink letters > ink bubbles and borders > ink the rest of the page. Then I scan it and do the colors. With the thumbnail process I kind of do the chapter twice in pencils but it ended up being way easier in the long run, since I hate doing panel layouts and doing that work in the beginning is way easier.

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

Afraid there's no scripting for https://oldmanandtheseawitch.tumblr.com/. It's all pretty much in my head but I go over it literally every day, and I have a few roleplays archived to keep things on the right track, but that's about it. Thumbnails are done in big batches. Last batch was about 20+ pages done at once. Thumbnailing is also where I figure out composition and such. Just detailed enough to give me the idea of what I want, with enough leeway to do as I please on the page itself. Thumbnails done, I make a batch of empty pages, and go in and make all the panels for the 20+ pages. Since I already know the composition from the thumbnails and I have digital guides set up on each page, that's super easy. With all of those done, then I just go back in, do rough sketches for each page. Cleaner than the thumbnails but not too clean yet. Once the rough sketches are done, this is actually where I'll add text and balloons, so that I know what the bubbles will be hiding and don't have to waste extra time. After that, I do as much in large batches as I can, usually cleanup sketches, then inks, maybe flat colors. But after that point, I just have to sit down to work on individual pages until they're done. And voila!

authorloremipsum

http://signsofthreecomic.webcomic.ws/comics/ For Signs of Three, I always start with the script, get the basic idea of what I'm going for in the page. Then panel layout and gesture sketches of people and the environment. THEN! BEFORE I START DETAIL SKETCHING! I LAY IN THE SPEECH BUBBLES. Seriously speech bubbles are critical to controlling how readable your page is and so so many people don't seem to see that. They must lead from one bubble and panel to the next in an easy to understand way or your reader will get lost and confused. So I always make sure to put bubbles in during thumbnailing. After that it's just basic refining the sketch, lining, coloring, and shading.

AntiBunny

Typically in AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ I thumbnail a page first to decide what needs to happen. After that I look at those event and decide panel layout based on how best to depict them, factoring in what needs to fit, who needs to be there, and how time will pass. I'd say time is the most important aspect, followed by emphasis, and then content. Typically bigger panels depict more time passing, but that's not a concrete rule. A big panel can depict a very short moment in time. The amount of population has a big play in that as well. A lot of action in a big panel can be a short moment in time that's just heavily emphasized. A big panel with very little movement depicted is great for dwelling on a single moment, which is great for slowing down the pace of reading.

heroesofcrash

I used to not have a script at all, but now I tend to write out scripts in advance. I keep a four-panel format in mind (2x2) when I write a strip, but I'll sometimes combine or split panels depending on the flow of the story. (I'll place some sample strips below, showing a "default" 2x2 strip, and a few that combine or split panels based on that structure) I then draw guidelines in Manga Studio (I have the CD, not the digital version that became Clip Studio Paint) for where each panel will be. I put the dialogue in each panel, sometimes editing for space or to fit it nicer in a speech bubble. I can usually visualize how a speech bubble will generally fit in a scene; it's easier for me to draw around the bubble than to draw first and add the words later. After I sketch out the panels, I may move the words around to fit in the scene a little better. I may even tweak it a little when I draw the speech bubble around the text, if I don't like how the text fits in the bubble or how the bubble fits in the scene. As I mentioned earlier, here's two strips. One has four panels (which is the most common for me), the other has six. The latter is made by splitting the upper right panel into two skinny panels, and breaking the bottom half into three panels rather than two. Not only does it give me enough panels to do a complicated visual gag, but having panels with a similar layout next to each other makes the action easier to follow, and thus makes the gag flow better.

Desnik

For http://ask-a-warlock.tumblr.com/, I make tiny thumbnails to quickly go through layouts. I tend to have a few different ideas and doing small/quick is a lot easier on the revisions

LadyLazuli

For Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/) I've gotten into the habit of thumbnailing each chapter extremely roughly in a sketchbook, then bringing the pages into Photoshop and shifting the panels around to improve the flow throughout the chapter. I put in rough dialogue bits to anticipate balloons, then I get going on rough sketches and color placement in Procreate, then clean up and paint the sketches, then bring them back into Photoshop to finalize the page. It's honestly really haphazard, just because I tend to change details and dialogue around a lot, depending on what I feel is working/failing - but that core chapter flow doesn't change too much, just so I don't get caught needing more pages in one part. So... I keep the roughs very rough, but I adhere to them quite strongly? The details are where things get experimental (edited)

JUNK

I am a fool who hasn't been doing thumbnails lately, so my process is the typical script>sketch>inks>tone.

MJ Massey

I start with my storyboards, which are just skethcy first drafts of the pages in a sketchbook. I have a vague genreal story outline, but this is where I really figure things out--both the layouts and the script.

In my head, I tend to see things as if they were an animation, so I am usually trying to catch that sense of movement in the comic panels. I try to keep things interesting and thinking outside the typical grid layout, usually resulting in some pretty crazy stuff. It's easier with action scenes, but I try to mix up everything. I do my final pages on 9x12 bristol (I used to work on 11x14 but that was...too big for markers), but there are many times where I will scrap the storyboard and do something totally different for the final page, or add or take away things. But it's good to have that first draft down as an idea, it's easier to adjust from there if I need to

FeatherNotes

@LadyLazulii love your process ahhh!!!

LadyLazuli

@FeatherNotes MERCIIII

Nutty (Court of Roses)

For Court of Roses http://courtofroses.thecomicseries.com/ I mostly sketch out thumbnails, scan them in, and lineart/color. Like most of y'all, I have a general story outline, and specific scenes get more detail as I work closer to them. If there's a scene that has emotional hits and I want the right dialogue for it, I'll script it. If there's lots of exposition and detail, I'll script it. Just, largely winging it on my end!

Tuyetnhi

I usually work from loose script dialogue for a chapter, to get the feel for the page, then start thumbnailing. After thumbnailing tho, I redraw the thumbnails on csp, sketch, then change/define panel layout or render till finish. Often, my thumbnails don't give me enough info till I start the page. And that's good for me since it's still under a set guideline but I don't feel rigid on "Oh gotta make it exactly like this" or some sorts. Same goes with dialogue/scripts too since I tend to go back and correct panel layout if i don't think it was strong enough on the first go. Idk, I treat it more of a fluid process that I can go back and fix due to how I digitally paint/render things. Still the process depends on the page i'm working on, how strong the thumbnails are, dialogue, and color scheme theme I had with certain pages. Most of it is 40% gut feeling tho. Images shown here how I got OIYD! Ch. 2 - Page 15 to be to its finished form. [thumbnail-> Rough sketch -> add with color -> final render with dialogue]

ErinPtah (Leif & Thorn | BICP)

I took scans/notes about each step of the BICP page-making process back during chapter 5: http://www.bicatperson.com/comic/step-by-step/ ...and then again, seven years later, during chapter 28: http://www.bicatperson.com/comic/the-webcomic-page-making-process/ The art has gotten better, but the actual workflow...basically hasn't changed. (If it ain't broke...)

snuffysam

First I have the script for the entire book, which I'll have finished ahead of time. At the start of each chapter, I'll divide the upcoming script into pages based on how I want the comic to be paced - e.g. making sure the setup and punchline to a joke aren't on different pages, making sure there's not too much dialogue to read on a single page, etc. Then, when it comes time to do the page, I'll split things up into panels. That's pretty easy - I generally want to keep things to one line of spoken dialogue per panel, or one "action" per panel. Sometimes there'll be beat panels, sometimes two people will talk in one panel, but that's the general rule. Next I... put together the panels. I don't really use thumbnails to work this stuff out - important panels or panels with more dialogue are bigger, less important panels or ones with less dialogue are smaller. I try to make sure panels don't intrude on each others' vertical space, because i've always found that complicates things in a web medium - but that just means there's less for me to worry about. I make sure the panel layout is different from the previous page, and if there's an action I need to emphasize I'll do something weirder than just a rectangle. If there's not enough space on one page for the panel sizes I want, I'll make it a double-length or triple-length page. As for the actual artwork - I try to make sure the reader's eye line is led along the page. So panels on the left would have the characters generally facing to the right, and panels on the right would have the characters generally facing downward and to the left. I try to leave enough space for word bubbles - and in general, the characters on right panels will be placed lower than characters on left panels, because i want the speech bubbles to move downward as you read across a row. And, well, that's basically it!(edited)

authorloremipsum

finally someone who considers the eyeflow (am joking, mostly)(edited)

snuffysam

i didn't always, but a reviewer once told me how one specific action scene was really difficult for him to parse because the eye flow was just completely in the wrong direction, nearly every panel. so since then i've been making a conscious effort about it :p it's tough when there's two characters up against a wall and you need the page to flow the other direction from how they're standing though, lol.

#ctparchive #comics #webcomics #indie comics #comic chat #comic discussion #creator interview #comic creator interview #creator babble #comic tea party #ctp

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tyrantisterror · 5 years

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REVENGE OF THE A.T.O.M. CREATE A KAIJU CONTEST!

Eons ago, when the earth was young, I held the first A.T.O.M. Create a Kaiju Contest, and creators like YOU populated my activity page with a legion of giant monsters! Now, years later, in celebration of publishing the first volume of The Atomic Time of Monsters, the contest calls to us once again, and it’s only grown bigger and spikier with age. If you wish to once more ravage the world with atomic titans of your own design, then please, read on after the cut to discover the rules of this thrilling kaiju role call!

Ok, for clarity’s sake I’ll drop the goofy melodramatic tone.

THE RULES:

1. This time around, you are limited to one entry per person. Last time we produced 60+ kaiju, which was awesome, but this time around I want to narrow the scope a little bit - especially if I end up doing something crazy and end up drawing them all like last time, since my carpal tunnel syndrome afflicted hand just can’t do what it did those years ago. Work hard and make your entry count!

2. Your kaiju must have some sort of description of its physical appearance and its personality - you can submit a drawing or a written description (or both!) for the physical appearance depending on what you’re most comfortable with. Using the ATOM kaiju file template isn’t required, but it was cool when people did it in the last contest, so feel free to do so this time too!

3. The kaiju you create must specifically be created for this contest - no repurposing characters you made for other, wildly different stories.

4. The kaiju must fit the setting and aesthetics of ATOM. I’ll explain this in more detail down below.

5. The kaiju should add something meaningful to the world of ATOM. What would be the point of having another fire-breathing t.rex monster? The more unique and interesting your kaiju is, the more likely you will win the contest.

6. The kaiju must be independent of the main plot of ATOM - not “Tyrantis’s long lost evil brother who’s the strongest kaiju in the world.” These should be to Tyrantis’s story what War of the Gargantuas is to Godzilla’s movies – heroes (well, monsters) of another story in the same world.

THE REWARDS:

I will make pencil sketches of the top 5 entries in the contest.

I will then make fully rendered illustrations (lineart, colors, & shading) of the top three entries.

THE DEADLINE: All entries must be submitted by August 9th, 2019. You can submit it here on tumblr, via the horror flora e-mail, or any other channel you know how to reach me through. I’m in a lot of places.

THE GUIDELINES (TO HELP YOUR ENTRY FIT THE RULES AND WIN)

The smartest thing you could do if you want to win this contest is familiarize yourself with the world of ATOM by, y’know, reading all the material I’ve published on the subject. In addition to the many kaiju files that are free to read on horrorflora.com, the first actual, factual novel in the series was published very recently (and, y’know, is the reason I’m holding this contest), which you can get from amazon in both paperback and/or kindle editions (I’d recommend the former over the latter since I lack the technology to make a really nice ebook, but if money is an object, the kindle version is only $1).

Kaiju/giant monsters in ATOM work under very specific rules. There’s a full description of those rules at this link, but here’s the jist:

Most ATOM Kaiju are tooth and claw fighters - ranged weapons are a rarity in this setting.

While the terrestrial monsters in ATOM look strange, they are intended to fit within the taxonomy of animals in reality - reptiles, mammals, fish, arthropods, molluscs, etc.

Kaiju appear on every continent in ATOM, but certain areas tend to be dominated by different types.

North America is mainly besieged by retrosaur kaiju and giant arthropods.

Russia is beset by prehistoric monsters that seem to come from the Cenozoic, particularly the Ice Age.

Western Europe is plagued by creatures that vaguely resemble creatures from myth, if they were also prehistoric. Dragon-y lizards, fiery birds, etc.

Venusians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/03/atom-kaiju-file-29-karamtor/

Martians:

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-39-kemlasulla/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-40-podritak/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-41-sombarvot/

https://horrorflora.com/2017/01/17/atom-kaiju-file-38-ullawdra/

Giant robots exist in ATOM, but are big, bulky, and incredibly expensive. Fancy beam weapons also exist, but are similarly clunky - there are no sleek, elegant machines in ATOM.

ATOM is a setting for stories that are focused on humanity learning to co-exist with monsters, rather than humanity destroying them. A certain level of sympathy is put into almost every creature of its canon, even the ones that are meant to be villains.

REFERENCE MATERIAL

Here is a playlist of 1950′s monster movie trailers.

Here is some reference material from various monster comics of the 50′s and 60′s.

Video of retrosaurs in action.

Finally, here’s the page for the original ATOM Create a Kaiju Contest, which has even more reference material for you to peruse.

#Revenge of the ATOM Kaiju Contest #The Atomic Time of Monsters #kaiju

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