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Kemet Please! A New Ancient Egyptian-themed webcomic

JabroskyJabrosky Registered User regular
edited February 2012 in Artist's Corner
Kemet Please

This is a series of cartoons with an ancient Egyptian theme, although I may expand the subject matter to other ancient or precolonial African civilizations. It will be sporadically updated although I am aiming for at least one cartoon per week.

In case DA isn't working, here's a sampling of my cartoons:

Pyramids are Copyrighted
pyramids_are_copyrighted_by_jabrosky-d4ono6s.jpg

Microsoft Curses
microsoft_curses_by_jabrosky-d4p0pky.jpg

Jabrosky on

Posts

  • squidbunnysquidbunny Registered User regular
    Do not use Papyrus.

    header_image_sm.jpg
  • MaydayMayday Cutting edge goblin tech Registered User regular
    squidbunny wrote:
    Do not use Papyrus.
    RACIST!

  • JabroskyJabrosky Registered User regular
    squidbunny wrote:
    Do not use Papyrus.

    Why not? It's the most appropriate font I could think of for an Egyptian webcomic.

  • squidbunnysquidbunny Registered User regular
    The very fact that I ignored your art and your writing to comment on the font should underscore how distracting and out of place it is here, but if that's really not enough....

    Do not use Papyrus because

    A) Design types hate Papyrus with an intensity possibly only second to that reserved for Comic Sans. It has been used and abused for decades for Save the Date cards and church cookbooks and terrible DIY menus and its sheer commonality has made it instantly read as amateurish, not to mention utterly uninteresting. Trying to be clever with "Oh! Papyrus = Egypt" just exacerbates its terrible obviousness.

    B) Papyrus is a title/display font; it was intended to headline for a more reserved, more readable workhorse font. It looks terrible in large blocks of copy and is hard on the eye.

    C) Papyrus is not only not a body type, it is most certainly not a comics-friendly font. Its overdesigned look does not play well with your simplistic art.

    Go to Blambot and pick yourself out something nice.

    header_image_sm.jpg
  • tastydonutstastydonuts Registered User regular
    edited February 2012
    Jabrosky wrote:
    squidbunny wrote:
    Do not use Papyrus.

    Why not? It's the most appropriate font I could think of for an Egyptian webcomic.

    Papyrus is very kitschy now... and unnecessarily used in most cases. (I'd say if you HAVE to use it, do it in your title an nowhere else).

    It can also be hard to read at certain sizes because it is very thin.

    Since it has a "rough" look it can come across as pixelated when used with flat backgrounds, especially the capital letters.

    You will draw more attention to your use of the font than the actual work you've done, especially if your target audience is the internets.

    edit: see Squidbunny's detailed post. I am very slow to respond and I just happened to see this on the home thing, lol...

    tastydonuts on
    “I used to draw, hard to admit that I used to draw...”
  • JabroskyJabrosky Registered User regular
    All right, I'll use a different font from now on. How does Arial or Times New Roman sound?

  • squidbunnysquidbunny Registered User regular
    I can't tell if you're being serious.

    header_image_sm.jpg
  • JabroskyJabrosky Registered User regular
    squidbunny wrote:
    I can't tell if you're being serious.

    I am.

  • HeartlashHeartlash Registered User regular
    What software are you using to make these comics? Are you starting with pencil/paper or using a mouse/tablet?

    It looks like you're pretty new to digital art, here are some basic tips based on your work:

    1. Your colors are over saturated, the blues, yellows, and browns are all so deep that they create a high contrast look that's hard on the eyes. Try using more pastel colors, it may help things flow together.

    2. Spend some time drawing from life. This is a common mantra here. Your anatomy lacks confidence (blob arms, blob feet, inconsistent proportions, etc). Practice practice practice.

    3. Vary your line width. Right now all the lines are exactly the same width, which hurts from a compositional standpoint and makes everything feel very flat. Try making more central foreground lines thicker, while making less important background lines thinner.

    4. Spend some time on composition before you start actually drawing. Do an extremely rough version just to get the staging done. Don't be afraid to scrap it and move things around if it's not coming off as interesting. Once you've figured out exactly where everything will go, then start actually rendering out your work.

    5. Study comics you like. Look at what they do and think about what separates your comic from there's.

    Good luck with your comic, you'll find yourself improving naturally the more you keep at it, so don't quit.

    My indie mobile gaming studio: Elder Aeons
    Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
  • JabroskyJabrosky Registered User regular
    Heartlash wrote:
    What software are you using to make these comics? Are you starting with pencil/paper or using a mouse/tablet?

    Pencil/paper for lineart, then colors in GIMP.
    2. Spend some time drawing from life. This is a common mantra here. Your anatomy lacks confidence (blob arms, blob feet, inconsistent proportions, etc). Practice practice practice.

    Are you referring strictly to the cartoons? I should note that I always relax my standards for "cartoony" drawings; my more serious work tends to look like this:

    kasaqa__kentake_of_kush_by_jabrosky-d4ndbt4.jpg

    But thanks for the suggestions and encouraging words. :)

  • HeartlashHeartlash Registered User regular
    Believe it or not, a better fundamental understanding of drawing realistic items is actually incredibly beneficial even when working on highly stylized drawings (like cartoons).

    It makes you more comfortable with proportion, perspective, etc. A good knowledge of the rules is required to properly bend them.

    My indie mobile gaming studio: Elder Aeons
    Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
  • MustangMustang Arbiter of Unpopular Opinions Registered User regular
    I would say it's more essential than beneficial. There are no shortcuts in this gig, no matter how stylised your work is.

    There are three types of people; Those who can draw; Those who can't draw and Those who can't draw but do anyway.

    You have to pick which one of those groups you want to be in. Right now you're in the latter group, but if you really want to do this properly you need to dedicate yourself to years of study. The more intense you are, the quicker the learning process is, but it still needs to be learned.

    I'm certain your close non-art friends tell you what a great drawer you are, but you have to filter that praise, it's really worth nothing. The only praise you can rely on is that which comes from your peers, even then you need to filter between those that hand it out readily and those that bust your balls at every turn.

    Sorry to sound like a dick, but getting some perspective on where you stand as an artist is incredibly important to how you develop, and right now I feel like you're in that "Oh yeah I can draw too" phase. I've been there and most people here have, but you really do need to admit you know nothing before you can start learning. I still know next to nothing compared to what I would consider good artists.

  • Spectre-xSpectre-x Rating: AWESOME YESRegistered User regular
    crossposted because that other thread is superfluous.
    Spectre-x wrote:
    Jabrosky wrote:
    Hello, Jabrosky, please use your previous thread for your designs.

    But I'm reserving that for my webcomic.

    That's nice but if you make a new thread for every little thing you're working on or want to show us, you'll clutter up the whole god damned forum.

    So people generally confine their art to one thread, with smaller stuff going in the doodle thread. You do realize that this is an internet forum and you can pretty much post as much art in your own thread as you want, right? There's a lot of room on the internet.

    So yeah, it's nice that you want to save that thread for your webcomic but put your stuff there anyway.

    As for your art, people in your webcomic thread already mentioned that you might want to focus on anatomy and structure and whatnot a bit more because that stuff is just a really good foundation and your stylized stuff gets better as you get better at the more realistic stuff.

    That being said, your pygmy is the tallest man alive. I mean, if he's supposed to be a pygmy, jesus. Have you seen how big a t-rex skull is compared to someone of average height? Maybe it's just a tiny t-rex, or it's way off in the distance, which would make sense since the pygmy dude's aiming at something way off to the left and in front of the t-rex. There's just no perspective in any of these whatsoever. That's partially due to the colouring, which is very, very, very flat.

    I mean, your stuff isn't terrible. It's just incredibly flawed, and you'd improve immensely if you really practised your anatomy, perspective, proportions, structure and whatnot for a bit. Seriously. Cannot stress this enough. And Some of your comments in the other thread suggest to me that you're satisfied with your art and kind of complacent. Maybe. Don't read too much into this because I am sleepy right now, but always try to do better than what you did before. Never take your skill for granted. There's always room for improvement. Don't hate your stuff, that's counterproductive, but you should still always try to improve.

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