Hi, Folks!
Yesterday’s post dealt with lessons I’ve learned in 2009 about cartooning. Today’s post is about what I’ve come to understand about webcomics. To be clear, cartooning is a craft, and webcomics are a medium of delivery, much like television, radio dramas, etc.
1) Every episode should include at least one beat. A “beat” is the individual acts in a scene, just as scenes are individual elements of stories. Another way to put this is that every episode should have some meat on the bone, so to speak—it should advance the plot, or advance character development.
2) Long scenes don’t play as well in webcomics, and if the scene is too long then some readers will lose interest and maybe not come back. As a standard, I figure four episodes makes for a good scene length. If you make longer scenes, as I have sometimes done, break the scene loosely into acts.
3) Keep fights short and decisive. Long, drawn out slugfests, as presented in many print comics, just don’t play as well on the web. Think “compression,” not “decompression.”
4) Don’t dwell on depressing subject matter overlong. People read webcomics for enjoyment, and they don’t want to be brought down with really dreadful stuff.
5) Use flashbacks sparingly and even then in the most direct way. In general, try to keep the comic chronological in delivery.
6) Double-page spreads don’t work that well on the web.
A few more notes that I’ve learned on cartooning in general:
1) When inking, you don’t need to leave all the details in black areas. In fact, it often looks better if you lose some of the lines, and let things be obscure. Remember, shadow makes everything more dramatic!
2) In Photoshop, you can make a brush for almost anything, such as trees, rubble, smoke, etc. Save them for reuse, and perhaps save them as tool presets as well.
3) No matter how the final panel will be cropped, draw the whole figure. This avoids distortion, because everything connects to everything else.
4) Assume your readers are at least as smart as you are. This means it’s okay to include subtext and symbolism. Indeed, treat your characters like they have long continuities, played out over many years, even when they are new to the series. The readers won’t understand everything the characters refer to, but they (the readers) will pick up on most of it.
Scott.
