What makes a comic interesting, in your opinion?

[RedDiamond02]

Hey everyone, I'm new to Fur Affinity forums but I've been on FA for almost a year. In those two months I've been able to work on my first comic series that I called: "A Royal Sleepover"
You can take a look at the first three pages by clicking here: Artwork Gallery for RedDiamond02 -- Fur Affinity [dot] net

I've been able to make a few pages of it but for now it's nothing special since if's only the beginning of the whole story.

Since it's my very first comic I'd love to know what, in your opinion makes a comic interesting and what mistakes should I avoid.

Thanks for your help

 

[Stratelier]

Your first comic is ALWAYS going to make some mistakes. First attempts at anything always do, that's just how trial and experience works -- and, speaking as someone with their own (untested) aspirations for drawing a comic, I'm similarly lacking in the experience category.

The best comics have a story that is well-plotted (well-written) combined with a visual style that shows impressive skill. It doesn't have to be a "photorealistic" level of skill like the best-drawn comics you can name, but your skill level will ALWAYS get betrayed by what the comic actually looks like to the viewer.

For example, I looked at your gallery for literally two seconds and already noticed:
- Virtually all of your faces are drawn either (1) directly facing the camera, or (2) full side profile. I don't see anyone facing the camera at an angle (e.g. the "3/4's view"), any faces looking upwards or down, nothing different or unique.
- All of your characters are drawn, forgive the pun, "bust"ed -- as in, you're only drawing them from the waist up.

Which shows a clear lack of practice at just drawing character forms in general. There's no easy solution to this -- we can give you to any number of arbitrary tutorials, but we can't give you the actual skill. And I'm speaking from personal artistic experience -- I enrolled in an art class virtually every year of school, but it wasn't until a few years out (and on my own spare time) that I finally "got it" and taught myself to actually draw properly.

 

[RedDiamond02]

Your first comic is ALWAYS going to make some mistakes. First attempts at anything always do, that's just how trial and experience works -- and, speaking as someone with their own (untested) aspirations for drawing a comic, I'm similarly lacking in the experience category.

The best comics have a story that is well-plotted (well-written) combined with a visual style that shows impressive skill. It doesn't have to be a "photorealistic" level of skill like the best-drawn comics you can name, but your skill level will ALWAYS get betrayed by what the comic actually looks like to the viewer.

For example, I looked at your gallery for literally two seconds and already noticed:
- Virtually all of your faces are drawn either (1) directly facing the camera, or (2) full side profile. I don't see anyone facing the camera at an angle (e.g. the "3/4's view"), any faces looking upwards or down, nothing different or unique.
- All of your characters are drawn, forgive the pun, "bust"ed -- as in, you're only drawing them from the waist up.

Which shows a clear lack of practice at just drawing character forms in general. There's no easy solution to this -- we can give you to any number of arbitrary tutorials, but we can't give you the actual skill. And I'm speaking from personal artistic experience -- I enrolled in an art class virtually every year of school, but it wasn't until a few years out (and on my own spare time) that I finally "got it" and taught myself to actually draw properly.

Thank you for your advice, I always had some problems drawing character in different angles, and to be honest it's way out from my comfort zone even if I'm aware that I should try working on "something a little different" but I never tried "going for it" and spend time on that.

You're right, I should totally change things up a little, and spend way more time praticing on things that I can't really do instead of drawing only things I found easy to draw.

Thank you again for your help, I really appreciate it. I'll try my best and start working out of my comfort zone more often, so I can hopefully improve my style.

Have a great day!

 

[Asher Grey]

As long as there isn't a romantic focus/overarching plot, I'll probably find it interesting.

 

[Stratelier]

For the writing process people often say "write what you know", and for visual arts the analogous saying would be "draw what you know" ... but people have a nasty habit of just trodding out this advice with all the tired insight of a "git gud". The hidden caveat nobody mentions isn't that you should only ever draw from personal experience, so much as you should go out and experience more things (even vicariously), to broaden your repertoire of things you can draw* from.

* (pun not necessarily intended)