Creative Corner

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@Spooner

sorry for the late reply, i passed out cold. ah... my big mac meal & cheeseburger...

i see though! thank you, i'll try it out and see :-) i'm planning on making new drawings to use as examples so that they're up to date and everything, so when it comes time to put them in and add the prices i'll keep this in mind! ^^)/

@Spooner Hiya! I'd love some pricing help on a new digital painting style ^^ Or critique my comms shop that's undergoing a revamp (linked in signature) [img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/a60a680d6574b4345633ef2a4e666336/e830ee4ea317813a-29/s2048x3072/b8fc55ff3018508d8c0b62605f2ab321d5727624.jpg[/img] [img]https://64.media.tumblr.com/038729e999e9c3bc6059203b157adb86/08d6504d69d28eef-f9/s640x960/db904abcb88e611111f5796564f4d50aff969b0a.jpg[/img] And if you wouldn't mind helping me price B/W manga comic pages (or critique my art)? I haven't seen anything like that offered on FR and have been debating on offering it here [url]https://caleumart.tumblr.com/post/645416114269110272/the-honored-one-aka-gojo-satoru-looses-his[/url]

@Spooner sorry, forgot about this for a hot second

i didn’t realise i didn’t send any fullbodies/halfbodies or anything more on the ‘fantasy’ side in my examples, i have a whole bunch but they’re all very sketchy atm which is why i didn’t send them, while i can see how they could fit into the colouring tiers you suggested, it would make everything more complicated so idk if i should include them or not

here, struggle with me

@disastervampire -

Good news, this doesn't change the tiers I just outlined~ Since your fullbody examples are fairly loose and sketchy, they're not going to compete with your more polished painted busts, and as they're fully coloured, they don't compete with your mostly-black-and-white tier. So, you can just run fullbodies as a tier of their own, with a price between your premium painted busts tier and your black and white busts tier. I'd pick out this one as an example, but I think any of the coloured ones would get the idea across just fine.

Unless you choose to offer more polished fullbodies as a refsheet option, I'd just keep it like that for the time being, but feel free to come back here if you have more polished examples and wanna run them by me~

@Spooner you’re so good at this tysm for helping me untangle everything TvT

i’ll get to work on actually making an art shop forum one of these days and come back to give you a peek

@StormCaleum - Apologies for taking a few days on this - there's just so much to talk about! You're such a fabulous artist, and these are great questions - I wanted to answer everything you had to say. [quote=Painting] I personally struggle with digital painting of all kinds, so good on you for persisting with it! Here are some thoughts I've got: - The main thing I think I wanna say is that being able to paint light is as important, if not even more so, than painting shadows on a pic. If you can paint light well, your paintings will have much more dimension and direction to them. Sooo, that's what I'm mostly going to talk about here! Painting more realistically like this isn't like painting anime; you have to think more about shadows and lights, and the colours are much more complex because of those shadows and lights. (Think about how fire looks in manga vs painterly styles, and you sorta get what I'm saying?) - On the first pic, I'm personally not sold on the light sources. If there's a bar of light across someone's face like that, it should carry through onto the wall behind them. That, and as far as I can tell, the light sources are circular in both cases, so they shouldn't be creating random bars in the first place. - Light reflecting off someone's eyeball doesn't look like that, either. And neither does light reflecting off someone's hand. It's hard to explain - I think you'd be best off grabbing a torch and having a play around with it, or looking at some stock images. What I can say is that the guy on the right should probably look like he's illuminated from under his chin, similar to [url=https://c8.alamy.com/comp/A8WNMK/young-girl-shining-spooky-torch-light-in-her-face-A8WNMK.jpg]this photo[/url] (assuming the light source is the cigarette). - Speaking of hands - the hand holding the light orb thingy has three fingers and a thumb (or four fingers depending on how you count), and it looks to me like his fourth finger is longer than his third. I struggle with hands, I really do, so all I can tell you is reference! And don't be afraid to flip or rotate a hand to check that the anatomy's okay - sometimes it looks fine from one angle, but not so good from another. [img]https://i.imgur.com/0dboacz.png[/img] - Hopping to the second image now - again, I can see light problems. There's light reflecting off both sides of his hair, as well as both sides of the thing he's carrying, and down the front of his outfit as well as on top of both his shoulders. Have you tried doing the thing where you draw a little circle in the corner with an arrow to represent which way the light is coming from? I find that helps me quite a bit when I'm painting. [/quote] And now, yer shop~ Probably what I'm most qualified to talk about! Hooray! [quote] - For me, I always like to have the examples on the first page. This is because you want people to see your art and think about buying before they see the rules. Otherwise they'll just scroll by the rules and not read them because they wanna see the art first! Or worse, they won't read the rules at all because they got bored of not seeing any art and clicked away. D: - Regarding the examples themselves - I almost feel like a few big examples would be better than lots of little ones. Big examples show off detail much more, and your work is very detailed! Consider ditching the custom images with the prices etc, and just have a full size Epic (TM) Example with the prices typed underneath. - You could definitely stand to merge some of your tiers together, and even look at cutting out a couple; I'm concerned that with too many choices, some people will pick Nothing, Thanks Very Much. There is also a lot of overlap with your tiers - you have fullbody/bust/etc options for nearly every tier, and that's not a great thing because it causes your tiers to compete with each other. Ideally, you want as little overlap as possible. - My recommendation for you would be the following tiers, presented in the following order in your shop. I am pretty minimalist with tiering, so feel free to add more things, but I do feel these are tiers that won't conflict and will still allow customers some freedom in your shop. - Watercolour Chibis - Inked (Busts Only) - Watercolour (Halfbodies - Semi-realistic and Manga styles to choose from) - Watercolour With Background (Fullbodies only) - Digital Paintings (Busts Only) In these categories, you then offer to do humans, dragons, creatures, etc within each tier (so for instance, you have some human and non human examples inside of the Watercolour With Background tier) - this will tell commissioners quickly that you can draw dragons etc without them needing to scroll so far down the page. - If you want to charge less on creatures, just say that there's a discount or a special on creatures inside of that tier - $10 off for all inked dragons, for instance. - The YCH commissions are adoptables! Give them their own shop in FR's dedicated adoptable subforum. [/quote] Aaaaand there's one more thing you need me to go on about, right? Thankyou for reading btw, if you made it this far hsjdhjg [quote=Manga Pages]- Firstly, I do feel that the best way to offer these will be to say that each page has x number of panels, and x number of fullbodies/headshots/etc. You wanna give commissioners confidence when they order - are they going to get [url=https://64.media.tumblr.com/8432de841662f7a72657b63a7322c446/8fdd235d73c28db4-b5/s1280x1920/087c022b0b5d1d20764168248c17a1adabe243f3.jpg]two panels and an environmental shot[/url], or [url=https://64.media.tumblr.com/da52ab0dbe0eb1580aef65ec58a288bc/8fdd235d73c28db4-73/s1280x1920/264aa53d71d99c1346fc894a45b790bb6d649c17.jpg]multiple halfbodies and characters[/url]? - By doing it this way, you'll also know about how much work you're going to be doing for each page (or set of 2-3 pages??) and how many halfbodies, fullbodies, etc. You can then calculate your prices accordingly. - From what I've seen on FR, 'cinematic screenshots' seem to sell decently. You may find that instead of offering whole pages of four or five panels, just one or two manga-style panels will do fine and may actually tell a better/more coherent story for a single-page commission (like [url=https://64.media.tumblr.com/ae52c57283a05013c75578bd452efb24/8fdd235d73c28db4-b3/s1280x1920/016d6512729be05857e6f84a7e142a0c8a6a4df2.jpg]this panel[/url]). - There's certainly a market out there for traditional art, as you know - I'm pretty sure these are digital, buuuut have you considered inking your manga pages traditionally instead, so they can be mailed out to commissioners once you get back to posting things? Those would be some very unique comic pages to own. [/quote] Best of luck for you and your shop! I love your traditional art, as you already know. :00

@disastervampire - I'd love to see it if you do manage to come up with a shop! You can do it.

(...That said, I've been meaning to open a shop for what, four weeks now? Things keep getting in the way, haha. No pressure on you at all to get back here in a week or w/e.)

@Spooner

Aaa thanks for getting back to me ^^ I honestly didn't know that YCH should be in the adoptable section of FR :P

I've been debating on doing a few things to my comms shop. Mostly having a large banner that showcases the different styles available at the start of the shop. I do agree some larger examples would be good to showcase detail (esp with some watercolor pieces)

The thing with the comic b/w style is that a lot of people definitely prefer color over b/w. I'd think it would attract more people if I did the cinematic screenshots in color. But then it wouldn't be a manga panel b/w anymore; it would just be a scene right? Or maybe a splash panel?

For the comic paneling, how would you price backgrounds? I was thinking about setting a base price for bust/half/full and number of panels to let the commissioner choose within their budget and then, offer background options. So it's kinda like 'custom drawn manga page/panels'

I've tried manga inking traditionally and it is kinda insane how much money, materials and time goes into one page with like, 2 or 3 panels. It costs around $100 for the paper, inks, nibs and (especially) screentones alone, and over 10 hours of work for one page T^T I doubt I'll ever offer it traditionally unless someone wants to pay an arm, leg and kidney for it.

@StormCaleum

FR has some funny ways of labelling things, haha. I still don't know why exactly YCHs are referred to as adopts - it might have something to do with deviantart using the term 'adoptables' to mean pretty much anything (including YCHs)? Dunno.

As far as banners go, I’d personally recommend you have just one style showcased in the banner on the grounds that FR is going to make sure it displays pretty small, and it’s going to be the first thing people see – you want a strong image out the gate, not one that might confuse people with multiple colour palettes and styles. I’d recommend showcasing your most expensive/premium product, with as much detail as possible. You could even use a close–up rather than a full piece – maybe think about artshop signatures you’ve seen around and how much of the art they typically show.

I think for you and your shop, it makes more sense going forwards to go with b/w over colour here. That may sound odd, but I feel that as most of your other tiers are coloured, b/w comic panels don’t compete with your other offerings, whereas coloured stuff would compete.

As far as the market on it goes, what I see is that there’s an unaddressed market out there for b/w (many people on FR have manga fandragons, which does indicate they may be interested in buying manga–style art). There’s also a market for coloured comic screenshots/panels/whatever we’re calling it, which some people are already offering on FR, and which seems to appeal more to people interested in anime (ie people who might not read manga in the first place – different audience). By offering b/w when few others do, you can corner that segment of the market for yourself, instead of trying to compete with other people who are offering coloured fare.

My concern with making the manga pages completely custom is that someone might order a fullbody or a different scenic background in every single panel or something, haha. Perhaps you could have a couple of options for the pages – one with x number of busts, one with x number of busts and y number of fullbodies, and so on? People can always ask if they’re really set on something.

As far as the backgrounds themselves go, though, I would price them based on complexity. Maybe something like whether the panel is empty, has a greyscale gradient, has a simple bg like clouds or a repeating pattern (like hearts, leaves, whatever), or whether it’s a full on scene? I’m unsure how long it takes you to make bgs compared to how long you spend on the characters.

Aaaaand that is an insane cost, my goodness! Makes you wonder how on earth mangaka turn any kind of profit with traditional inking. (I've used inks before, but I've never attempted inking screentones, haha. I don't think I could do it, either - all those little dots... D:)