Improving means realizing why you suck
As I reported last week, one of my Disney comics were printed in Norway this week. This is the first time it’s taken as long as seven years for one of my comics to reach publication, so I was pretty excited to see it. While I have copies of the artwork lying around and I’ve occasionally looked at it, I haven’t read the story in a while, but I remember it as pretty good.
However, when I read the comic, I found it… pretty boring. Sure, I still like the idea, but nothing really happens, or things happen really slowly. The lack of action makes it an uninteresting story… and I used way too much text. And what really amazes me is that this is a story I thought was pretty good seven years ago. I wouldn’t do these mistakes today — some of them I still struggle with, but I’m aware of them, and I’m trying my best to change them. Still — seven years from now, I’ll probably look at the scripts I write today and get the same impression from them.
This is what improvement is all about: Realizing what your greatest weaknesses are, and changing them. If you believe that you are perfect, you will never improve. Everybody has mistakes — you need to find yours if you want to get rid of them.
Do you make a webcomic? If you haven’t done it already, here’s a tip for an exercise I believe will improve your comic:
- Take a look at your archives from a couple of years ago. Read at least a couple of weeks of comics.
- Jot down everything you don’t like about the comics. Writing, art, anything. Do the characters talk as if they’re just reading stuff out loud from a script? Do the characters have abnormally large hands? Anything.
- If you have a list of things you dislike now, congratulations! You’re already improving. These were comics you were satisfied enough with to publish a few years ago. The fact that you find errors in them now means that your standards have risen since then.
- Go through that list and ask yourself how you’re doing today. You’ve probably improved, but can you improve more? If you drew abnormally large hands two years ago, are they good enough today? Can you do something to improve them? Do you still have strange-looking dialogue? Fix it.
- If you didn’t find anything wrong with your old comics at all, there are two possible reasons:
- You are Baby Jesus. You never make mistakes.
- You are still doing the same mistakes that you did back then, and thus you don’t notice them. If you haven’t improved at all in the last couple of years, you’re probably doing something very, very wrong. Show your webcomic to other neutral parts (that is, not your best friends) and ask them to tell you what you’re doing wrong.
Do this right, and you’ll be able to improve your comic drastically. And your readers will notice.
Good luck!
Da skulle jeg komme godt ut i fra denne lista. Har et slags hatforhold til alt jeg lager, selv om det bare er et par uker siden jeg tegnet den og den siden/stripa.
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