What aspect of comic making do you find to be the biggest source of frustration for you? For me, it's definitely figuring out and determining the placement of the word balloons, and how big they may be depending on the amount of dialogue contained within them - especially if particular panels don't have a whole lot of room because of the number of characters and/or how they're positioned within the frames of the panels.

This particular VAMPIRE GIRL strip, for example, was a particular headache for me, as you can probably tell; for one thing, the panels were a little more rectangular than square-shaped as I tend to stick with, so that narrowed the frames a little bit, and because quite a bit of information and speculation was exchanged among the characters, it was a particularly dialogue-heavy strip at that, so there were a number of rather sizable word balloons that were filled with wordiness that I have to try to squeeze into each of the panels as best as I could.

Sometimes, depending on the layout and composition of the strip or page as a while, I might can cheat a little by having word balloons overlap and extend out of the panel frame boundaries, if it otherwise doesn't detract from the overall appearance . . . but unfortunately, that's not always the case.

All in all, this definitely gives me a better understand of why some authors and artists try to avoid wordiness in comics as much as possible.

I usually ink the words first and draw the balloon around them. Then I draw the rest of the page.


For me the most frustrating part of making comics is not having enough time to do them.

That Vampire Girl page doesn't look particularly overcrowded with balloons, everything looks neat and balanced. Sure, sometimes you have to re-shape balloons to fit an awkward area but that's just part of the work. Whenever I find myself with a panel that's getting too dense I'll snip the dialogue and move some of it into a new panel.

My biggest frustration is having to obey the laws o' physics – staging action that needs dynamic angles, as characters are knocked hard or get thrown around. Can take me all day, and I'm never happy with it.

Starting a storyline is a huge one, once I get going I have trouble stopping but it is trying to set up that launch that's a pain.
The newest pages (280+) are now colored, and I decided to go for digital Marvel dye job which slows down page progress a ton, but it looks good to me.

lothar wrote:
For me the most frustrating part of making comics is not having enough time to do them.

This is exactly why I try to give myself a generous buffer to get as much of what I can done as far in advance as I possibly can; even though I began publishing the current season/chapter of VAMPIRE GIRL back in October, I actually had begun working on the pages back in January of 2021!

dpat57 wrote:
My biggest frustration is having to obey the laws o' physics – staging action that needs dynamic angles, as characters are knocked hard or get thrown around. Can take me all day, and I'm never happy with it.

If you're going for realism, I can understand that; usually if things start to get just a little more extreme, I tend to ignore such laws, and go for however I feel best conveys what I want to illustrate - especially when it comes to facial expression, I'm not at all afraid to go for the crazy “wild takes” that are far too exaggerated for any person in nature to make.

Otherwise, I too am all too familiar with the feeling of pouring so much time, work, and effort into something and not being 100% satisfied with the end results; I'm quite a perfectionist like that.

Furwerk studio wrote:
Starting a storyline is a huge one, once I get going I have trouble stopping but it is trying to set up that launch that's a pain.

Sometimes I may be able to figure out how I want to begin a storyline, or even how I want to end a storyline, but it's the details in the middle that sometimes give me a bit of a hangup . . . I may know how I want to get from Point A to Point B, but not how to get to Point C from Point B. At least with VAMPIRE GIRL, I could luckily consult with a friend of mine who's more well-versed in fantasy than I am for input on certain little details that I feel so lost about.

In case of my main comic, it's probably figuring things out properly in advance. Blessed Days chapter 4 has >200 pages and each chapter builds on the previous ones, but also tells a somewhat complete substory or storyline. If I make a mistake now and publish it, I can't go back later to change it, but characters practically playing 3D chess with each other and a plot arching across hundreds of years kind of make it necessary for me to write and finish a chapter entirily before I start publishing it. That means I often have to spend months on producing material in advance and the work can become kind of a pain if editing of something that's already written takes such a time.

InkyMoondrop wrote:
If I make a mistake now and publish it, I can't go back later to change it

Not necessarily pertaining to comics exclusively, but I find that this is one of the biggest problems I face with my non-linear creative process, especially if I'm collaborating with others who contribute input - suppose a certain detail or element is developed during the creative process in an earlier part of the story, and becomes significant enough that it has to now be worked into later parts of the story that may have already been made in advance? At least in writing, it's possible to go back and change this (again, especially if the content was made in advance, and had yet to be made public), but yeah, if such a thing happened with a comic, that's not exactly something you can easily go back and change without having to do a total redo of certain pages.

definitely word bubbles
they're so mind-numbing, and with the fact that I use Clip-Studio, I can't just copy-paste the dialogue I have to re-write everything. And there's ALWAYS a typo cause my frickin keyboard is broken.
I've also been wanting to switch to square dialogue bubbles but for consistency's sake, I can't.

Also curious since I brought it up, but does anyone else have a sort of “non-linear” creative process, or is it just me? As I said, sometimes if I'm working on an over-arching storyline, certain parts of the story come to my mind before others: sometimes I may figure out how I want to pay off a story, before I figure out how to kick things off, or as I said before, sometimes I may know how I want to get from Point A to Point B, and in spite of how I know what I want Point C to be, struggle to figure how to get to there from Point B. As I said, at least in situations like this, it's nice to have people to collaborate with you to help you figure out those solutions, but this kind of creative process can be quite challenging, even if you're used to it.

Yeah, when I work on a chapter, it means I work on any part of it, given my mood. Today I might write jokes that will land on page 180, tomorrow an action scene that I'll put on page 9. Easier this way, because in order to work I always need something that entertains me atm. I have a spreadsheet with just a list of things I want to include in a chapter, each color-coded by which storyline it ‘s on. After a while I have enough stuff to fill a chapter with, so I write the dialogues and look for the locations, design new characters, start putting them all together etc. But it’s really chaotic to an outsider, because I work on all these simultaneously until the chapter is finished and more often, than not, the order of how strips follow each other is not finalized until the end.
+ if I have an idea or dialogue for future chapters, I write it down and obviously I try not to deviate from getting there eventually. But

I really don't have any one concrete system for how I plan certain things, at least when I'm working on my own that is; if I'm collaborating with other people, I'll at least try to have an outline written, or in some cases even an actual script (if it's a production we're filming), just to give them a better idea of what I'm aiming for, and to ensure we're on the same page, so-to-speak, but otherwise, because the projects tend to stay freshly cemented in my head, I tend to forego notes altogether. There are certain exception to this of course, such as the current season/chapter of VAMPIRE GIRL, which I did not only map out, but I also made up a list of what I want each specific strip/page to cover, sort of like an animation production pipeline in a sense.

Gumshoecomix wrote:
And there's ALWAYS a typo cause my frickin keyboard is broken.

Stupid typos I didn't see are surely on my list. No matter what you do, there's always one you're going to miss and you will get comment about it 5 minutes later.
Another thing on my list is me sometimes having blank page syndrome - I know where story should be going, but somehow I can't figure out how next page should look like.
But first place goes to not having enough time to draw stories I want. There's a lot about my characters that I would like to show, but I'm just one guy and can work only on one thing.

If I'm not sure exactly how I want a particular page to look, I may do a really rough thumbnail sketch just to kind of a quick layout of how it could possibly turn out in terms of how many panels there will be, determine the sizes of boxes and such, where to place the characters, etc. It's not quite like doing a storyboard, but that's the gist of things.

The crushing irrational guilt I felt whenever I try to draw.

Just thought of a new one:

Development.

Going through brain storming, character sketches, model sheets, planning. That's a huge pain, especially when the original “wow, this is something I want to read” morphs into something completely different.

An example is Nakamura Rex was supposed to be a visual novel turned into a comic that WAS supposed to focus on monsters of the arc Hellboy style adventure that became a sort of life and times of a sex addicted divine beasts, an ‘80’s ova.

Furwerk studio wrote:
Just thought of a new one:

Development.

Going through brain storming, character sketches, model sheets, planning. That's a huge pain, especially when the original “wow, this is something I want to read” morphs into something completely different.

Example of this for me have been supporting characters who want to take over the narrative. So I really end up struggling to keep the focus on the MC and not have everything devolve into an ensemble cast with no clear focus.

Then there is the curse of “show, don't tell” How much should be shown? Should there just be showing without explanation to represent the limited understanding the characters have or exhaustive detail of what the creator understands?

And how many times does something have to referenced and explained before readers get it? Some complain of my explaining things everywhere and then others don't remember what was set forth twenty pages ago and does that mean explaining it all over again?

Or stopping the narrative for that special recap episode just before the climax so everyone knows what's about to happen. Dark Helmet breaking the fourth wall and asking if everyone “got that”. Lol

bravo1102 wrote:

Furwerk studio wrote:
Just thought of a new one:

Development.

Going through brain storming, character sketches, model sheets, planning. That's a huge pain, especially when the original “wow, this is something I want to read” morphs into something completely different.

Example of this for me have been supporting characters who want to take over the narrative. So I really end up struggling to keep the focus on the MC and not have everything devolve into an ensemble cast with no clear focus.

Then there is the curse of “show, don't tell” How much should be shown? Should there just be showing without explanation to represent the limited understanding the characters have or exhaustive detail of what the creator understands?

And how many times does something have to referenced and explained before readers get it? Some complain of my explaining things everywhere and then others don't remember what was set forth twenty pages ago and does that mean explaining it all over again?

Or stopping the narrative for that special recap episode just before the climax so everyone knows what's about to happen. Dark Helmet breaking the fourth wall and asking if everyone “got that”. Lol

Add “no info dumping” to the pile.

That is a huge pain, to try to work in the explanation of what or how something works in a setting without ether sounding weird, dull technobable or just stopping the story for no reason.

What's worse is “hidden” info, Stuff you can't just come out and say right off the bat, but an underpinning of the world workings.

I've written a lot on info dumps. Some have even said I'm good at it. So it's not a pet peeve for me anymore.

Does someone explain how an internal combustion engine and electronic ignition work when starting their car? You only have to explain the bare minimum. Your characters might not know how it works any more than you know the details of engines and ignitions. That's how I get around explaining faster than light travel in my stories. But when something is novel and different it will be commented upon.

Hi J_Scarbrough,

As far as word balloons and the thought clouds, I’ve got it easier than you digital creators, since I’m drawing onto paper. Once the framing is done I draw in the text first then draw the bubble around it. Now you have the drawing inside what is left of the frame (just like lothar explained). Once I’ve inked and scanned in the comics, I type in the text using my graphics program. Usually the text fits fine and if not, I can lower the type size to fit better. As you can probably tell from the weird shapes of my word bubbles, hand-drawn doesn’t look as accurate as the digitally drawn ones. Another problem is that my graphics program doesn’t spell-check so I need to use my computer’s dictionary and hand correct.

Perhaps in your case, you can type in the text digitally first and then do your drawing.

My biggest frustration is drawing a full page of comics with frames merging into other frames like you see some of the comics that the pros do. I tend to draw a row of frames at a time and then put them together using the graphics program. I’m envious of those cartoonist pages.

— Rick Rudge

I draw by hand, actually . . . I know it may not look like it, since I edit, color, and separate digitally, but before that process, everything is done the old-school way: pencilled on paper, inked with pen, erase the stray pencil marks, scan into the computer, and take it from there. But even so, I still try to be mindful of the layout of the panel and the composition of the page as a whole (I draw each panel individually) so that I can have enough room to fit the word balloons without otherwise having to cover up or obscure anything else . . . that's not always how it works out however, but I do by best nonetheless.

J_Scarbrough wrote:
What aspect of comic making do you find to be the biggest source of frustration for you? For me, it's definitely figuring out and determining the placement of the word balloons, and how big they may be depending on the amount of dialogue contained within them - especially if particular panels don't have a whole lot of room because of the number of characters and/or how they're positioned within the frames of the panels.

Sometimes, depending on the layout and composition of the strip or page as a while, I might can cheat a little by having word balloons overlap and extend out of the panel frame boundaries, if it otherwise doesn't detract from the overall appearance . . . but unfortunately, that's not always the case.

Here is a prime example of how I basically had to get a little creative with the placement and fitting of word balloons in a strip because, unfortunately, this was a wordy and dialogue-heavy entry. . . .


Most things considered though, I think I to pull it off in a way that worked.

My biggest pet peeve is getting too distracted to draw 1 minute after I start.

My second biggest issue is having to sort though my comic for reference images to use so I can maintain continuity- for uniforms, for the look of mecha, guns etc. That's exhausting.

Third is literally falling asleep 5 minutes into drawing.

@J_Scarbrough - drawing digitally IS drawing by hand too haha!

Ozoneocean wrote:
@J_Scarbrough - drawing digitally IS drawing by hand too haha!

Okay. If we're going to get technical, “drawing by hand” as in sketching with pencil and inking with pen onto paper.

the fact i don't know what i am doing and i was just winging it from day 1.

I do have a lot of experience not knowing what i am doing at least.

I guess my biggest pet peeve is going over my work and finding errors (the bigger the better)

Zero Hour wrote:
the fact i don't know what i am doing and i was just winging it from day 1.

I do have a lot of experience not knowing what i am doing at least.

If I didn't do lots of things that I have no idea how to do, I would never have learned how to do the handful of things I do know how to do.

Ross Bagdasarian and Janice Karman, the owners of the Alvin and The Chipmunks franchise have basically went into every aspect of their business (music production, animation production, film production, etc.) without knowing what they were doing . . . and most of their underlings resent them for it. Legendary Disney animator David Pruiksma worked on THE CHIPMUNK ADVENTURE and has nothing but bad memories of the production mainly due to the Bagdasarians' inexperience and incompetence.