image from The Art of Veiling, by yours truly

There have been posts before (I think) about how to go about creating a world, especially when it comes to fantasy settings. You’re supposed, if you want to do it right, to build everything that makes up the world in ...

We've all been there: all of the sudden, the trajectory of your own life seems to thwart you from your ambitions! Maybe it's obligations to schoolwork or your day job; maybe your partner or family; maybe you wind up homeless or awkwardly crashing on a series of couches ...

From the Best of Banes Collection…

CHARACTER SHAPES

I've never consciously designed characters this way, but I recently remembered hearing about this notion some time ago, on the dvd special features for an animated movie or show. I don't remember which one.
Characters derived from basic shapes can ...

Ying and Yan by TonyAlpsen

Ying and Yan are twin brothers who are joined at the hip…and the shoulder, and everything in between.

It's a simple, perfect premise for standalone jokes playing off the brothers' conjoined status, or the difference in their personalities, or snarky commentary on life ...

Aight! It's that time again, ain't it? Now we been talking a lot about rules and limitations and discipline and approaches to making your comics and making them better. This week we're gonna step away from all that for a spell and talk about how not making ...

They say that how hands are drawn is a good indicator of the technical expertise of the artist.
Makes sense!

Hands are definitely the most varied parts of the body, capable of the most diverse configurations. Add in the always-challenging angles and forshortening and you have a very difficult hill ...

LISTEN!

For this Quackcast we decided to chat about quirks- the things that stand out about a character, help you remember them, get interested in them, traits that pick them out as individuals and can ALSO be used to point at deeper character traits! These are so useful in so ...

Artemisia Gentileschi, Judith beheading Holofernes, 1611-12, oil on canvas, (Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples)

There are several different ways to read a painting. The perspective of the reader adds a new insight to the history behind the art. For the purpose of this article, I have selected Judith beheading Holofernes ...

So last time I talked about the little extras that can go into dialogue and how that dialogue can be presented on the page of your comic, so I was thinking today might be good to continue in that general trajectory and talk about little extras in your character design ...

Every now and again, an acquaintance or friend who ain't as deep in comics culture and creation as I am (which is to say they ain't really got much of an idea about comics but have seen the Sunday funnies page and know that Batman is a thing ...