When writing and drawing comics, facial expression and body language can sell and reinforce character, tone and story.

A smiling face can say as much as their words about what's going on in the moment, and in the character's emotions.

But what about a sarcastic smile? Or sarcastic ...

Last week I talked about what kind of stuff to stick in the middle section of stories.

Here's a tangent I found myself on, about the actual halfway mark:

Well, the middle bit almost always contains the actual halfway point of the story. In many stories this is a ...

Low-Fidelity (Lo-Fi) Chill-bop Music has played a crucial role over the last year in my ability to calm down and feel at ease. Originally used as background music while doing homework or as a sleep aid, Lo-Fi music has been around for a while. The idea is that it layers ...

In the beginning, we set up our character
Iin the middle, we get them into trouble
In the end, we get them out of trouble.

Sounds so simple! It's tougher than that to pull off.

The middle of a story in particular, as people have talked about, is often ...

We're always advising people to give their characters flaws. But why? Is it just so they'll be relatable and not perfect/boring?

That is a good reason, for sure.

Is it so you'll know how they're supposed to react in certain situations?
“I wrote in my ...

I've compared “Avengers Infinity War” to the classic movie cliffhanger in The Empire Strikes Back.

But the Marvel Cinematic Universe actually pulled off an almost-“Empire”-level story a couple years before that, in Captain America: Civil War.

The MCU started off with multiple movies setting up Iron Man ...

Interesting.

It is quite amusing how Valentine's Day 2021 landed on a Sunday, a day without a new blog entry. Friday was the celebration of the Lunar New Year–the Year of the Ox.

In previous years, both occasions would have drawn massive crowds of people. There would have ...

The Horizon

Even though I've been drawing/cartooning for longer than I can remember, there are major holes in my knowledge. Even after a lifetime of drawing, and making hundreds of webcomic pages.

Luckily I found some great info while cruising around the ‘Net.

You may already know this ...

I just finished a rewatch of The Mandalorian series and one of the things I thought about was the vicious profiteering and scramble for money (or ‘credits’, or valuable metals or what have you) that indicates what kind of economy is at work in that show.

Granted, so far we ...

Maintaining an update schedule is beneficial to your readers and to yourself. Sticking to an update schedule encourages readers to come back. It becomes part of their routine and is often something they look forward to that day. They’ll remain invested in both you and your comic. That is ...