TWCL

[nothinghappenedtoday]

I was looking at some of my strips and noticed how much the characters/drawing/lettering has changed over the course of its run. So, I'm posting a before and after. Anyone else want to play along with their creations?

Strip 1:


Strip 47: (the most current online)

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nothinghappenedtoday.com

[Metruis]

Oh, heck yes, I am all over this. I love my before and after strips.

Page two, as done in early June 2008.


But to be fair, by the time I'd done the first couple (mostly all cut or edited) scenes I realized I hated digital inking, and those pages aren't a fair example of my art quality because I was trying to comic 'properly' and I was never cut out for that. This was one of the ones I traditionally inked. Anyone who's seen me comment that I don't ink might now understand why. I don't think I did more than fourteen pages like that, and in that time I did like, four different scenes, so you know. =P

It didn't take long before I started trying to paint pages, because inking gave me a headache. This is probably a better glimpse at my early comic pages since this is the style I've since retained and polished.

July 2008. This is the page I consider the best out of my early painting attempts; it was the second one I did and I put more effort into it than a lot of the other earlier ones.

(If you want an idea of what the worse end of the scale for my early attempts was... here's a page from August 2008.)

Since I've been going at it for a year and a half, here's a page from December 2008, six months after I started if you want something in the middle to compare.

And, well... September 6, 2009.


This is my current favorite page but if that doesn't count, well, here, October 20nd's page.

So there you have it. And I've just had some mega panelling breakthroughs so I anticipate some more improvement once I get to coloring those pages in about a month's time.

When I say practice works, I'm not kidding.
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[Irma]

Oh Oh! I love this! Here's mine:

Strip #4 - Dec 2007:


Strip #159 - August 2009


The beginning was a lot of getting used to how I was going to draw the characrters, and the brushes I would use and all. And then of course there's also the part where I changed Imy's hair color after a few strips
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[Zoe Robinson]

There's some amazing development in these comics. It's great to see how people find and improve on their own styles.

For what it's worth, here's how The Life of Nob T. Mouse has changed since it started in '96.

Not the first story but the first available online with the original drawing & colouring style:


The latest strip

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[n9uxu]

Hmmm... always fun to look back at what we've done and where we're going...

First strip:


Most recent strip that I was relatively pleased with the art:


Latest strip (which I'm not pleased with the art but is fairly typical):


The hard part being that Brittany is too busy with her Senior year/getting ready for college, so I have to handle all the drawing and it's taking forever for me to ramp up.

Dave[/img]
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Also be sure to read ttallan's

[Marooned]

Love your improvement Irma. Your strip has really matured and you've got a real style going that is great.

Here's my first:



A recent strip with the same two characters in it.


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[nothinghappenedtoday]

This is awesome! Keep 'em coming. I love seeing how everyone's styles are evolving. You don't get that with "cut and paste" comics. Plus, it looks like everyone is getting better. Keep up the good work!
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nothinghappenedtoday.com

[katastrophe]

Yanno, it doesn't seem like there should be room for much improvement given that I'm using CGI-generated art, but there really is. I suspect this is a testament to how pig-ignorant I was when I started than anything.

A panel from my second week (I'm not doing full pages, those are huge):



And the same characters last week:



The biggest change is the lighting, which I can't take much credit for: I finally broke down and bought a light set rather than rigging my own. It is much kinder to characters with dark skin, especially. And I've improved my posing somewhat. But the real skill jump for me has been panel composition. At some point I figured out that I wasn't limited to two sizes of panel, "full" or "half", which helped a lot. I also got a lot better at centering the characters, changing the angle, and zooming the camera in so we could, yanno, see their faces. And then there's the speech bubbles. I still struggle with these (yeah, that last one is too small again) but I have managed to get it through my head that the tails don't need to be stuck in people's mouths.

Like I said. Long way to go yet, and the improvement's more a testament to pig-ignorance than anything, but... at least it's improvement, right?
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[Zoe Robinson]

katastrophe wrote:

And I've improved my posing somewhat. But the real skill jump for me has been panel composition. At some point I figured out that I wasn't limited to two sizes of panel, "full" or "half", which helped a lot. I also got a lot better at centering the characters, changing the angle, and zooming the camera in so we could, yanno, see their faces. And then there's the speech bubbles. I still struggle with these (yeah, that last one is too small again) but I have managed to get it through my head that the tails don't need to be stuck in people's mouths.

These are all things I'm still learning, and I've been drawing comics for thirteen years. It's great to see people picking it all up so much faster than me (and not just 'cause then I can see where I'm going wrong and make notes!).

Your second image is excellent. You've got excellent composition there and it really does look natural, especially the pose of the bald guy.
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[NobbyNobody]

Hmm. Definitely some changes...
First ever Odd-Fish:

and a year later sitting on the same couch...


Seems they've bought a new telly, too!
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[Liliy]

Oh oh, these are fun. I love seeing everyone's side by side strips.

The first strip posted in my current coloring style from 2008:


And a more recent strip from this month:


I like to think the art style in general is a bit more fluid. But that just comes from being more comfortable drawing the characters I think.[/url]
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[ryan.noriega]

The first strip I drew in college:



Sept 2003

to

April 2006


And then on my other strip:


August 2006

Cut to three years later, picking up the strip again after having seen a picture of an actual mole.

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[Immer]

Here is how two characters have changed over the years:

Strip #8


Strip #56


Strip #60


The style hasn't changed too much, mainly just my understanding of anatomy has.
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Walnut Grove // deviantART

[Darc]

It's been interesting seeing the changes in everyone's comics over time. Here's mine...

Version I of the comic from 2003 -


From the restart in 2005 -


And the latest one currently on the supporters side -

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[smbhax.com]

charlie, I'm impressed by the consistency of style in Holy Mole; the layouts are punchier, the poses more dynamic, but line and detail has stayed consistent, which is very impressive.

Darc, the inking you're doing now is a huge plus! :D

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My stuff:

Princess and the Giant, Page 2 (first one with the princess), May:

Page 22, today:

I'm still drawing her a bit different each page, though. She doesn't usually have such an emo hairstyle, for instance. ;)

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A* is a bit harder to compare because I'm constantly switching camera angles, environments, and outfits. So here are two comparisons between episode 1 (March) and episode 6 (specifically, work from this past week) that may give something of an idea of changes in technique:

Close-up of the main character, then and now:





Dramatic entrance of the main character, then and now:




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