A lot of creators in webcomics, including all of us here, have come from an animation education or a career path. It makes a lot of sense that many of us are drawn to it, because there’s so much creativity and energy in the world of animation. And webcomics are very freeform, so if you have your own site or a platform that supports it, videos, GIFs, and CSS animation tricks are all on the table as tools we can integrate into the comic experience. So let’s talk about it!

Our hosts share their experience in the animation world, and what have they've brought from it into their webcomic work, whether that’s story structure, working habits, or art approaches,

Learn how is animation different from making comics? What’s easier to do in animation versus comics, and what’s easier in comics?

What is your advice to someone who is really inspired by animation, and trying to figure out how to make a webcomic but maybe use some of that inspiration too? Share your favorite examples of animation or animation-inspired techniques in webcomics!

----

Episode Release Date: January 15, 2025

Episode Credits:

Ally Rom Colthoff (@varethane) - she/they, chirault.sevensmith.net wychwoodcomic.com

Claire Niebergall (Clam) - she/her, phantomarine.com

Star Prichard (@starfishface) - she/her, thestarfishface.com castoff-comic.com

----

The Intro "DO IT (feat. Shia LaBeouf)", and the Outro "It's Good To See You Again!!", both by Adrianwave, have been used and modified in good faith under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Licensed. Edits include: Fade IN/OUT, and a repeat added to the beginning of "It's Good To See You Again!!". For more information on this creative commons use, please reference https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.

Transcription

This transcript is auto generated by our recording software.

00:01.02

Varethane

Woo! Okay. Hello, and welcome to ScreenTones, where we talk anything and everything webcomics. Today, we're going to be talking about animation and what kind of techniques filter in through the animation world into webcomics and the influence they have on one another. I'm Verithain. My pronouns are she, they, and I make the webcomics perault and witchwood.

00:24.48

Star

I'm Star and I make the webcomic cast off.

00:27.96

Claire

I'm Claire, also known as Clam. I make the webcomic Phantom Marine.

00:33.34

Varethane

Heck yeah. um So a lot of creators in webcomics, including all of us speakers here today, have come from an animation education or career path.

00:43.83

Varethane

It makes a lot of sense that many artists are drawn to it because there's so much creativity and energy in the world of animation. And webcomics are very freeform. So if you have your own site or a platform that supports it, ah there's ways to incorporate it into a comic. um There's a lot of tricks you can use to integrate into the comic experience as well as kind of ah some thematic influences that these worlds have on one another. ah So today we are going to talk about it. ah Going into the first question, what's your experience in the animation world and what have you brought from it into your webcomic work, whether that's story structure, working habits, or art approaches?

01:27.86

Star

was gonna buzz in first.

01:27.99

Varethane

We'll start with star.

01:30.38

Star

Oh, now the spotlight on me.

01:33.45

Varethane

You've been voluntold.

01:34.65

Star

ah Okay, ah so my animation experience is a little bit odd. um So I've technically never had a job in the industry. However, despite the fact that comics are like my main bread and butter these days, I actually I went to art school, but I did not major in comics, which is very funny because everybody who wasn't like a very close friend of mine thought I was a comics major because I was taking so many comics classes, but I was taking it because I was doing an animation degree with a storyboarding minor, and a lot of my storyboarding classes had prerequisites that were like sequential art classes.

02:12.09

Claire

Mmm.

02:12.46

Star

And so a lot of the stuff I learned specifically for animation to try and put me on that path also worked itself into comics because comics and storyboarding have a lot in common. Storyboarding is kind of like it feels like the middle on the Venn diagram. It's like this is kind of a little bit of each thing.

02:34.43

Star

And since that was my focus, that translated really easily over into comics. Um, but I also, like, had a webcomic during college, and so it just kind of felt like a really natural progression. Um, and then after I graduated, I couldn't get a job in the studio and said, I said, screw it, it's comic time! And now I'm doing this.

02:55.58

Varethane

You heard the call of the comics.

02:57.70

Star

A-woo! The call on the wind! But yeah, basically. i i mean i and um I had been making comics in like middle and high school for a long time before that, and so but i like I always wanted to go into animation of some kind. My primary goal was like story department, whether storyboarding or like screenwriting or something along those lines. I wanted to be involved in the making of the story.

03:23.33

Star

And, like I said, Studio Job didn't really work out, but the cool thing about webcomics is that it's a way that you can kind of tell a story that does not require a huge budget and a ton of, like, other workers and, like, a bunch of different disciplines. There still are, but I would argue that comics are a much more easily solo endeavor than animation, and so I'm like, well, guess we're doing this! But I mean, I already liked comics, so...

03:50.93

Star

It was, it was not like a negative. It's like, uh, all right, plan eight and work out. Let's do this plan. A point one. yy

04:00.40

Claire

Exactly.

04:04.53

Varethane

How about you, Clam?

04:06.19

Claire

I'm quite different ah because I'm still in the animation industry, but um I never went in for storyboarding or design or anything more from like the creative side of things, which sounds weird because like i'm I'm a CG animator.

04:20.52

Star

Yippee.

04:21.73

Claire

I'm actually a CG animation supervisor at my current role. um But a lot of what I do is very much like service work for a studio in LA or overseas or anything like that where like you you give me the storyboard and I make the puppets dance kind of um so it's it's a far more sort of technical like I I'm following orders in the animation industry essentially which is also fine and like I get to inject some of my own creativity into some shots here and there but there's far less creative wiggle room compared to like going in as like a storyboarder where like you can put in gags or you can

05:03.38

Claire

you know, pitch new ideas to, you know, whoever the creator is, and they can be like, Oh, that's a really cool idea. Let's incorporate it. I fell into comics partially because of that sort of thing.

05:14.43

Claire

Like, I, I started my webcomic when I was working on a movie called sausage party, which ah is a which kind of speaks to like, my my mental state at that point where I'm just like, I don't like what I'm working on.

05:20.91

Star

Mmm.

05:22.22

Varethane

oh my

05:30.85

Claire

I'm not working on something that I'm fond of or that's really my jam so I wanted to make a web comic or I wanted to make something that was mine and I didn't get any notes on it and I didn't have any sort of like like oh the character needs to do this or we need to have a love triangle or whatever like I I wanted to have something that was uniquely my own and kind of a kind of a creative like dumping site for all of my thoughts during the day and yeah I I

05:45.63

Varethane

Oh my.

06:01.39

Claire

I like my day job and my comic side job are quite different in certain ways but there there is some overlap in terms of like things that I know about like staging a shot or um a lot of it is actually like scope so like picking your battles with like okay I'm not gonna put tons of effort into this one panel versus this one or like I you know I'm I'm going to use how to yeah choose how to use my energy wisely, which is a very important thing when you've got like a quota at work. So I, I don't know it. It's interesting how you know I know a lot of people that are in web comics in animation but they are storyboard artists, or they're like designers, and I feel like I'm, I'm more on the like,

06:47.74

Claire

technical side and then I'm coming back into something more artistic so it's kind of an interesting blend. I feel like I've got kind of a foot in both worlds and I i know i ah I didn't want to animate my idea so I made it a webcomic because I do enough animation during the day.

07:00.92

Star

Yeah!

07:04.53

Star

I that's definitely something like a sentiment I've heard with a lot of people and actually ah I just remembered it was not like a studio job but I did do I had my first big job out of college was like an illustrator job but there's heavy air quotes on that I was making like graphs and occasionally like images for standardized testing um and towards the

07:27.81

Claire

Hm.

07:28.59

Varethane

Oh, so Illustrator because you could do it in Illustrator.

07:32.58

Star

No, you joke, I did do it in Illustrator, though.

07:32.95

Claire

Maybe?

07:36.46

Star

I lied on my resume and said that I knew how to use Illustrator, because I taught myself Photoshop, I could teach myself Illustrator, and I did the night before I went in for my first day. Anyway, oh it's not that hard.

07:44.44

Varethane

Amazing.

07:48.34

Star

but Um, so towards the end of my time at that job, they started doing more like, uh, video stuff, which was doing a lot of like really, really basic after effects animation, which was like, make the gears turn. Um, show is like, have these things like float across the screen. She is a fish. Just make it so translate from right to left. How long do you need this? Like four days. And I was like, sure.

08:20.47

Claire

Two hours later.

08:22.03

Varethane

This is definitely within scope.

08:22.06

Star

yeah i Yeah, I am going to spend four minutes on this and then browse Tumblr for the next three days. I hope y'all don't mind me doing that on company time.

08:32.63

Claire

That is the way.

08:36.21

Star

But yeah, and so like the thing about having a creative job that's not necessarily creatively fulfilling, that is what I was doing when I started cast off. I started the comic while I was at that job because like, yeah, I go to work and I like i I'll draw a gerbil But I come home and I still have all these little b blurbos in my head that are just like, hey, write, write a comic about us. And I was just like, okay.

09:02.28

Varethane

Show thing boss.

09:03.43

Star

And sometimes I did definitely write scripts on company time, but I quit that job 10 years ago.

09:09.05

Star

So. Don't tell anybody.

09:13.52

Star

yeah ever access You ever accidentally copy paste a section of your script into the company work document?

09:13.56

Claire

Call the police.

09:18.93

Varethane

oh

09:20.00

Claire

Oh no.

09:22.01

Star

I fixed that real fast. but

09:25.05

Claire

Why are you having thoughts on company time?

09:27.74

Varethane

I'm trying to remember whether It's possible it didn't happen to me. Anyway, I don't know.

09:32.50

Star

It was like a shared Google Doc or something. And I was just like, oh, that's that's not what I meant to copy paste.

09:38.22

Varethane

Control Z.

09:39.60

Star

Oh yes, the world's fastest controls the quick draw on the west.

09:41.51

Varethane

no Nobody noticed.

09:46.68

Varethane

ah um I guess for my own answer, um it's kind of funny. i I also am in kind of the camp of like I have experience in the industry, which I i feel has stayed very separate from like my work in comics, but to an even greater degree.

10:02.97

Varethane

I worked as a 3D texture artist so I wasn't actually making the characters move um or really drawing up until i I actually eventually pivoted into doing design so like drawing props and like little little set pieces and costumes and things ah which was getting a bit closer but for most of my career it's been as a texture artist which is like painting onto 3D models like you know the the texture of the skin or the hair or the cloth or whatever.

10:31.90

Varethane

And then and a lot of very fiddly like shader work within the program to make sure that all the parameters are right and it's reacting to the light appropriately. And like a lot of little sliders, an unfortunate amount of math more than I really felt that I had signed up for as an art student.

10:47.71

Claire

No, not math.

10:48.80

Star

Disgusting.

10:49.18

Varethane

um But you know i I actually really enjoyed it. I love doing like the texture work. um But it did not necessarily apply to like comics in any direct way. um Beyond that I got very good at Photoshop and ah at painting, I learned a ton of like crazy layer tricks and like how to use clipping layers and like masking.

11:10.32

Varethane

um Because a lot of these things are applicable even when you start getting into the other programs that the ah that the industry uses like Substance Painter and ZBrush and whatnot. um So i was I grew up kind of fascinated by animation.

11:26.89

Varethane

ah and animated stories were definitely a big part of the inspirations that kind of led to me like wanting to do comics in the first place. And it took until probably mid-university before I really started to like differentiate between the two. i initially ah I knew I wanted to do storytelling and visual storytelling in some way, and it took me a weirdly long time to kind of arrive at the like what I ended up doing. ah because i went to I studied literature first, and then I transferred halfway through to a visual arts program.

12:02.99

Varethane

And I started comics during that process before I really had a notion of like, oh, animation is an option. um I ended up going to an animation program after getting a fine art degree. um And by that time, I already had been working on Chiralt for like three or four years. um I was doing it during school. I was like drawing at the back of lecture halls and like, because of the traditional nature of the comic, I could do it literally anywhere. So when I went to animation school,

12:31.64

Varethane

I put the comic on hiatus for a little bit because it was very intense. um And I had a blast doing like the storyboarding and planning out the story. um I discovered that the actual animating was the part of the process that I enjoyed the least.

12:46.80

Varethane

So kudos to you, Clem.

12:49.05

Claire

It's hard.

12:49.93

Claire

It's not for everyone. Like a lot of people, they'll they'll go to school, quote unquote, for animation, and then they'll take their first animation class and they'll be like, well, I absolutely despise this. I want to, I want to go take a walk in the woods and not come back to my computer.

13:06.51

Varethane

It is funny how it goes because there's i've I've spoken to people who had the same experience as me and then others who had like kind of the opposite where they were like, I want to go into like rigging or like some totally different.

13:16.97

Varethane

like I want to do storyboarding. And then they fell in love with animation. I'm like, it is great.

13:20.37

Claire

Yeah, we do.

13:21.42

Varethane

We need both people.

13:22.97

Star

and then i

13:23.63

Claire

And I think there's a lot in animation, like the thing that I've seen that kind of delineates people that either become like animators with a capital A or like something tangential is like, do you like animation or do you like kind of detail oriented, like do you watch people as they walk to see like walk cycles?

13:42.87

Varethane

Mm.

13:43.93

Claire

Do you observe like really interesting facial expressions and you're like, Oh God, that'd be a really good, inspiring thing.

13:46.64

Star

Mm-hmm.

13:49.95

Claire

Like it's, it's, there's a lot of pathways to the same industry. And that's why like, I think anybody that wants to get into animation, like you don't have to be an animator, like anybody who's a texture artist making animated characters, like you're in the animation industry, you're still absorbing things from all sorts of different departments, so like, there are many paths to the same end.

14:13.81

Star

Yeah.

14:13.91

Varethane

Yeah, working in animation I definitely felt like, um because even even though I wasn't necessarily drawing while I was doing it, like just being in the presence of so many people who were all passionate in some way about storytelling, about like putting out a narrative in some kind of way. Everybody was creative and like interested in these things, so had a lot of great like conversations and I'd I liked everyone there, so I definitely enjoyed it from from that standpoint. um I kept the comics like pretty firmly on the side. um I guess I'll also talk about that a little more ah in subsequent things. I'm going to ah go into the next question, um which is, how is animation different from making comics? What is easier to do in animation versus in comics? And what's easier in comics? Starting with Star.

15:06.53

Star

okay So my big thing with, I love animation. I love like animated things. I watch a lot of animated shows, a lot of animated movies. Animation is hard. And when I talk, I say animation, I mean like the all of it. There's something where it's kind of like, there's like a sliding scale of like your work to output ratio.

15:31.88

Star

And I feel like on one side, there's illustration where it's like you spend, you know, a couple hours drawing when illustration, you draw the character one time, and then your piece is done. And then somewhere in the middle there, there's comics where you have to draw the character like six or seven times a panel and you got to draw like the backgrounds a couple different times a panel, la di da. um And you that's still able you can still do that as one person fairly easily and still you know put a decent amount of work into it but still get a decent amount of work out of it animation is like the far end of that spectrum where you draw a character like 20 times and you've made like three seconds of animation and that's like maybe one shot of an entire scene and yeah you gotta do the

16:10.57

Claire

Yes.

16:16.30

Varethane

Oh, but it's not even one shot because you still need the whole background and you still need all the audio and the music and the editing and the lights.

16:21.02

Star

ah throughouotten And usually it's like sometimes people are savants and they can do that all on their own. um Sometimes people trick themselves into thinking that they're that and they can handle all of it, which is kind of what I'm doing right now on another project.

16:35.47

Star

Please hold. um I'll talk about it later.

16:36.91

Claire

Oh no!

16:39.29

Star

It's not important to the podcast, but um it's settled on like that comfortable middle because I also feel like there's a sliding scale of how much story like you can kind of push out with the amount like the ratio of like how much story you're able to output versus how much work you put into it because like one illustration you can tell a story with an animation but i was always more interested in like the long-form narratives that you would get in like animation or comics um but animation there's too much stuff and i don't like working with other people uh so i'm just like comics

17:14.91

Star

Yay. So I feel like that's kind of the big difference that I point to is just kind of like how much work do you want to put into this versus how much stuff do you want to get out of it. um Another big thing is just kind of like the final product in a way because you know with animation usually you're working with a fixed size for every single shot.

17:39.38

Claire

Thank you.

17:39.97

Star

You'd you'd have like your 16 by 9 or if you're one of those crazy TikTok people ah points to self you're using a 9 by 16 aspect ratio um but all of your shots will be the exact same size.

17:52.96

Star

And you also have the element of time in there that you fully control you have a lot more control over like the nuanced aspects of it is like how much time are people going to spend looking at this thing. um How like you control the pacing a lot more ah with comics.

18:09.39

Star

Ideally, your panels should not all be the same size, and we can circle back to that. um Because it's going on a page, it's a lot more freeform. You can make vertical and horizontal panels. You can do a series of short panels or one really big panel for maximum impact. And you can kind of control the way that the reader sees your work, but in general, the reader is kind of responsible for how quickly they pace through certain things.

18:34.58

Star

um And so it's a little bit more freeform, I would argue. And yeah, like there's other things like motion can be a little bit harder to portray in comics versus animation because you only get like one panel to show what an animation could show like the entire movement. um Animation has voice acting, music, all that stuff that comics Generally don't, but like we said at the beginning, webcomics can be a little bit more freeform with that kind of thing. I know like some webcomics incorporate music into it that's just playing in the background as you read. um Also, you have to think about your compositions a little bit more with comics because you also have to worry about where your word balloons are going to go.

19:19.14

Star

Um, and so it's just like, there, there's like little granular bits of like things that are different, but they are a very, like very similar products on both ends. I don't like calling them products because it makes it sound like, ah, yes, sort of sell this store and it'll make millions. The final product is more what I'm trying to say.

19:37.61

Varethane

It's kind of interesting that you were mentioning like the the music and stuff because I know there have been some webtoons where they'll have music trigger as you scroll a certain like amount down the page.

19:43.53

Star

Yeah.

19:48.26

Varethane

And it's kind of interesting because I feel like that platform has started to really like cultivate an audience who sees comics and animation as like even closer together than they might be in a traditional like comic page.

20:00.03

Star

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

20:03.10

Varethane

It gets pretty intense.

20:05.02

Star

Yeah, I think, I know Tapis used to um do the thing where you could add music. I'm not sure if you still can. And I think webtoon, it's only a thing that the fancy like sponsored comics can do.

20:18.11

Star

It's not something for us plebs to have access to.

20:18.45

Claire

Yeah.

20:19.06

Varethane

Yeah.

20:21.33

Claire

I think you have to be an original, so...

20:22.82

Varethane

Yes.

20:24.54

Star

But if you make your own website, you can do whatever the heck you want.

20:27.56

Varethane

Oh, yeah.

20:27.78

Claire

Yee-boy!

20:31.44

Varethane

How about you, Clam?

20:32.95

Claire

It's interesting, I... I'm more on my mind right now ah because i I just got back from Lightbox in l LA, which is like the big LA like animation industry, art, comic convention sort of thing. And it's really cool. I'd never been before and thinking about um so much of like the limitations of like producing an animated show or ah even a pilot in l LA or even like a just a pitch for like Netflix or whatever, because I had, yeah, several conversations with people about kind of the nature of like, okay, you you want to

21:12.43

Claire

make an animated thing, whatever it is, out of your story and your characters, but you have to fit it into a very particular kind of niche, I guess, um for us for a like a studio or a sponsor to pick you up.

21:30.29

Claire

or a network just to be like, okay, we're gonna give you money to make this thing. And I feel like so many people gravitate to web comics because you don't have that sort of limitation. like it's It's obvious, but it is something to think about where a lot of people, they'll be they'll kind of think like, oh, I'll make a web comic and that'll be my pitch you know for an animated show.

21:47.67

Star

Mmm.

21:49.17

Claire

And that is possible. And it is happening a little bit more here and there, but it is still exceedingly rare. And it's something where like Like you can't count on it to be a pitch because there are so many little boxes that like a traditional industry production will want you to tick along the way so like depending on your demographic, or you know whether it can be turned into toys or whatever like that and like i yeah i I always think about kind of the structural differences like Star was talking about with like you know panel size or flow or music or you know effects or whatever. But yeah, more so right now, I'm thinking about just just kind of the freedom um that you don't really... like you You can have it in indie animation to a degree, but even then, like

22:42.85

Claire

you know productions that happen now like has been hotel or i guess like lackadaisy like they're they're out there and they're happening but they're still they're still reliant on the same sort of like we need we need to get money from people that believe in us so that we can make this thing unless unless you're absolutely like a powerhouse and you basically animate the entire thing yourself i think was it Alice in the Stars is a new one that ah was I think entirely animated by one person or like one person and then a couple other people couple other people like I was just like holy heck like like to have that sort of drive is a whole other sort of

23:15.59

Star

Oh my God.

23:16.45

Varethane

Whoa.

23:26.67

Claire

I guess phenomenon that like I get in very small spurts where I'm like, Oh, I love this line. I'd love to animate one of my characters saying it. And I just do that in like a fever dream over two weeks. But to do that sort of thing on such a large scale, like I, I do have in my head, like how my comic would look.

23:45.22

Claire

as like an indie animated short or something like that or miniseries but I don't have the brain cells or the energy to do that sort of thing like full-time and like I fully respect people that do it is it's incredible to see people kind of just jumping right into it and being like I don't care I want it to be animated I don't want it to not move and they find a way to make it work so I don't know like

23:46.63

Star

Mmhmm.

23:52.01

Star

Oh, very much.

24:12.88

Claire

i i'm I'm using everything I can in my webcomic to kind of bridge the gap where like people a lot of people read and they're like, I can imagine this animated. And that's kind of good enough for me at this point.

24:27.07

Star

I get so many comments these days on both the, um because I guess with the nature of just like kind of how my audience is manifested on like YouTube and those people have followed me over to the comic, did it a i my audience tends to skew a little bit young.

24:42.54

Claire

Hmm.

24:42.75

Star

Um, and so I get a lot of comments from these kids who, no shade or anything, um, but maybe don't understand how much work animation is.

24:53.76

Claire

Yeah.

24:53.92

Star

Um, and they'll go in and they'll ask me, have you ever thought about making cast off into an animated series? And I'm like, yeah, I've thought about it. I've thought about how much freaking work that would take.

25:05.79

Varethane

I thought The well-meaning comments from like relatives or like whoever, it's like, oh, you do so much of this.

25:07.01

Star

I've thought about several things. I've also thought about the mansion I want to own. We can't have it all, kids. I mean, listen.

25:13.19

Claire

I want a pony!

25:14.58

Star

I mean, I mean, listen. Yeah, of course. Someone wants to get in my inbox like, hey, perfectly good story over here that is very popular with the indie animation kids, according to who is leaving comments on my YouTube channel.

25:27.00

Star

But I mean, like, I'm not doing it.

25:30.75

Claire

That's kind of my thought.

25:37.28

Varethane

like Have you ever thought about like going into like storyboarding or like animation or something like that? And it's like, it is so different.

25:42.99

Star

Yes.

25:46.64

Star

It's like I know on the surface it looks the same. You do not understand what you are asking of me.

25:55.47

Varethane

Yeah, this is something that i that I've thought about a lot ah personally. I guess to get into kind of my own my own answer, because like definitely the the length and scope that's available is a huge difference between animation and comics. Although I think part of that scope change is just the act of making something as a large team with like huge oversight to keep things on track.

26:19.35

Varethane

um Because you can kind of see that sort of scope in like manga, like long-running Shounen series.

26:19.39

Star

Mhm.

26:26.08

Varethane

Those can get a ton of story out, like arguably even more than animation, but it also takes a team effort to make that happen. And they definitely control kind of the amount of detail that goes into things a lot, unless it's a series like Berserk, and in that case it also

26:38.67

Star

Yeah.

26:42.58

Varethane

takes like over 10 years to make to make it happen. um But a yeah, the whole the storyboarding thing is what I'm going to talk about in my answer specifically, um just because having worked for so long. And I was a texture artist, but then people would see like, oh, you can draw. Why don't why don't you go into storyboarding?

27:02.15

Varethane

instead of textures. And initially after kind of entering the industry, I was like, you know what, maybe I should actually try to pursue that. And I talked to a lot of my colleagues who were board artists, um because we would hang out like one of one of the really neat things that um my Time and animation like at the studios that I was at often people would have little like sketch lunches and stuff where you'd all hang out in like the kitchen or find a cafe nearby and like just be like drawing together um and ah a lot of this this was popular with the storyboard artists. um

27:34.32

Varethane

And so I got to talking to a lot of them about like kind of what they did. And I was like, oh, like if I wanted to like try to do that, like what should I do? And I had um i actually made like kind of a test storyboard portfolio thing. um And one of my ah boarding friends kind of looked it over and gave me some very ah insightful critique. ah Some might say harsh, but I definitely appreciated it at the time. But like there are a lot of things that I do in my comic to save page space, like things that work well in a comic to cut down the amount of like panels that you need to use to communicate a certain action um that help with the comic reading experience. Because pacing in a comic, um keeping things tight and letting the reader infer stuff can help, especially if you're doing an action comic.

28:24.45

Varethane

You don't want things to feel like they're dragging or taking forever or like, you know, man, it's taken this character like, you know, three pages to pick up a cup and put it back down. um Like readers will notice that it doesn't work in a comic, but in a storyboard, you actually need to break things down. Like you have to like split every action up into multiple sequences. And like I thought as I was doing this storyboard test sequence, I was like,

28:50.16

Varethane

Oh boy, I'm breaking this down so much. And then when my board friend looked it over, it was like, wow, you really need to add more to all of these. I hadn't gone far enough. like All my instincts were telling me, like you know keep this concise. um But when you're boarding, like you do actually need to show that. And these two very like these two mediums they look on the surface very similar because you're doing a series of still images accompanied by text to start to tell a story but they serve different needs because the comic is what the reader like that is the final product that's your delivery to the reader uh and it is its own art form that has its own conventions and its own like sense of pacing this is the final experience but a storyboard is a piece in a production puzzle

29:36.35

Varethane

that an animator needs to look at later and a scene planner. A lot of people are going to be looking at this storyboard to guide what they do. And it's not actually the final product, um even though you can, obviously, you can share it and like director's cuts and things. And there can be a ton of interest in looking over storyboards from an animated production. um But it's such a different kind of method you sort of have to retrain your whole brain to to pivot from one to the other and it's fairly common to see comics where like ah in webcomics you can sort of start to tell like there's this little like niggly sense like oh this person wants to do storyboarding for animation so um it's something to kind of uh like watch for they're not they're not interchangeable uh no matter how much my like well-meaning aunts might think so

30:16.73

Claire

Yeah, I think it's also interesting because like I'll look at storyboards from like the 90s like Disney like Lion King storyboards where it is so different than storyboards today because storyboards today like you have to be so specific about every action because it's often being sent either up to me in Canada or like I don't know to Korea or other places where the the animation will be outsourced And you need to be so so specific to avoid, I guess, notes coming back. But like back in the 90s, you would just have, like I don't know, a panel. And it would be like, OK, I'm going to draw Scar looking evil. And like the animator just kind of knows, OK, I'll animate him looking evil in this shot. like it's It's not so specific as to be that limiting. So like I think storyboarding now, like a lot of people

31:23.53

Claire

they might kind of think a little bit more in the past of like okay I get to I get to like stage shots or think about layout for these things but it's like no you if you have a character and the the script says he has to walk over and you know pick up this cup drink it put the cup down and sit down like you got to draw every single part of that and that's why like I think a lot of storyboards veer towards truly being animated in that way and like it's exhausting but at the same time like I see I do see people that do that same thing in comics where like you'll have a just a standard page and every panel will be the same size and the character will be in it it's basically shot like you know it's just I guess taking screenshots of something that already exists and just putting them on a page where like

31:53.66

Star

Yeah.

32:15.66

Claire

There's not much variation between the panels or the placement of the characters in the panels. And you're just kind of like, oh, no, like you don't have to be beholden to the same limitations as industry people, please be free.

32:25.82

Varethane

Oh my gosh. Seriously.

32:27.98

Star

Yeah.

32:30.68

Varethane

I have talked to one one of the other things that I did learn about like storyboarding because a lot of the shows that I worked on are in the preschool like market. So like stuff for the under five set.

32:41.23

Varethane

um And there's a lot of limitations on what kind of shots can be used because on a 3D production to kind of keep in check the amount of things that the modeling team needs to make.

32:46.12

Claire

Yeah.

32:53.44

Varethane

often a set can only be filmed be shot from certain angles like they'll have like a list of approved angles and the storyboard has to stick to just those angles and you have to have the characters a certain size on the screen at all times and in certain placements

32:57.83

Claire

who

33:08.90

Varethane

And sometimes a character can't be shown from certain angles, or like if you get like you know a little wacky with your camera, like maybe you're like, oh, I want to do a worm's eye view for effect. like They'll be like, nope, can't do that.

33:20.81

Varethane

Or like ah any more kind of like expressive or like dynamic shots um have to go through like a crazy process to like even be approved at all.

33:22.52

Star

Oh.

33:29.67

Varethane

And ah in in comics, you don't got that problem. You can just do what you want.

33:33.65

Star

oh

33:34.71

Varethane

you You can have so much fun with it.

33:34.81

Star

Yeah, be in my art.

33:34.82

Claire

Mm-hmm.

33:37.94

Star

Me and my artistic high angles. I'm just like this is an establishing shot. Show the whole room. What do you mean it can't do that?

33:46.15

Claire

You do have to draw the whole room though, but if you like doing that...

33:48.16

Star

ah Yes, well, I. I will pay for my hubris. I want everyone to see my... Listen, I i have started... um One of the skills I picked up in animation school was learning some basics of 3D modeling ah that I now use for evil. And by evil, I mean I make 3D models of all my comic sets, so I don't have to worry about perspective.

34:11.80

Star

It's just like I just I just take screenshots and roughly like ah so I'll fudge it sometimes just because sometimes the camera angles can err the my cat is playing with a quarter on the floor in the kitchen and it's very distracting.

34:24.66

Star

um It's like, yeah, sometimes I won't follow exactly, but it's like, I don't want to have to worry about where this chair is in every single panel. I'll just take a screenshot and now I know where the chair is. Or the the chapter I just wrapped production on, chapter 12, most of the comic took place in like the same couple of rooms.

34:45.62

Star

Um, and so it's just like, okay, it's consistent and I can just copy, paste, or I can just take screenshots of every single angle. And then I always know where that shelf is. And I always know where this is in relation to the characters and it just makes things very easy. Um.

35:02.65

Claire

I've done the same with characters.

35:02.84

Varethane

Heck yeah.

35:04.69

Claire

like i ah you know I feel like I've actually gotten better at um anatomy and perspective by just animating characters in 3D. I have more of a sense of like body proportion like relative to camera and things like that.

35:21.39

Claire

so like There have been times where like I'll be on my lunch break and I'll be drawing and you know my my scene file for my professional like animation job will be open. And I'll just be like, I don't know how to draw from this angle.

35:34.30

Claire

So I'm just going to pose this completely unrelated character in like a similar way and be like, yeah, that's what I wanted. And then go back to it. And by the end, I'm just like, wait, why did I pose you like that?

35:45.11

Claire

Oh, that's right. Something else.

35:48.47

Star

i was doing shenanigans on company time ah

35:53.67

Varethane

um This actually ah kind of leads into, or potentially even gets ahead of my third question, um which is, what is your advice to someone who is inspired by animation and trying to figure out how to make a webcomic, but maybe use some of that inspiration too? um And you can share some of your favorite examples of animation or animation inspired techniques in webcomics.

36:14.57

Star

I was doing shenanigans on company time. I'm not sure if you would call this a technique necessarily, but uh

36:22.16

Varethane

We can be as loose with the definition as we want.

36:23.67

Star

yeah Heck yeah! ah So I always tell people, people keep at another series of comments that I get very frequently because my audience is very young and maybe doesn't understand how much work goes into these things. ah Love y'all, no shade, but you torment me on a daily basis. is um They're always asking me, how long is the comic going to be? And I'm just like, how or how much longer is it gonna be? How much more time until it's finished? I'm just like,

36:53.93

Star

I'm about halfway through and it's been about 10 years. Please hold.

36:59.27

Star

um But it's actually funny, because when I tell people, like, kind of how I planned the story, you know, I grew up, like many people our age, uh, watching a lot of Amine, watching, watching the animes on TV, bennemones annemonnemonemnes the the animes is one of my college professors used to jokingly call it to fish out the, the, the annoying weaves.

37:14.89

Varethane

The Anemones!

37:27.80

Star

It was so funny. He would like bust into comics class on the very first day and be like, all right, which one of you kids like the animes and the man jams? And you know like most of us would be like, ha ha, he said it wrong. But occasionally, there'd be like the belligerent person. He's like, it's anime and manga. And he's like, OK, you're the one I got to watch out for.

37:47.55

Claire

Perfect.

37:49.17

Star

and Um, but yeah, so, uh, I actually, when I was scripting cast off and like planning out the events and planning when certain things would happen, I always say that I kind of paste it like a two season anime. Like it's going to be roughly 24 chapters and each chapter is roughly the amount of content you could get away with, with a 22 episode or a 22 minute episode of a show. Um, that kind of helps me keep like.

38:19.96

Star

I love it for pacing because it's very specifically, it's like you have to make sure that every chapter on its own has some kind of arc. There's like your overarching story for the chapter and how does it fit in with the overarching story as a whole. It helps me kind of figure out, I was like, okay, am I lingering too much on this thing? Am I not spending enough time on this thing? Is this going to be clear for my audiences? I just kind of thought about it, like how much would be in like a standard TV episode of a thing and that's about how much I put into the webcomics so it's like you kind of follow the beats for that and granted some of my chapters are longer than others I don't stick like super duper strict to this um I usually say that the end of chapter 10 is like the season finale quote-unquote

39:06.59

Star

Um, because that was like a really big turning point in the story. That was like kind of the party is together and everything is big. And that's like sings like season finale to me. Um, but that was only chapter 10. And so you would imagine it's like, maybe if this was made into an animation, cough cough studios get in my inbox. Um, chapter 10 is long enough. It would probably be divided into two chapters. So I play real Lucy goosey with it, but it is like thinking about it that way has genuinely helped me figure out like,

39:36.10

Star

kind of how to keep it moving at a steady clip how to like focus on things like it's been a it's been a solid boon for like the actual scripting and planning sections of the comic.

39:51.02

Varethane

How about you, Clam?

39:52.94

Claire

Gosh, i think I think a lot about pacing too, but I do think more more about kind of the technical side because I think with pacing like I run into the problem where like in my in my head I can see the overarching story and I can feel what it'll be like to read it when it is like three or four, you know, compiled volumes or whatever. But webcomic time is so slow that I'm just kind of like, I'm putting that on kind of a back burner in terms of like, okay, i I trust the process in terms of the pacing and three act structure and kind of rising and falling action intention and whatever like that much I can feel like, okay, I've got it. But

40:35.30

Claire

far more like the technical side of things I think is something that I've I've thought more about and I've seen more of my kind of day job come into the webcomic over the years because like I there's a concept in I guess animation in general in terms of just like pushing something whether it's you know caricaturing you know of of character design or you know pushing the posing of something or you know just basically just making something so it's actually like probably too much but then you can pull it back a little bit um when you're just like okay you know it it's gone a little too far but i love the feeling of it let's just pull it back a little bit so that the energy is not too overwhelming and like i see this happen where like i've gotten more confident in posing and in expressions and in kind of

41:26.46

Claire

taking risks with certain pages or shots or things like that, like as as I've gotten more comfortable with just the technical aspects of drawing, I feel that kind of thing in the back of my head where like when you're working on an animated shot, I've kind of got like a checklist of like, okay, what are the certain things that I'm looking for? I'm looking for you know How is the posing? is it Is it clear? Is it effective? Is it fun to look at more than anything else? like Even if it's not perfect anatomy, at least make it fun to look at because that's that's what's going to get somebody to keep reading. like Even if they're not super into the story at one given point, they'll at least be like, it looks great. I want to keep reading. um But then also like just aspects of like you know little things. like

42:16.20

Claire

you know little and anatomical things like looking at eye direction or you know again portraying perspective well or you know thinking about cameras you know a lot of stuff i'm actually jumping into doing more layout at my current job and layout layout comes before animation in the animation industry where it's basically just like you set up very very basic camera shots of you know what's going to happen in that shot um And you you move the characters just like little dolls, like you don't put animation on them so much. It's more for staging things. And even that's making me think like, okay, like there's there's so many interesting ways of portraying

43:01.00

Claire

movement in a shot and it's actually something where you can you can move that back into a comic with you know I don't know like I look at again I don't read a lot of superhero comics but they are really good at portraying action and you know a varied sense of you know place and time and stretching things out or not like there's there's a lot of things that I'm thinking about constantly when I'm animating that I have actually started thinking about when I'm drawing and it is it does go through kind of a filter but I I find it interesting like the

43:38.74

Claire

a lot of the same principles apply because at the end of the day you're trying to make something that communicates effectively, looks appealing, and is just fun. And I think that's kind of universal to any sort of visual medium. Like you you don't have to make it fun all the time, but it's still something where you have to feel you would have to feel like you have to keep watching or reading. And I think that's that's something where as as long as you're conveying something in an interesting way like animation or webcomics, it's the same for both.

44:14.46

Star

Yeah, definitely. um As far as like because what you were talking about with like layouts and stuff. I mean, I know for me at the very least, I'm sure this is not a unique thing, though, like doing the thumbnails of a comic page. I remember when I first started making comics, I didn't do thumbnails like at all. And you can tell.

44:33.50

Claire

Oh no.

44:35.47

Star

I just went straight into sketching the page. Um, but no, yeah, like I, one of the first steps for making a webcomic is doing those layouts and like planning how the page is going to look and doing, I call them my stupid lollipops, um, with a face shot on them is I just, I don't even, they're not even stick figures. It is a circle with a line underneath it. Uh, sometimes the line is at an angle.

44:56.88

Star

to show motion and sometimes the line will have some arms like I can I i show these on my Patreon um but my thumbnails are the dumbest looking things um but that's basically like how the layouts work it's just like you kind of like do the really rough stuff ahead of time um and then that you board out your comics like you would board an animation but you know make sure to take

44:58.41

Claire

Gasp.

45:00.19

Varethane

Insert dynamicness.

45:24.78

Star

The freedom of every panel can be a different size into account. And you also have to take into account how does the page look overall as a whole with all your different shots. Get a beta reader to go through and be like, hey, does this ah action make sense? Does what is what happening here make sense? Are any of these shots like really boring? Do I just have an entire like scene of talking heads or is there something more interesting I can do with these layouts?

45:50.93

Star

um I know for me, I usually do my thumbnails like an entire scene at a time. And so I'll just really just sit down and draw thumbnails for an entire scene. And then I'll look at my awkward little stick figures and be like, okay, does this do these look good? Does this page layout look compelling? Is this saying what I need it to? And then I will move on to the next step. And so I feel like that's kind of similar to what Clam was talking about with the ah like layouts rough stuff. ah So I just think that's interesting.

46:19.63

Star

One thing that I did want to talk about, though, that I put in the notes and then I forgot to mention earlier, in so far is like advice for people who are coming from like a love of animation, maybe wanting to work into web comics. This is not a requirement.

46:34.72

Star

If you, like, re- if this is something you really, really, really want to put in your webcomic, I cannot stop you. Um, but when I am designing characters for my webcomic, I tend to design them as if they were intended for animation, i.e.

46:50.20

Claire

Mm.

46:50.85

Star

simple shapes, simple outfits without a ton of detail. Like, if- if you're gonna hate yourself drawing it 12 times a page,

47:02.31

Star

Just take it out. um I remember I watched like some of the bonus features on like the Lilo and Stitch DVD when I was a kid and they talked about how one of the characters they were gonna put like a design on her shirt and they opted against it because of how many man hours it would take to like track that design on the shirt for every single frame of animation.

47:19.16

Claire

Mm hmm.

47:25.22

Star

And I'm just like, yeah, I think these characters can have just like simple little outfits, and that'll- that'll be what we do here. I'm not gonna do Genshin Impact level character details for my main cast. Screw that.

47:39.49

Varethane

Oh my god, I feel this one on my bones, because much as I love a really complicated like character design, I know that I could not. like I gave Kieran's jacket pockets in like chapter two or three of Geralt, and within four pages, I was already forgetting to draw the pockets. So after realizing it like a chapter later, I was like, okay, the next outfit, just not going to have them.

48:05.72

Star

Yeah, i my my readers give me nonsense sometimes because they'll usually catch this before I do, but with my military uniforms in my comic, there I made them so simple. It's like shirts and pants and like they have a little shoulder thing and that's the uniform because I don't want to draw like complex military uniforms all the time. I don't want to. You can't make me. It's a fantasy comic. We're going slightly Star Trek and they just have like and just vague approximations of a uniform, um but one of the things that I am consistently forgetting.

48:40.68

Star

is um i brought up star trek because that's actually where i got the idea for this from um my characters have stripes on their sleeves to show what their ranking is in my fantasy military and guess who forgets to draw those stripes constantly it's literally just like one to three lines across the hem of their sleeves and i forget it Consistently. Every single time. Half the time, I don't catch it until someone comments on it and the page has already been up for days, and I'm just like, ah, beans! Zara, maybe you just don't have stripey sleeves in this scene. Who's gonna care?

49:19.53

Claire

I'm not allowed to do that with my characters because it's tattoos and they're on, it's on everyone and there's like, oh gosh, I, I, I i do, I do have concepts of Jeff from ages ago where I tried doing something a little bit more complicated and I just, I want to go back in time and just hug myself and be like, thank you for not making it worse.

49:23.17

Star

Oh, no, yeah, mmm. Mmm. How's the grave taste?

49:46.27

Claire

Thank you. Bye-bye. Enjoy the crowd shots.

49:50.47

Star

god yeah no i keep seeing like because you you have so many just giant crowd shots in your comic and i'm just like are you okay after that are you good oh

50:00.11

Claire

Surprisingly, yes. like i there's There's a reason why chapter one took three years to draw, but I won't do that again because I i already have a bad elbow and I don't want to make it worse.

50:11.54

Star

on yo

50:13.19

Claire

It's okay. It's worth it.

50:17.28

Varethane

Actually, the thing that I wanted to talk about um is that like ah when it comes to kind of the the animation industry, it' sort this is a bit more of like ah a bit of a technical thing, I guess, but there's a lot of things that ah studios will do to make things kind of easier and smoother when like a different thing kind of goes down the pipeline.

50:40.10

Varethane

um And this includes like ah doing a lot of like planning ahead of time, making sure to have like a style guide for the characters and so on, um and like certain techniques as you're producing the things themselves that mean that when it gets passed on to the next person in line who's going to work on it,

50:58.75

Varethane

it's really clear and easy for them to like jump into this file because they know all immediately kind of what they got to do and it's set up in a way that makes it easier and I'm like you know I could just make things easier on myself in the future by kind of putting in some of these things like when I when I plan ahead of time so part of this is like stuff like what Star was talking about with like the layout and like planning my pages as like little thumbnails and stuff

50:59.38

Claire

Mm hmm.

51:23.12

Varethane

um and try to make those like clear so that ah relatively clear. I have terrible handwriting, so like this is sort of a mixed bag, but like the the easier it is for me, potentially three weeks or more later, to look at those thumbnails and understand what the heck it was that I was doing.

51:39.34

Varethane

um So I'll have like a script on the side to sort of inform myself and when I make like ah ah a drawing of a character I Try not to get bogged down and like doing designs or concept art ahead of time And let like if I if there's something that I'm like, this is really important for me to nail down I'll do it um but I know how easy it is to kind of get stuck in the trap of like I can't work on the page until I have finished like this and Um, and if that's getting in the way of actually making the pages at a certain point, like if you draw it really nice on the page and you're like, I'm happy with this, just save it as a screenshot and put it in a folder.

52:14.28

Varethane

That's easy for you to find later on.

52:14.43

Claire

who

52:16.33

Varethane

So you can be like, what did this character look like? Well, I'm going to go to my folder that has my like master shots and I'm just going to dig it up and then I'll, I'll see what they look like. Um, and also certain, like this might seem super basic, but like name your files in a consistent way.

52:32.55

Star

Yes.

52:32.67

Varethane

like Give them all names that you will intuitively know what they are. like Number things have a method for numbering that can stay consistent. Put it all in ah the same kind of folder.

52:45.78

Varethane

um And then while working, um this is something that can make file sizes really big. So this is kind of an optional thing. But like ah working non-destructively, so if you need to like make an adjustment to a page ah using, um they're called correction layers, um where basically instead of um and instead of doing the hue saturation change or level adjustment,

53:09.64

Varethane

Like instead of flattening all your layers and then doing it that way, you can make a layer on top of everything else that will make those changes to your colors, et cetera. And you don't have to merge your layers so that if you need to go back later and edit things, you can actually do that. um When I was working ah in the studio, everything had to be non-destructive. So if you're doing a texture and that texture is like, you know, patterned cloth or something like that, you'd have a layer for the base color and a layer for the pattern and then potentially multiple layers of like the kind of cloth texture, like you know the weave like the pattern of the weave, the cotton, or whatever it is, and that would be sitting on top of everything else. And you only when you do flatten it, that flattened file is saved separately. You'd always have this master that you can go back to if you need to change things later.

53:57.51

Varethane

Um, and this last thing does require hard drive space. So if that's kind of something that's difficult to come by, um, I feel like this one is something that you can kind of plan around, but it does make it like way easier down the line.

54:12.65

Varethane

Um, I learned a lot of lessons by it flattening all of my terrault pages as I was working on them the first time.

54:17.48

Star

I

54:19.81

Varethane

So ah there there' is a there was a moment in the middle of volume three, which is when I started working at the animation studio.

54:20.56

Star

know!

54:28.83

Varethane

And i was like I was learning all these new habits of like file management. And I was like, you know maybe I'll try doing this. And I was like, oh, god, this is so much better. So yeah, that's kind of my tip.

54:44.34

Varethane

um Anyway, ah as it has been, ah um Anyway, that will be a goat cheese and roasted red pepper wrap.

54:55.35

Varethane

um Thank you so much for listening.

54:55.76

Claire

Ooh.

54:58.19

Varethane

I've been your host, Verithain. You can check out my work at terrault.7smith.net or whichwoodcomic dot.com.

55:06.65

Star

and I'm Star. You can find me on the internet. um My comic is castoff-comic dot.com, but I am also on just about every platform as The Starfish Face, all one word, um and I will be lurking around.

55:24.36

Claire

And I have been Claire Clam. My webcomic is at Phantomarene.com. Just smash the words together. Dot com. And yeah, I can be found in most places as Phantomarene or on Twitter as Phantomarene underscore because somebody else took the username before me.

55:41.36

Star

ah

55:42.58

Varethane

What a rat.

55:43.21

Star

You got to get them.

55:44.56

Varethane

Anyway, we'll see you later.

55:47.05

Star

Bye.

55:48.82

Claire

Bye bye.