I'm having a problem...

*Listening to Victor Von Gerdenheim's theme from Darkstalkers*

I'm thinking of finding an artist for some of my comic scripts, but since I am in artist myself that kind of makes it pointless. But I want to give this a shot because I want to expand my horizon in character design, props and outfits. But I could also do that by reading more comic books, and using them as reference. But I still want to work with an artist to hone my team work skills because quite frankly I'm more of a loner which is a problem from what I've seen. But I'm being indecisive as always on this. I figure collaborating with some else would be fun in seeing how they can create new looks for my characters, but I could also do this myself...

So if anyone has any words of wisdom in how I can solve this problem go ahead...

wordmonkey said:

Focus.

Decide on a path and follow it. Make it happen. Don't second guess. Just do what you set to do.

Did I mention focus?

No magic answer. Just comes down to hard work and getting used to rejection.

Oh... and focus.

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You said focus three times, and I've gotten used to rejection already I practically expect it...

Wolvel said:

Are you trying to get new looks for your characters or a new look for the strip overall?

As a fellow artist I know what your going through since the strip is your creation you feel your the best artist for the work. It seems to me though that your not really satisfied with the overall look if your pondering bringing in a second artist.

Have you tried deviantart.com ? I'm a member there as well. You could check around and find an artist who will work with you on design ideas. Also by seeing anothers ideas it could inspire you as well to really redo the designs.

On deviantart my profile name is Bluemaro79 , I only have one work there right now cause my scanner took a dump on me.

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I'd like to develop outfits for many of my new characters which keep popping in my head like every five minutes, as well as some new outfits for my current character so they don't look the same. Also I want the readers to be able to tell which character is which because I've noticed that I may have used a similar design with many of my characters. Here take a look at some of my comics, and you'll see what I mean. And yes I've looked at deviant art... My user name on there is "Hanyouyomi." I may have to check there again though and another site I visit called animartists.org

Axler said:

A good rule of thumb is to collaborate only when you can't do everything yourself.

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Yeah, but like many black people I'm a horrible team player, and I wanna change that... Because thinking that I have handle an entire project on my own won't bode well later on.

Gary Clarke said:

I agree with Wolvel, if you aren't satisfied with your own work, or you want to freshen it up a bit look around DA. You might be inspired by what other people are doing. There’s so many different comic art styles over there that it's just crazy :0) DA peeps aer generally good folk too, willing to share ideas etc.

The only problem with collaborating on a project that’s as long as a graphic novel or comic book series, is the amount of work involved. Unless the person you hire or team up with is as dedicated to the project as you are, they're more then likely gonna flake on you. One of the huge obstacles to getting a GN finished is seeing the artwork through to the end.

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Hmm... Yeah that could be a problem... Also I'm hoping to find someone I can collaborate with if I'm lucky to go to Wizard World this year, if I'm lucky in getting to go.(Mainly because I missed out on A-kon, and animefest, and in me being a private person I could collaborating with someone online but my parents will think I'm just mindlessly chatting if I'm in the midst of working on a project.)

wolvel said:

I agree here as well. You may want to have them just colaborate on just character designs and you draw the whole book.

If you need any help let me know either here or DA. I can't be involved in the whole work but I may be able to give you some ideas and I won't charge you a dime.

The only time I charge is either one its my own work or two if I am drawing the whole work. But I can maybe give you an idea on which way you could head with the characters, just PM me if interested.

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*Listening to Der Mussolini Covered by KMFDM*

Hopefully you got the "note" I sent you yesterday... It was a pain in locating your account...

Wolvel said:

In case you didn't get my note on DA. After looking at your designs they just need a few tweaks to get them in the right direction.

Most anime/manga characters are distinguished by to key points, costume and hairstyle. Both are usually unique to the character. A good example to study this would be Dragon Ball Z and Evangelion, also Gundam Wing uses this method to create looks as well.

And what you said about being a bad team player, its all in your head. Attitude will get you so far as will talent but you will need help along the way. A loner attitude will get you at home alone with your designs.

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I think myself an idiot for not noticing that about character development, and yeah I am a bad team player... I've been that for years in fact, it's a harsh part of me I had to accept if I wanna kill it... I only became this way because I figured I'd be surrounded by incompetence, and people who just love to underestimate me because they think they know me just because of what of what they've seen. It's vexing I'll have you know to wake up every morning to see that people are just as stupid as me...And when I expect them to be better with all the $%#& they talk.

Wolvel said:

I got it and replied chect your DA account.

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Lol Yeah I got it, and it was pretty eye opening...

Wordmonkey said:

If you are pulling this way and that, jumping from one thing to the other, this idea to that, this costume to that plot-twist, if you DO get anything finished it will be a mess and in all likelihood, you won't get anything finished.

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Tell me about it... that's why I've made it a point to just write down my ever increasing ideas for later so I can focus on finishing Princess Of The Damned, Dreamers' Hearts, High School Guardian, Nether Tales, and Demonic Redemption. But right now I'm working on finishing up Princess Of The Damned: The Boogie Hunter and my RSOM9 submission Forest Guardian.

Wordmonkey said:

And don't sweat the rejection. Just keep learning and getting better. This is not a sprint. EVERYONE starts out creating crap. The degree of crapness will vary, but it's the way EVERYONE starts. But you can and should use that crap. Learn from it. Analyze it. Listen to feedback and crits. Get better. And you will find that just like you put crap around plants and they grow better, your writing will also get better.

Don't look on ANYTHING you do as wasted. Look on it as the rich loam something better will grow from.

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I've often taken my crap, and remade it into something else... like my series Invasion started out as an Invader Zim fan-fiction, and was revived and renovated through the influence of This Zim Doujinishi. But it took some agonizing time revamping the series completely because the elements of the original fan-fiction were still there which would've made it plagiarism, and sense that was brought to my attention, I sought to draw inspiration from other sci-fi story arcs like Halo 2, Transformers, and I took out some of the DBZ elements from the original fan-fiction, but it seemed to work out...(I hope...)

Axler said:

Huh.

I wasn't aware of that...apparently neither were Darryl Banks, Frank Turner, Marcus Rollie and Bill Marimon, all artists of the black persuasion with whom I worked.

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I'm not not talkin' about the self-respecting African Americans who are working on achieving their dreams, I'm talking about the stereotype... When being among black people you'll learn that our community is divided between hard working dreamers and delusional stereotypes.( Those who live in the ghetto or those who act like gangsters.) I have exhibited traits from both halves of this divide... For you see those who live in the stereotype aren't good team players. They aren't humble or open enough to work with others. I may have a dream I'm working to achieve, but I'm not much of a team player, I feel people only get in the way when that's not true of everyone.

Gary Clarke said:

Hi Rasun, the best way of finding someone on DA is to google their DA name and the word deviantart, the first link on google should be their DA page:0) It took me a while to figure that one out myself :0D

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Well thanks, that solves my problem with looking for deviantart profiles....

Gary Clarke said:

I had a look at your stuff. I'm not much help for anime, I'm afraid, and I'm pretty sure you already know this, but have you looked at the many many excellent resource books there are on anime character design? There are tons of them and lots are very helpful.

I'm not sure where you would find them, but over here they're available in most bigish comic stores and in borders? Also, I think you can probably get then online? Anyway, you probably know that, but just thought I'd mention it.
I also can't advise enough that you read a wide range of comic books in all styles and genres. You can learn loads from studying panel flow and character design etc, even if it's not in your genre.

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And this sure'n be another good reason fer me t'work at a comic-book me-hearty... You see I'm currently working on getting a job at a comic book store for that exact reason, so I can look into other reference material...

Wolvel said:

Here is an idea for a anime style werewolf.

Maybe this will give you some ideas.

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Yeah it does, because you looked at Bon You'll note that he doesn't look as furry...

Wolvel said:

Here is what I was talking about with hair and costume.

And the male vampire.

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LOL, I'm sorry it's just I'm lovin' that retro look for your male vampire... I apologize for imagining him with a transilavanian ascent, as he invite a guest into his castle!

Though my problem is that I've given a gothic or emo look to some of my vampiric characters like Demyan for example, and I just came up with a look for my vampiric character "Liocard" from my story Princess Of The Damned.
I'll show it latter...

C.bronco said:

Why not take an interesting art class at your local college to "freshen up," and then re-evaluate how much of the project you feel ready to take on?

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I already planned on that...

wordmonkey said:

Just for the sake of clarity on my part (because you are totally free to do what you want and whatever works for you, if it works, is the way to go) I didn't mean you take the old stuff and rework it.

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*Listening to Victor Von Gerdenheim's Theme From DarkStalkers OST*

I know, but it's something I wanted to do for quite sometime... I wanted to rework Invasion to where I developed a concept different from that of it's influence Invader Zim. I often take old ideas and rework them using new elements I've gained from experience, it's a habit of mine...

wordmonkey said:

You learn from the process. What the project is or was is less important that the process and skills you learned.

I wrote a screenplay as my very first major serious writing piece. When I was done I was seriously proud of myself and thought I had, without a shadow of a doubt, written the next major summer blockbuster. I sent it out, but as I did that started to work on other things.

The project was soundly rejected everywhere.

But I moved on.

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I never really saw or see any of my works as the next biggest thing. Truth be told I never really desired to be the next J.K. Rowling, like alot of writers these days... I just write because I enjoy it, so I might as well make a career out of it to keep a roof over my head, and put food on the table. Whatever fate befalls my stories on the popularity charts really doesn't matter, because however the media distorts things isn't my concern... Besides you know as well as I do that you don't see black people televised, or mentioned often unless they're singers, sports, or hip-hop stars, anything outside of these stabled careers, and you don't see'em often.(Which is good because I love my privacy...)

wordmonkey said:

A few years later I came back and decided that I must have developed my skills and learned new things, so I'd have a look at this first project and see what little tweaks I could make.

I was horrified. It was ghastly. REALLY bad. The idea was still pretty solid, but the execution...? Well, let's just say the execution did just that - killed the script.

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Oh I know how you feel, I can't look at my comics I did in my 9th and 10th grade years in high school. Reasons being: The panels are too small, The characters are poorly drawn, the dialogue is written in cursive, need I say more? But I got better with it for the most part, and I try to avoid those errors...

wordmonkey said:

I was embarrassed beyond belief that a) I had thought this good; and b) sent this out to people who looked at it (well, the first five pages anyways - I had trouble reading beyond that point, and I knew the writer and liked the guy).

However, I didn't sit down and rewrite it from scratch (which it needed) nor did I think of a way I could modify the thing to make it better and different and new. I looked at the mechanics of the writing and what I had done wrong and used THAT to make my next project better.

That was my point about the crap/loam analogy.

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As I mentioned earlier it's a habit of mine to want to rewrite crumby concepts, because my stories are like... (dare-I-Say-It) children to me, and I won't rest until they're renovated into something better. Which is why I drop the concept, and meditate over it if it ever comes to mind again... And threw the process of meditation, I develop something different but I maintain the essence of what I started out with...(I'm just crazy that way...)

wordmonkey said:

If you're having lots of ideas, all the time, don't sweat coming up with them and saving them. Focus on one and work that through. THEN do another. THEN do another.

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I do that anyway, but I plan out a time to start them so they don't get in the way of stories I'm currently finishing up. I used to write the newly spawned concepts in a spiral when I was in school, so I wouldn't forget them. I wish to find that spiral, and renew this process.

wordmonkey said:

If you want to break in, to ANY area of writing, it's about the WRITING. Never about the idea. Don't get me wrong, ideas are important, but it doesn't matter how freakin' cool the idea is if it's buried under shitty writing. Trust me on this. I have the t-shirt.

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*Listening to Indestructible by Disturbed*

Oh I trust ya... I'm having that problem now in fact with my current work Princess Of The Damned: The Boogie Hunter The idea I have is good, but if I don't fix it soon the final product may be like that of the Red Hulk miniseries. Only I don't think the art will help any... You see what I wanted was The Vampire Liocard sends Luciami on a vampire hunting mission after hearing that children all over town had been disappearing. As Luciami investigates this matter she runs into A girl hunting down the Boogie Man known as "The Boogie Girl." The Boogie Girl knows that the Boogieman is behind the kidnappings, and seeks to get her little brother back, and she ask Luciami to help her. The only problem is Luciami doesn't believe in the boogieman, which is weird since she herself is the princess of all demon kind... But Luciami winds up aiding the Boogie Girl, but the Boogie Man escape thus leading into The Boogie Girl's own series The Boogie Hunter.

Wolvel said:

Yea I know my werewolf is furrier but that is a design I used. This was not intended to redo Bon just show another look for the character. I just sketched it out in about five minutes with just an ink pen off the top of my head.

The Vampires were some I had drawn for my wife and I added them to my DA profile to help fill it in and also to show you what I meant about hair and costume.
And yes the male vamp is based on an idea I once had for a transylvanian vampire.

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Okay... Apparently I need to work on clarity... I didn't mistake your werewolf as a redrawn version of Bon. What I was doing was comparing Bon to your werewolf... After looking at your werewolf, and mine, I thought that Bon looked like a hairless wolf, and the only way you could tell that he has fur was perhaps either his tail or his mane...

And as for vampiric concepts I might as well give Dracula a transylvanian look, because as much as I'd like to put my own spin on Dracula, a part of me wants to maintain some of a retro look because I'm a fan of the classics...

Wolvel said:

Well you mentioned some of your vamps had a goth look and to me thats been done heavily lately. You could go another route and put them in a regular old t-shirt and jeans and put a goth spin on another character not known for goth.

No I understood you about your werewolf not being so furry. I have seen some hairless some furry and some with just a fine fur. The one I drew was from my personal tastes.

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*Listening to Haunted by Disturbed*

More often than not, Liocard will dress in a suit because he's a gentleman, as do his friends of whom are "Day Walkers." Day Walkers in my fictional universes of Princess Of The Damned, Nether Tales, and many of my stories in the supernatural/horror/fantasy genres are basically vampires who are immune to sunlight because they like the first vampires Dracula, and Nakisha,(Character concepts inspired by Dracula from Blade Trinity and Akasha from Anne Rice's Queen Of The Damned) have walked among mortals, and have gained pigment to their skin, and a tolerance towards sunlight. They are often despised by the pale skinned Night Walkers(The traditional characture of vampires) because of this, and at times are murdered for it because they are the true essence of a vampire's immortality.(But the thing is the Nightwalkers are unaware that Nakisha and Dracula are daywalkers because of the legends.) And of course I have two vampiric brothers named Amos, and Methuselah who are royal guards of the vatican.(Trinity Blood inspired characters.) And they where knight's armor. And of course after listening to the intro of Disturbed's "Haunted" after listening to a youtube review of the song's intro the nightwalkers Luciami will facing when she meets Dracula in Her Infernal Majesty will be dressing in suits, and capes. But also in imagining during that moment this, I gave them blue spiky hair, and red eyes....Does that work well?


And thanks for the idea of dressing some of my vampiric characters in casual attire... That coupled with listening to the intro of Disturbed's "Haunted" gave an idea for a character if not another concept for a miniseries...

Also I see now that you like furry werewolves where as I prefer some with a fine fur. But the reason why I'mma work to having some of my werewolves look furry is because of distinction... I would like to have each one look different from the other.