Quality Vs. Quantity

It's something I constantly struggle with; whether it's worth it to spend a ridiculous amount of time on something if the product is beautiful.

In webcomics time is of the essence, too many missed updates and your fans will stop checking back. In the seven (eight?) years I've been reading webcomics I've seen three finish where they were intended (and two of those were by the same person), but I've lost count of how many that have just up and died. Some of the comics I follow now are showing signs of imminent failure, updates have been slower and slower over the past few years, a few are down to once every month or two. Hell, I failed the first time I tried it, six months and ten pages.

I really hope I can do it this time. I just went back and recolored all the trees in the five pages I have finished to make them match and look more aesthetically pleasing. It took me two days. I don't think I'll have to do it again, but the wasted time really put a dent in my production schedule. I'll probably only have up to seven done for tomorrow when I wanted eleven. I was banking on those to get me through the next eleven weeks in England in case I don't have time to make more while I'm there. If just a little slip up can put me this far behind can I even keep the comic going? Should I have just left all the mismatching trees? I could have got more done, but I'm a perfectionist, and I do have to say they look nice now.

Oh well, now I have to go write all the dialogue in. Ugh.

Better

It seems to me that every time I feel as though I've accomplished something with my art I turn around and see what the "professional" community does and it's like I'm still a high school student copying anime.

I mean, look http://www.conceptart.org/

I want the skills to make artworks like all those thumbnails.

I was admiring the pages I've completed for my webcomic, when I decided to google something and ended up there. I'm almost fourth year in my BFA, why can't I do that yet?

Where do I go to learn that? What program do I take? I thought fine arts was the highest you could go, but I can't do that yet.

I know I could, and I do feel like I'm getting there. I'm much better than I was when I started this program. (Much, much, much better. I can't look at my old art without suffering embarrassment.) But I know I wont be up to that standard when I graduate, and if there's such an abundance of people better than me how do I get a job? I'll need to take more supplementary education, but what program? Where?

That's what I was googling for, a program. I can't tell which ones are worth it though.

Things I Learned While Making Webcomics

Trees are green.

No, really. I mean, that seems obvious right? But when you draw trees, and you go to colour the trunk, what colour do you use?

It's brown isn't it? You're going to use brown aren't you?

Don't. Stop right there.

You see, if you use brown as your base, going lighter is going to take you into the yellows and oranges. Which is fine if your tree is all by itself on a hill in bright sunlight or something. But in a forest? Go with green, trust me. Your leaves are (most likely) going to be green, and since the complementary colour to green is red those orange highlights are going to get an impressive boost and be the most eye-catching things in the picture. So for a nice background use a yellow-greenish brown, and darker green-browns for the shadows, even go into blues a bit. for the lights use a lighter brown-brown-green, and you can finish with some (tiny) yellow-brown for the highlights (only where direct sunlight will hit it).

The second thing I learned from making webcomics is to colour your pages in order, that way you don't discover six random pages out of eleven in that you've been colouring trees wrong.
(I went 2, 3, 4, 7, 1 and that was where I found out how to colour trees.)

Always go in order, then you can excuse earlier goofs as learning from experience.