One thing to make your art stand out from the crowd

Описание: My live comic book workshops - https://courses.dionhamill.com/course...

Read my webcomic "Jim Reel Paranormal Investigator" online - https://courses.dionhamill.com/course...

Take my online course where I teach techniques used to create my art - https://courses.dionhamill.com/course...

The Art of Storytelling

I love making horror comics.

I love telling stories about characters that live fantasy lives that are dangerous and exist in a world full of monsters and demons.

I love the idea that with just paint, pencils and paper I can draw the reader into a totally fictional world and give them a moment of escapism that entertains them, makes them feel emotional and maybe even teaches them something new.

Like recently I’ve had the greatest opportunity to teach young kids how to create their own mini comics from scratch.

And the beauty of these workshops is that I was getting so much out of it too.

For instance I learnt about “Food comics” a genre I didn’t even know existed.

I also realised that some kids don’t even know that Spiderman started as a Comic book, they mostly know him from the Tom Holland movies.

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And all the kids who attended were passionate about comics as an art form to express themselves.

Their parents would tell me how their child would often make comics in their spare time.

Teachers would tell me how often before classes would start, students would ask for some pencils and paper so they could make a few mini comics before class.

My own daughter, who is only 5, came along to one of my workshops and really got into making her own story called “the bat family” consisting of Batman, the Joker and a dog and a cat.

Oh and they had a bat van.

I’ve never seen her so engaged and focussed.

All the kids were talking to each other about their ideas and just enjoying the process of creating their worlds with their characters.

And not one of them looked at another students work and said “I wish I could draw like that”

Or “mine isn’t as good as yours”

They were content with their creations because each style was different, each story was different and it was only something that could come from their imagination.

And I think that is a key point when it comes to the medium of comics.

Imagination.

Yes you can be the best artist with anatomy, colour and perspective skills, but without imagination you won’t capture your readers attention.

If you’re writing a story and everything is grammatically correct, perfect punctuation but lacks imagination its never going to be an interesting story.

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What is most important through your imagination, is how you can show your reader what is happening within the story.

For instance in this scene of Jim Reel Paranormal Investigator

Jim has just been in an epic kung fu battle with the supernatural characters I’ve called “onion heads”.

If you read the story their names will make sense, I promise.

I needed to show the reader that Jim is out of breath, this wasn’t an easy fight.

He needs to look tired, all his energy is spent.

I went into my own imagination and thought, okay, how do I feel these days after going for a run now that I’m in my 40’s and physical activity is not as easy as it used to be.

How do I usually react after really hard physical exertion?

Do I drink water, sit down, lie down, stand with my hands on my hips, lean forward on my knees..?

Yes, yes, that was it, the leaning forward, hands on knees.

Head down, sweat dripping.

Breathing heavy.

This is what I needed to show the reader.

Because Jim Reel is exhausted and that Kung fu battle was hard!

I could rely on other things like sound effects or speech balloons that have him panting or saying something like “whew, that was hard”.

But that just doesn’t seem realistic to me.

The most important aspect to the scene is to be able to tell the story in that one frame first with just the visual.

Sound effects, captions, word balloons are all there to assist the story but the picture comes first.

I don’t need to add a caption that says ‘and Jim was really, really tired after that fight”

You can see it form his posture.

And you can probably feel it too, because we’ve all been physically exhausted at some point in our lives, right?

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And that is the beauty of your imagination.

It’s like an unlimited resource of references you can dip into anytime you need to be creative and tell a story through your own artwork.

Whether it’s creating a character, drawing a scene.

Designing a car, plane, rocket or creepy monster…

Your imagination is unique to you.


That’s it for now, let’s talk again soon.