Note to Self: Panel Numbers — Or, How Saga uses panels to keep pacing and engagement
Note: I tried to pick pages that aren’t plot heavy so minimal spoilers ahead
Something that always stuck out to me about Saga was how readable the entire wild story is. The creators Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples aimed to make a story that could only be told as a comic. The bloody, heart-breaking, and often times sweet story is exactly that: something untranslatable. Ships are skulls, large mechanical hooves and characters can be humanoid ferrets, mostly regular religious ferrets, infant planet super predators, fish people, and robot humanoids who have no mouth and yet can still breastfeed
It is a wild story and despite some recent story directions choices that kind of making me lose interest in keeping up with the most recent volumes, it still is the single most readable comic I have ever encountered
My theory is that this readability is achieved largely artistically through limiting panel length, prudent use of word balloons, and dynamic panel placement. This creates short snappy pages which average to about 4.16 panels per page
(Apologizes to the person sitting next to me on the flight who watched me go through ten volumes of Saga in light-speed to count panels. Only took about three hours 😀 )
I am so serious when I say if you want to learn about light, you NEED to at least look at modeseven’s tutorials. even if you’re not pursuing a painterly style, this is all essential theory that can be easily adapted to different coloring styles. notice how none of these ever say ‘light with these colors and shade with these colors’? notice how this is teaching how light works on a mechanical level, and reminding the audience to adjust the actual colors they choose by context? THAT is good advice.
(if you’re thinking ‘wow I want to study more of this persons art!’ I encourage you to do so, but proceed with the knowledge that modeseven draws pretty much exclusively weird as hell kink art. sometimes wisdom comes from horny places)
A general cane guide for writers and artists (from a cane user, writer, and artist!)
Disclaimer: Though I have been using a cane for 6 years, I am not a doctor, nor am I by any means an expert. This guide is true to my experience, but there are as many ways to use a cane as there are cane users!
This guide will not include: White canes for blindness, crutches, walkers, or wheelchairs as I have no personal experience with these.
This is meant to be a general guide to get you started and avoid some common mishaps/misconceptions in your writing, but you absolutely should continue to do your own research outside of this guide!
This is NOT a medical resource!!! And never tell a real person you think they’re using a cane wrong!
ALT
The biggest recurring problem I’ve seen is using the cane on the wrong side. The cane goes on the opposite side of the pain! If your character has even-sided pain or needs it for balance/weakness, then use the cane in the non-dominant hand to keep the dominant hand free. Some cane users also switch sides to give their arm a rest!
A cane takes about 20% of your weight off the opposite leg. It should fit within your natural gait and become something of an extension of your body. If you need more weight off than 20%, then crutches, a walker, or a wheelchair is needed.
Putting more pressure on the cane, using it on the wrong side, or having it at the wrong height can make it less effective, and can cause long term damage to your body from improper pressure and posture. (Hugh Laurie genuinely hurt his body from years of using a cane wrong on House!)
(some people elect to use a cane wrong for their personal situation despite this, everyone is different!)
(an animated GIF of a cane matching the natural walking gait. It turns red when pressure is placed on it.)
When going up and down stairs, there is an ideal standard: You want to use the handrail and the cane at the same time, or prioritize the handrail if it’s only on one side. When going up stairs you lead with your good leg and follow with the cane and hurt leg together. When going down stairs you lead with the cane and the bad leg and follow with the good leg!
Realistically though, many people don’t move out of the way for cane users to access the railing, many stairs don’t have railings, and many are wet, rusty, or generally not ideal to grip.
In these cases, if you have a friend nearby, holding on to them is a good idea. Or, take it one step at a time carefully if you’re alone.
Now we come to a very common mistake I see… Using fashion canes for medical use!
ALT
(These are 4 broad shapes, but there is INCREDIBLE variation in cane handles. Research heavily what will be best for your character’s specific needs!)
The handle is the contact point for all the weight you’re putting on your cane, and that pressure is being put onto your hand, wrist, and shoulder. So the shape is very important for long term use!
Knob handles (and very decorative handles) are not used for medical use for this reason. It adds extra stress to the body and can damage your hand to put constant pressure onto these painful shapes.
The weight of a cane is also incredibly important, as a heavier cane will cause wear on your body much faster. When you’re using it all day, it gets heavy fast! If your character struggles with weakness, then they won’t want a heavy cane if they can help it!
This is also part of why sword canes aren’t usually very viable for medical use (along with them usually being knob handles) is that swords are extra weight!
However, a small knife or perhaps a retractable blade hidden within the base might be viable even for weak characters.
ALT
Bases have a lot of variability as well, and the modern standard is generally adjustable bases. Adjustable canes are very handy if your character regularly changes shoe height, for instance (gotta keep the height at your hip!)
Canes help on most terrain with their standard base and structure. But for some terrain, you might want a different base, or to forego the cane entirely! This article covers it pretty well.
Many cane users decorate their canes! Stickers are incredibly common, and painting canes is relatively common as well! You’ll also see people replacing the standard wrist strap with a personalized one, or even adding a small charm to the ring the strap connects to. (nothing too large, or it gets annoying as the cane is swinging around everywhere)
ALT
(my canes, for reference)
If your character uses a cane full time, then they might also have multiple canes that look different aesthetically to match their outfits!
When it comes to practical things outside of the cane, you reasonably only have one hand available while it’s being used. Many people will hook their cane onto their arm or let it dangle on the strap (if they have one) while using their cane arm, but it’s often significantly less convenient than 2 hands. But, if you need 2 hands, then it’s either setting the cane down or letting it hang!
For this reason, optimizing one handed use is ideal! Keeping bags/items on the side of your free hand helps keep your items accessible.
ALT
When sitting, the cane either leans against a wall or table, goes under the chair, or hooks onto the back of the chair. (It often falls when hanging off of a chair, in my experience)
When getting up, the user will either use their cane to help them balance/support as they stand, or get up and then grab their cane. This depends on what it’s being used for (balance vs pain when walking, for instance!)
That’s everything I can think of for now. Thank you for reading my long-but-absolutely-not-comprehensive list of things to keep in mind when writing or drawing a cane user!
Happy disability pride month! Go forth and make more characters use canes!!!
Thank you so much for reading and i hope it comes in handy for any of your wingies needs :3 This took me… a While, more than it should’ve, but is finally here! And maybe i’ve been slacking a little on the tagging for this blog specifically, but i recommend besides reading all of this, to go check my Guides tag, as i’m missing a few little things here and there that i couldn’t for the life of me find a way to explain, and i’ve already re-done this Way too much for my liking o(-(
But you can also just go around this blog to get some inspiration :o I got a Lot of different wing styles here, and again i gotta go back to tagging (and fix my blog web theme, don’t worry about it—) but other than that, you’re free to explore this lil blog of mine
Two last things—First, i did all of this for free, i want it to reach as many people as possible (which is why soon-ish i’ll translate the entirety of it to spanish and add image descriptions to both versions, i need a break….), but if you liked this enough and would like to leave a lil’ tip on my kofi (@/rainbowpinyata), i would appreciate it a lot… Second, my inbox is always open if you or someone you know is in need of a more in-dept explanation on any of the parts of this, as i had to resume most of the info, or just needs a little bit of advice. I’m gonna explain wings Much more than i already have on the next part, but that… is going to take a bit, so…
Anyways, many thanks to my friends for always being there for me, i don’t think i would’ve gone past the first draft or the many others after that without their encouragement, suggestions and general help with keeping me going. It means everything to me.
Also, click for better quality pls, the pages are pretty big but… this site….
Anonymous asked: Hey I'm trying to learn how to do art digitally and I've found it's really hard (especially because I don't know what any of the cool options mean). What exactly does Multiply/Overlay do?? I've tried using them with varying results. Also I have a hard time with shadows? Any tips? Thanks ily!!!
Sure! Disclaimer: I don’t use blending modes that often, and this response will probably be a bit convoluted (as usual). But here goes!
When painting, layer blending modes are typically used to shade/render objects, or as colour adjustments. There’s a lot of math that goes into them but I don’t think it’s too important!
Multiply: creates a darker and heavily tinted version of the colour below it, so it’s usually used for shadows. The intensity of the effect depends on the brightness of your multiply colour; a near-black multiply layer will make colours super dark whereas a white multiply layer has no effect at all. Here’s an example:
(The first section has no multiply layer, the second section’s multiply layer is filled with dark green, and the third is bright red).
The way most people use Multiply for simple shading is by first putting down flat colours without shading, making a Multiply layer above it with a clipping mask, and painting on the Multiply layer with a dark colour in the areas there are shadow.
The second apple has dark red on a Multiply layer at 70% opacity (the opacity setting affects the “transparency” of the layer). This method is clean and easy to adjust since everything’s on different layers!
Overlay: multiplies dark colours, makes light colours brighter. Generally, it pushes all of the values to be more saturated and pure. Unlike the multiply layer, it creates high-contrast images. Here’s the example with the same colours as before, just set to overlay instead:
Unlike multiply which heavily changed the drawing’s hues, some of my original drawing’s colours still show through under Overlay even at 100% opacity.
All layer modes are useful for establishing lighting, mood, or any other type of colour edits. Experiment a lot, try out all of the modes and different layer opacities, and try using different layers in combination with each other! But don’t sweat it if you’re a beginner – they’re not at all essential to digital art.
As for shadows, my main tip is to avoid shading directly with black. Use different hues in the shadows to avoid muddy or plastic-like shading! Compare:
got an ask recently about the way my digital art looks like traditional, so I tried to explain the steps on my self portrait, feat. some of my favorite artists and favorite brushes. sorry if it’s incoherent, I’m not used to explaining my process besides “I’ve been professionally studying traditional art for half my life and I’m really bad at technology so I just paint digitally the way I do on paper”
I was asked by a friend yesterday if I could offer basic tips about comic paneling. As it turns out, I have a lot to say on the matter! I tried breaking down the art of paneling using the principles of art and design, and I hope it helps you out!
EDIT: uh uh there are a lot of people reblogging this, so i figure i may as well append this now while i can lol
This whole thing was very much cranked out in a few hours so I had a visual to talk about with a friend! If this gives you a base understanding of paneling, that’s awesome! Continue to pull in studies from the comics you see and what other artists do well and don’t do well! You can tell paneling is doing well when the action is flowing around in its intended reading format.
Here’s the link to the globalcomix article from which I pulled the images about panel staggering! Someone sent in a reblog that it wasn’t totally clear that the 7th slide mostly covers what NOT to do in regards to staggering, and that is my mistake!
I saw in a tag that someone was surprised I used MamaYuyu too, and I don’t blame them lol. If I had given myself more than a couple hours maybe I would have added something else on, I just really admire MamaYuyu’s paneling personally.
uh uh, final append: I am by no means a renowned master of paneling, so if you find anything off base here, by all means, counter it with your own knowledge and ways you can build upon from here! Art is always a sum knowledge of everything we find. 💪