My name is Westly...and...I think I'm an artist...

[Westly]

Hi all!

I'm the artist over at Sacred Grounds Comic, and, I'm currently struggling for the motivation to re-draw, and re-create my webcomic.

I've had a few requests about it, namely, one of the characters is based of a friend, and she no longer wants to be a part of it, so I'm taking that as a sign that...well, now's a good time to re-invent the whole thing, and start again.

So...that's why I'm here.

Nice to meet all of you.  ^_^

[Rob]

Very nice to meet you. I'm sorry to hear about your problem with your friend.

I've heard horror stories from other artists like Randy Milholland, about putting real people you know in your art.

I remember one story in particular about a friend becoming furious because the artist  had not drawn her boobs big enough. :::::shivers::::

It's a tough spot to be in. Sounds like you need to do some reevaluating.

I'll tell you what I would do, especially if that friend wasn't so much of a friend any more.

Car accident. Put your character through a car accident, reconstructive surgery. Have her die her hair to match her new look and radically change her personality due to the effects of the accident and some minor "brain damage" LOL

Good luck. I hope you enjoy your stay enough to come back often. 

[Westly]

Well, luckily, it's only 20 pages in, and since I've worked pretty hard on improving my art (Took over 160 free commissions to improve!!) I'm just going to start over, adjust the character so it's not her anymore, and voila!  Done!  Plus I get better art!

But, now it's gathering up the motivation to do it.  I want to get into it and just steamroll through, but...color's a little intimidating, and I'm not sure the best way to put on word bubbles and stuff... etc etc...oi.

[Rob]

This is actually a pretty good reference point to start with some citiations that may help with further study.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_balloon

Also, I use a font called Komika that comes from a free font website.

http://www.fontspace.com/search/?q=komika

The font has one section that is all speech bubbles. In case you want ready made ones. The creator of the font just asks that if you use it for commercial work and you donate some small (unspecified) amount to your favorite charity. It says that in the readme file that comes with the font.

And in case you don't know how to add fonts to your computer (and Iassuming you use PC because I know diddly about computers and nothing about Macs) you go to your control panel, open the fonts folder, download the font from the site onto your desktop, unzip the font files and copy/paste the font files into you font folder. They will install themselves and then you can delete all the detrius left on your dektop.

Good luck.