In 2022, I wrote/drew a comic for the After the End anthology. It was an amazing learning experience, and I thought it might interest some of my friends to catalog everything I learned. Not so much because I expect them to make comics, but because I think it's a useful case study of project-based learning and breaking into the beginner phase of a new craft, which I do expect many of my friends to go through.

Typically, I like to write essays for blog posts, but I think in this case, I will just leave my notes as-is.

My main critiques / learnings:

• Now I understand why character design sheets show the character at multiple angles / poses / emotions -that helps guarantee your character will look similar throughout the panels in the comic. Honestly may have saved me time to do these up front
• Many of my face drawings look awkward and naively drawn, I would like to practice this more and get better at it. I really suck at hair in particular. I'd like to do 100 character studies to perfect this. Additionally there are several character panels where characters don't really resemble themselves due to eye placement or face structure inconsistencies.
• My characters look too similar to each other. I wish I had done character designs ahead of time to notice that and add more detail to their shoes etc
• By default, I'll layout a lot of panels that are just a head and a speech bubble. I ended up wishing I had more variation in panels and less of these
• Next time I will plan more empty space. No dialog, no action, just people existing in space. This is what I find beautiful in life but there is nearly none of it in my comic and that feels like a dishonesty to my voice.
• I tried to fit way too much story into my comic (24 pages). I think roughly 1 page equates to 30 seconds - 1 minute or so of a TV show in terms of how long it feels. The more dynamic and interesting the visuals, the slower it hits. I should have yanked out the guard scene.
• I still think it's unclear why Ebion goes back to save the guard, and I think I was forcing that to happen for plot reasons.
• I feel like, by the end of the comic, I still don't really know who Ebion is. He goes and does cool things, but I don't really see him doing anything that really only he would do. Watching a bug walk across a tree branch for a while. Praying for a chicken he killed. Writing a letter to Tove. I couldn't fit these in because... I tried to jam too much story into 24 pages. There was only enough time for him to say and do what he needed to say and do to deliver the beats I wrote down in my outline. The next time, I will give a lot more breathing room to the outline. I would also plan to draw pages before writing anything in a document. I think comics are more similar to films & storyboards than novels so you should start there.
• I don't know how to draw small people (Again mostly an issue because I jammed too much story into 24 pages so I had much to fit into one page at a time.
• I am really bad at drawing feet. I don't know how to make them look like they are pointed in the right direction.
• I'm not very good at drawing clothing. Another candidate for some studies.

Things I like about my comic:

• Ebion's powers - they are cool and if I was a kid I would totally play pretend like I had them. I like that he learns healing magic and that the healing magic is cool and he makes it his own.
• Zoss - I like him. I know who he is better than Ebion actually. The two best drawings are actually of him, probably because I like him so much and I wanted the moment where we meet him to be the best part of the comic. I think it is.
• The first page cat-tails are fun.
• I liked how I wrote the dialogue between Zoss and Ebion. It's funny and charming and sweet. It makes me blush when I read it to people.
• I like that I had the idea to draw characters as Chibi in parts, and layout the dream sequences as squiggly intestine things to differentiate it from the rectangles. I also liked how I rendered the dream sequence boundaries/barriers.
• I like the font I chose and the speech bubble shapes I used
• I like the post processing I did to add some grain and the minimal value structure I used. I wouldn't change the value structure even if I had more time although it's a shame I almost exclusively use black for Ebion's hair.
• I'm happy with the level of ridiculousness of the story. It's a little wacky to champion the spirit of joke comics you pass to a friend in class, but also honest and earnest enough to pay homage to my inspirations of Yu Yu Hakusho and Miyazaki films.