Sigune's How Not To Draw Comics - Part XI

[sigune]

Squee! I got very nice comments on the comic recently, from a photographer and a famous architect, among others, so I was pretty flattered and not a little pleased. The gentlemen were not Potter fans, so when they looked at my stuff they referred to Snape as “the lady” (LOL), but I forgave them :D.

No news from Rufftoon yet… But on with the story!

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The Comic So Far:
Page One
Page Two
Page Three
Page Four
Page Five
Page Six
Page Seven
Page Eight

You Are Here:
While in the library, Snape, thirsting for revenge, overhears Messrs Padfoot and Wormtail plotting a nocturnal rendez-vous with James Potter by the Whomping Willow. What Snape doesn’t know is that the two Marauders are aware of the fact that their Slytherin enemy is listening in on the conversation, thanks to Evan Rosier accidentally drawing their attention to his presence. Sirius purposefully reveals the Willow’s mechanism, counting on the fact that Snape won’t be able to resist the temptation to put his large nose into the Marauders’ affairs…


14. Flashback

Ah, page nine. I don’t think any part of the comic gave me quite as much trouble as this page, with number fourteen as a close second… For some reason (I have no idea why), I seem to have been worried about this part long before I had actually arrived there – one of my oldest sketch pages for the comic deals with the particular episode that would eventually be depicted on page nine. You can tell its age by the fact that Snape’s robes are the right size; the idea of making them too short and alluding to the poverty of his background came later :D.




As you can see, I first envisioned the layout as having a large Whomping Willow on the right, with Snape getting down into the tunnel as the focus of the whole. The left half of the page would be filled with small panels depicting his sneaking out of the school and getting to the tree. However, though I sort of liked the build-up, I doubted that the small panels would convey what I wanted them to convey, especially when it came to the leaving Hogwarts and crossing the grounds part. The reader would have no idea of the distance between the school and the Willow, and there would be no room for a picture of the grounds. It looked altogether too claustrophobic. The action was too hurried as well, especially since the Whomping Willow is such a great plant and a more detailed confrontation with Snape seemed fun.

Another thing that bothered me about the above sketch was the first panel. I was very much bent on having a picture of Snape wearing the hood of his robes, his face partly obscured, peeping from behind the door to see whether the coast was clear. But unfortunately, no matter how hard I tried, I never got that image to work. All sorts of things were wrong: the hood, the way his hair fell, his position with respect to the door, the door opening and more. I failed to visualise the picture properly in my head somehow – I couldn’t find the right angle. I don’t remember whether I ever went looking for photo reference; in any case, I gave up on the panel in the end. I thought I would deal with the problem later, when I had actually arrived at that part of the story.

When I finally did arrive there, I still couldn’t figure out how to deal with the episode. That’s why, after a few failed attempts at Snape-in-a-hood, I got distracted and started doodling for a later page :D…




15. How To Cope With Things Not Working

I’ll be up front about it: I don’t like page nine. Some of it is blech. I will list my objections below; they’re personal and I don’t know how apparent they will be to others. On the positive side, though, it could have looked worse. It was quite horrible before I inked it. Now it’s just – unsatisfactory. But first things first.

It took me the longest time to determine the layout of the page. First, I decided to spread the sequence from Snape’s leaving the castle until his entering the tunnel under the Willow over no less than three pages. Second, I got stuck.

It is normal for some time to pass between my making one page and the next. Drawing comics (at least the way I do it; I can’t speak for other people) is very labour-intensive. Sometimes a month or more goes by that I don’t even think about the whole project. From June 2004 until now I have drawn no more than seventeen pages. Mostly that is because I have plenty of other things to do as well and simply can’t find the time to work on the comic. Now and then, it is because the Layout Muse forsakes me ;). With page nine, I grew positively desperate. I couldn’t wait to move on with the story, but I didn’t know how. Maybe it’s one of the funny side effects of working without a scenario. I knew that Snape was supposed to get to the Willow, push the knot and get inside – surely it couldn’t be too difficult. But it was.

Then one day while I was at work (I know I must have been at work because that is the only place where I have one of those tiny square writing pads) and doodling (*ahem*) it just came to me.



I had introduced Wilkes and started to toy with him as a character. Having brought him in and set him up as Snape’s friend, I could not just let him disappear without a word, especially because I wanted to make it clear that Snape had a choice in the werewolf debacle. Nobody forced him to go to the Willow; and nobody forced him to go on his own. There is little love lost between myself and the Marauders, but I wouldn’t want to exonerate Snape either, and as everything had to be compact, I thought I could use Wilkes to illustrate a way in which Snape might to some extent bring accidents upon himself. He seems to me to be the type who says he doesn’t need anyone, and, when things go wrong, complains that nobody was there to help him. I could see Wilkes trying to make up for the Slytherins’ censure of Snape in the library scene, so I decided to give him a few lines to that effect – and comment on Severus’ smoking habit in one go ;). Of course Snape, angry at the fact that his friend took Rosier’s part in the censure issue, rejects Wilkes’s effort at reconciliation and chooses to go after the Marauders on his own. I made a tiny thumbnail with the page layout as I saw it then:



As you can see, half of the page would consist of a conversation between Wilkes and Snape; then would come a larger version of the panel I had been struggling with before, namely of Snape peering round the door before sneaking out; and finally I’d have a large panel of Snape crossing the Hogwarts grounds, with the rising full moon in the background.

At that point I either remembered how the combination Snape + door had always failed to look good, or I just thought that rather than sneaky he should look triumphant in anticipation of his presumed victory over the Marauders. In any case, I thought it would be nice to depict him as swinging the doors open instead of slipping through a crack. As you can tell by the quick sketches, though, that wasn’t going to be easy either :D…



I started sketching for the lower half of the page first, and at once ran into problems. I liked the Snape who has both his hands on the same door, but I couldn’t see how he was supposed to be positioned in relation to that door. It was a nice picture, but I didn’t know what I was drawing :D. I also liked the running Snape in three-quarter perspective, but there I couldn’t get his left hand to look good. Frustration abounded. I turned my attention to the upper half of the page, in the hope that this would be a bit easier to manage.



I constructed the dialogue in these sketches, like I often do. Wilkes would be sitting in an armchair by the fireplace, and Snape would walk away from him. (Armchairs usually give me some trouble, as you can see, but hey, there has to be something in the panel, right?).

The very ugly, very panicky Snape at the top is a study for a later page :D.

Anyway: things didn’t look too promising, did they? I’m bad at armchairs and I added an armchair. I couldn’t figure out how Snape would look opening a door, but he had to open a door. I had problems with my running Snape as well. Oh, and I’m pretty bad at landscapes. So here is what I ended up with:






Okay, the positive things first…

I like the final layout. If you compare the top strip to the one I sketched in the thumbnail, you’ll notice that instead of making the first two panels the same size, I changed the arrangement to have longer and longer panels, to suggest Snape walking away from Wilkes. That is good. Shortening the first panel also allowed me to elongate the one underneath it, which was nice because it allowed more swinging of doors ;).

I think I managed to make Snape look fine in the end; I swung from a doorpost in front of a mirror in order to see what the pose had to look like :P.

The panel bottom left is actually the single most reference-aided picture of the whole comic: the staircase of the hall behind Snape is based on a photograph of the Castle of Le Roeulx’s eighteenth-century double staircase – not very Hogwesian in spirit, I guess, but a double staircase just looked nice in the background, or so I thought.

(I posted this page at deviantART first, as a primer, and in a comment there, sscrewdriver rightly pointed out that the stairs at Hogwarts should look used. Also, the simple perspective jars with the movement of Snape’s body. The image didn’t work for her, and I can see why… But I have a long way to go before I’ll know the tricks that give movement not just to a body, but to a building as well. My backgrounds usually look stiff and static. I think you can tell that I hate doing them, and struggle with them a lot.)

The armchair turned out all right. I had some discussion with bettyboop_comic as to whether I should cross-hatch it to make it more leathery-looking, but I decided against that because I liked the contrast. I also thought that more cross-hatching would drown the figure of Wilkes, and I adore Wilkesy.

Oh, and I do like the wall and the fireplace. But that’s about it.

Now for what annoys me:

Snape is having a Bad Hair Day throughout the page. Yes, I know, his hair isn’t really supposed to look good at the best of times, but still – there is something I don’t like about how it looks in every single picture except the one where he opens the door.

Wilkes isn’t nearly as handsome as he was on page seven.

I really, really don’t like Snape’s eye in the panel top right.

I don’t like how my landscapes come out. Blech. I do my best, but they never seem to live, and so this one doesn’t either. Oh, I don’t know… Maybe I should start using photo reference. I don’t feel as if I have enough imagination to create an imaginary landscape. The results never make me happy. I felt the same about the landscape in the drawing I did for _grainne_ - it’s too cold and it doesn’t breathe.

All the things I dislike became evident while I was working on this page. I saw them, but somehow I couldn’t fix them. The pencils looked worse, so I did manage to improve some of it, but… Well, I guess I just have to live with how it looks. I don’t know how rational or irrational my scepticism looks to you; I only know that I can’t help feeling that some elements of this drawing should have looked better, but don’t :/.

So, all in all this is one of the pages (if not the page) of the comic that I like least. The next, however, is one of those that I like best :D…


Next: Wizard Meets Willow.

Comments

[valis2.livejournal.com]

I am totally loling right now because I have the same style of paper pad in my cubicle at work, and I write cryptic story notes to myself all the time on it.

Of course, sometimes when I bring them home I can't remember what they're about, but it's too hilarious that you do the same thing. ;)

I love the landscape. When I first looked at it, I was so impressed, especially with the look on his face. Wow!

[sigune.livejournal.com]

LOL - you should see the small stack of square bits of paper with Very Useful Information and Scraps of Story lying on my desk... I can never bring myself to throwing them away, but apart from the one I showed above, I don't think I ever did anything with them :D.

The landscape? ...I obviously have no idea about what I do well and what I do badly *g*.

[valis2.livejournal.com]

*laughs* I have the same stack of papers on my desk! That's hilarious.

[veradee.livejournal.com]

The gentlemen were not Potter fans, so when they looked at my stuff they referred to Snape as “the lady” (LOL), but I forgave them :D.

It's a given that Snape wouldn't forgive them, though, isn't it? ;)

It's fantastic to see an update. I particularly like the last panel. For me the landscape works very well because it does have perspective. And I also like Snape hair in the last panel: I think you depicted very well how his stringy hair flaps before his eyes.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

It's a given that Snape wouldn't forgive them, though, isn't it? ;)
They don't know how fortunate they were to deal with me and not Snape... *g*

I'm glad you like the last panel, even if I wasn't not sure of it myself. I don't know - I don't seem to be able to estimate just how well (or not) something will work :/.

[corvus-coronis.livejournal.com]

" The gentlemen were not Potter fans, so when they looked at my stuff they referred to Snape as “the lady”"

That made my morning, lol! :D

I rather like his hair in the second panel, though with Snape any bad hair day seems to look right on him.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Yes, I guess "bad hair day" is a natural condition for Snape :D. I just have the feeling that the hair looks different on this page than in other places - but I do have to admit that the way I draw it simply changes very often in the details.

I'm happy to have made your morning ;).

[daphster.livejournal.com]

I like your landscape. I think you're doing a great job =) And you explain yourself so well. *gives applause*

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm glad you like it :).

[sophierom.livejournal.com]

Pretty cool stuff, as usual! Sorry I can't offer a more insightful comment, but I enjoyed both the art and the discussion of making it.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

LOL - thanks, Sophie :)!

News from Rufftoon ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Ah yeah, me bad leaving all you guys in the dark for so long. I was having a bit of trouble with formatting stuff to send to the printer, but it is almost almost done now! I just need to get the cover ready, burn everything onto a cd and ship it away. The moment it is sent, I'm going to send an email to everyone.
Then, another email when I finally receive the whole thing.

Sorry for the delay, things always get waaaaaayyyy too busy in the end of summer. Mea Culpa.

[embossedsilver.livejournal.com]

I love your style. That's all.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thank you :).

[tawabids.livejournal.com]

Fantastical! I've been waiting for the next installment since... well, since page eight, I suppose. So glad to see it arrive!

Love the final panel, tension abounds - the box around the setting sun does it, and Snape's hair blowing across his face: I can hear the wind howling. Did I ever tell you that I loved the darkened landscape on page two? Well, I do, and I like this one even better. The trees are sensual.

Plus, once again, I love the personality that all the character's faces show. Eagerly hanging out for page ten.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)!

Okay, okay, I'll have to get to terms with the fact that people like my landscapes ;-)...

[http://users.livejournal.com/_vocalion_/]

Well, this proves beyond all doubt that I don't know how to critique art. While viewing the finished layout, the two things I liked best were the look of the landscape and Snape's eye in the top right panel. I can't explain what there is about the landscape I like, but my eye was drawn to the heavy lines in the sky and the cluster of trees in the background on the right. Perhaps it reminds me of an illustration from an old storybook.

As for Snape's eye, I think his expression captures his determination. Not being an artist, I can't guess what bothers you about it. Moreover, I like the fact that his face expresses so much with only the top part showing.

The stairs. Again, not being an artist, I didn't notice the staircase at all. I only saw Snape framed in the doorway.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I like the "feel" of the layout, even though I'm not very good at recognizing the flaws. But I suppose the flaws aren't really there unless one can see them. :-D

[sigune.livejournal.com]

*sigh* The eye - I know, I know. I used to like that way of drawing eyes a lot when I adopted it, and it still expresses what it's supposed to express, but now the extra line that goes in the direction of the nose has started to bother me. I can't explain why; it's like a toy of which I have become tired :/.

As for the landscape, I seem to be the only one who isn't too fond of it, which only goes to show just how much I'm out of touch with what viewers like :D...

[thirteen-ravens.livejournal.com]

I love to see Snape in this "graphic novel" style. It's excellent. :o)
It's too bad JKR isn't more of an artist: how cool would stories of the Marauders be in graphic form?!

they referred to Snape as “the lady” (LOL), but I forgave them :D.

Not your fault - it's Snape himself - the guy wears dress like robes and shoulder length hair... even JKR couldn't resist putting him in drag in book three! XD

Truth be told I'm crap at drawing robes - which is why I hardly ever draw an entire Snape... My first stories I created as a youngster were all in basic comic strip form on an A4 page, but as the characters were animals they were a whole lot easier for me to draw than people!

[sigune.livejournal.com]

It's too bad JKR isn't more of an artist: how cool would stories of the Marauders be in graphic form?!
I wish she's let me do them XD! (LOL)

I usent to like the idea of drawing robes at all - I thought they'd all look the same. But I find that the fact that everybody wears robes forces me to be more creative with the details; plus, robes can be used to great effect.

Animals are easy?! For me they're horribly difficult :)!

[thirteen-ravens.livejournal.com]

Robes are a nightmare for me.
*shudder*
Well the world would be boring if everyone had the same talents! ;o)
I was drawing animals long before I was drawing people. I still have a really cute picture of a group of snails I drew when I was 3 years old... XD
And that's my tiger drawing on my userpic. ;oP

That frame...

[ook.livejournal.com]

Lovely work, as always.

I do have one critical comment though -- what's with the floating frame in the last panel? I find it distracting because it seems to serve no purpose to the narrative -- it's a just a distracting decorative element. Now, if you'd placed a small Whomping WIllow inside that frame, then it would have made sense. Snape is heading to the Willow and then the frame would highlight his intended destination in the distance (much like an iris shot works in a film).

Re: That frame...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Hm. Actually the frame is supposed to draw your attention to the rising full moon, but apparently that's not quite clear...

*g*

Re: That frame...

[ook.livejournal.com]

The way the sky is depicted, I thought it was a sunset. :)

Hmmm...that IS tricky to show. The moon about to appear.

But I do like your idea of using the frame to draw our attention to something in off in the distance. Perhaps if you'd drawn the sky completely dark? Hmmm...golly! What a quandry. I'm not sure how your story will go, but I seem to recall the book saying that Snape found a fully-changed werewolf at the Shack. Perhaps you could have had the sky completely dark with the moon hanging very low in the sky (in the panel with the frame). I think part of the problem is that it doesn't look very dark outside when Snape goes outside. Moonlit night scenes are incredibly hard to do and require deep shadows.

Re: That frame...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

(Sorry for the delay!)

Yes, night and darkness pose a serious problem to me and my style - I don't know how to use my b/w to the right effect; with colours everything would have turned bluish and greyish... I'm criminally bad at shadows, especially when they're supposed to have a shape; and I also needed to show that time had passed between Snape's entering the tunnel and his leaving it again - I have an entirely black sky in later pages.

[dolabellae.livejournal.com]

Very remiss of me not to comment on this and say how much I like what you'e done with Wilkes here (yes, I know I've said this before, but when you're a Wilkes fan like me you have to take everything you can get!) I like the view of him over the chair (relaxed and at ease in the common room, unlike Snape but still friendly) and I think what you say about Snape He seems to me to be the type who says he doesn’t need anyone, and, when things go wrong, complains that nobody was there to help him. is so true...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I am growing fonder of Wilkes every day - I can't wait till Im' free again and can write lots and lots about him in the WIP of Doom :D. He'll be back in the comic again, too, but not for several pages, unfortunately.

Isn't it weird how you can like a canon character who is no more than a name? :)

[(Anonymous)]

Potioncat here.

I'm enjoying your comic, and I like your commentary even more. But to be completely honest, I miss your fanfiction. Are you writing anything now? Will any glint of 'The Tunnel' appear in the graphic version?

Sketching at work are you? I've set aside a notebook to do some quick fan-fic notes, but can never concentrate enough. I was visiting some HP discussion sites at work until my team leader made an off-hand comment about it. Now it's gardening sites: lupins, pansies, petunias...

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Aww, I'm so sorry... I really haven't got time for ficcing these days. I can only post the comic because those pages have been finished months ago; recently I've only done two drawings and a drabble :/. I'm itching to return to the WIP of Doom; when I get to that, I think I will concentrate on that tale and likely not do short stories besides... I don't know. My only prose these days appears in pr_snape and pr_brynhild, and by the start of October those stories should have ended too.

LOL! Actually I rarely sketch at work, but sometimes an idea just won't let go of me. It was worse when I still had classes and wrote everything by hand :).

Yay for your gardening... XD

The promised comic concrit.

[totalreadr.livejournal.com]

You quoted your sister as saying that, in your comic, one Snape "looked like a total sissy" (I remembered this as "like a little geek") and the other "at least looked manly" (I remembered this as "like a man").

Well, yes. But...

1. SNAPE IS A LITTLE GEEK. OF COURSE HE SHOULD LOOK LIKE ONE. (I don't tend to use the word "sissy," because it confuses things by mixing "wimp" with "girlish," but...to get the nickname of, basically, "tattling crybaby," he'd kind of have to look like a "sissy," no?)

2. A sixteen-year-old BOY should NOT!!!!!!! look like a MAN!!!!!!

What really struck me about the comic was the way some Snapes manage to look like a genuine kiddo, and others...just don't. But I never said anything because what good is it to you unless I can tell you more than that?

So I will now go through every goddamn panel and tell you which ones I thought did, which didn't, and, if I can figure it out, (my opinion of) why.

Also the occasional other thing I should happen to notice.

All just my opinion, of course.

Page Nine
Panel 1: Pretty much appropriately teenlike, though not as good as some. Also there's something a bit wrong with the nose.
Panel 2: VERY EMPHATICALLY NOT (appropriately teenlike). Dude, that's a 40-year-old man, there. Seriously, no sixteen year old looks like that, or, OK, maybe one in a thousand. As for why, though... MAYbe the face is too broad. Or maybe it's just that the jaw is too broad. Not sure though.
Panel 4: Nice face. Especially like the nose. Did you mean for Snape to look like he's really struggling hard to get the doors open?
Panel 5, re teenlike: Decent enough.

Page Eight
Appropriately teenlike all the way through! Funny, too.

Page Seven
Panel 1: A bit too old, like 20s maybe. Perhaps the cheeks are too sunken? Or maybe just the cheekbones are too high?
Panel 6: Yes! The cheekbones are too high relative to the overall length of the face! That's why Snape looks too old here, too. Also the nose looks too small here. I mean, relative to your other drawings of him, though I think you always draw it too small in a way.
Panel 5, OTOH, I like. But Panel 8 has the same problem as Panel 6...though I'd say in 8, it's more that he just doesn't look like Snape than that he looks too old.

At this point I set out to write the intro to this post, so I went back to try to find the person you'd quoted and what exactly she'd said. So:

Page Three
Panel 1: Too old, high cheekbones, entire top part of face compressed, yadda yadda.
Panel 2: GREAT.
Panel 3: Good enough.
"Panel 4" (inset): Grown. Man. Face too broad, I think.
Overall: James looks, somehow, too stiff. (I think it's how very straight his nose is -- it seems a bit unnatural.) And probably too skinny, especially in Panel 3.

Page Four
Panel 1: OK -- borderline same problem as Panel 2.
Panel 2: Bottom of face (philtrum to chin) too long compared to top of face. I know his mouth is supposed to be open, but instead of swinging the jaw open along the joint, you just moved the jaw down so that the entire face looks longer and the mouth doesn't look very open at all.
Panel 4: REALLY like it. OK, the nose is waaaaaay too short top to bottom compared to how long it is face to tip, but... making the entire face shorter like that really lets Snape look younger, kidlike. Actually he looks more like fourteen, there, rather than sixteen.
Panel 5: Left cheekbone too prominent and bottom of face too far forward compared to rest of face. I do like the "verge of tears" look that creates, but I think you went overboard so it begins to look like an anatomy problem.

Continued in a reply to this post...

Comic concrit, cont.

[totalreadr.livejournal.com]

Page Five
- I do NOT like the tiny clinging nightshirt, no way. Dude, buy a new, oversized one you can grow into. He so would. If it clings so much you can see his ribs, it definitely clings so much you can see his package, and there's no way a sixteen year old would put up with that. He'd go to bed in his outer clothes first.
- Snape's body isn't sinking into the bed enough.

Page Six
Panel 1: Something wrong with that expression. I think the bottom of the face is too far forward again.
Panel 3: NICE.

Page One
- Panels 3-5: Just like Page Seven, Panel Five. Well, Panel 4 looks remotely like Snape, but an old, grown-gaunt-with-age one. You're just drawing the nose smaller, and the bottom of the face longer, than when you draw him from the front.
- On to plain opinion: Now, I actually don't like the way, from the front, you tend to draw Snape's nose as taller top-to-bottom at the tip than at the...part where it connects to his face. Because that sort of overhang is...really unusual IRL. But dude, keep the "part where it connects to his face" just as long top to bottom as you always draw it at the tip! THEN it'll be properly "overlarge."

Page Two
Panel 3: Lupin looks (a) too handsome (he's not described as "handsome" in canon, after all) and (b) like a 25-year-old man, not a mid-teens boy. I think (b) is a result of the face being too broad, cheeks too gaunt (esp. relative to those broad cheekbones), and that suggestion of a strong chin.
Panel 6 or is it 7: Snape looks decently teenlike.

Whew! Finally. Well -- here.

Re: Comic concrit, cont.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Panel 4 looks remotely like Snape
Again, how do you mean? I don't see how he looks unlike Snape, to be honest. I'm not sure - are you suggesting he should look more like how Rowling draws him? But I'm not remotely interested in copying Rowling's picture. First of all, I started drawing Snape long before I even knew that Rowling had done pictures herself; and secondly, I take the books as a lead, not any other visual resources, because that wouldn't be any fun for me.
The impression the description of Snape in the books gave me was that of a rather stereotypical 'evil wizard', and my visual inspiration came from fairy tales. It's true the Snape I draw doesn't look like anyone you'd meet in real life, but does Disney's evil stepmother in Snow White look like anyone you have ever seen? She's an archetype, with a nose that has 'overhang'; she's like an evil old hag from Grimm. I brought stereotypical elements like those into my Snape because I like them. But it is true that I have since discovered that it is really hard to incorporate those classical things like noses pointing down and chins poiting up and hollow cheeks and still get a result that looks suitably young when I need it to be :/.

As for Lupin, I have always had trouble picturing him. You say he's not described as handsome, which is true; but the problem is that he's not described as much else! About the only thing we know is that his hair is greying and he looks older than he really is. Meh. I really wish Rowling would give me a bit more to go on.
Also, whether or not the Lupin on page 2 is a matter of personal taste: I honestly don't think he's handsome myself :D... He looks like an ordinary bloke to me. I agree he probably looks too old; but then, you know, he was supposed to look haggard, ill and tired. I just did my best. I know i'm not particularly good at children and youngsters, but I'm learning. I also have problems with some angles of faces.

Thanks for taking your time! I appreciate feedback; I'll do my best to do better next time :).

Re: The promised comic concrit.

[sigune.livejournal.com]

Well, you certainly went to some trouble with this... :D

I think, if I go through your comments, that I can more or less summarise them as: three-quarter views = good; profile and frontal views = bad. Well, I feel most at ease with three-quarter views and I guess that shows. They're what I'm best at :). It's just not easy to draw a nose like that from the front; I haven't yet found a way that satisfies me. I also find it difficult to suggest the shape of Snape's face in frontal views.

(Page 7) I'd say in 8, it's more that he just doesn't look like Snape than that he looks too old
How do you mean? To me, he doesn't look different from the other Snapes: same nose, same chin, same hair. *is puzzled*

James looks, somehow, too stiff. (I think it's how very straight his nose is -- it seems a bit unnatural.) And probably too skinny, especially in Panel 3.
I like James's nose, actually. I don't mind whether or not it looks natural; I'm sure nobody has a nose like the one I draw on Snape or Peter either. My greatest concern is that the characters can easily be distinguished from one another, that their appearance hints a little at what kind of people they are, and also that I just like how they look :).
I tend to draw Snape and James as too skinny; they're still developing. I am also aware of the fact that I have a tendency to give everybody legs that are really too long; but if I draw them in the 'right' proportions, I just don't like the result.

I have no technical basis and no character sheets or such, no fixed measures as to how far every element of the face is from every other. So yes, the faces vary a little, and I have idiosyncrasies that I developed along the way. I suppose that's a lack of professionalism, but I'm still developing my skills. I don't use photo reference generally; maybe I should start doing that...