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Post by Moni on May 6, 2021 5:40:59 GMT -5
Thorn thank you (i also like the art of people here!) however, i still think of plato when i'm raging at my inability to draw xyz (as i am right now). makes me feel better.
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Post by Ginz ❤ on Aug 31, 2021 13:47:56 GMT -5
So, something I've realized about having a screen tablet is that it doesn't work super well with my creative process. No complaints about the tablet itself, it's a fantastic tool! The problem is my digital drawing process usually looks something like this:
1. Open art program 2. Leave it open in the background for an indefinite ammount of time 3. Finally start drawing 4. Take a break to browse tumblr 5. Okay, I'm all caught up. Time to continue drawing 6. Take a break to watch a youtube video... or two... or three... 7. Oops, I was meant to be drawing, wasn't I? Okay, okay! 8. Oh, people are talking on Discord, gotta see what they're saying! 9. Fine, I'll continue drawing
And so on, you get the idea... it's not usually continuous. And this wasn't a problem when I had my Bamboo, because it just sat there, unassuming, waiting for the time I re-opened the window with my drawing program. However, my screen tablet feels like something I should turn on when it's Time To Draw™. If I open tumblr, or youtube, or Discord, they reflect back at me on the screen of my tablet, distractingly. I could turn off the screen during my breaks, of course, and then turn it back on when I'm ready to draw again. But the connection is finicky, and sometimes when I try to turn it back on it says "No Signal" and I have to unplug it and plug it again, and it's... well, a bit of a hassle, you know? Not a huge hassle, it's something I can easily do. But it does hinder my motivation a bit, not only to continue drawing, but to even start in the first place.
So here are my ideas to fix the problem: a) Re-install my old tablet b) You know, traditional art is a thing! c) Push through it. I'm gonna use my fun fancy screen tablet whatever it takes!!
I don't know, it's a shame it isn't working smoothly for me. We'll see how it goes. I just wanted to share my experience.
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Post by Liou on Nov 26, 2021 16:22:33 GMT -5
Yo sidewalkers, I'm just back from two days' training about comics angled mainly towards kids' comics, mostly basic things on the medium and how to advocate for it and introduce it to more users. It made me realise a few things: - our resident comic makers here make good stuff and study the right techniques - y'all have low key taught me a lot while showing your creative process, as in, taught me stuff that has been helping me for my "by day" job <3
(At some point the trainer was giving us an example of a comic that was mainly in black and white with only small objects marked with colour to show their plot importance. I was like "hmmm that sounds familiar, where have I seen that before?" and spent a while running professionally published comics through my mind before realising that no, this process had been used in an even cooler way by an internet friend for their internet comic :3 )
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Post by June Scarlet on Nov 30, 2022 21:45:53 GMT -5
Throw it out there, I'm interested in hosting a winter-themed art exchange. I'm off work next week, so more details to come.
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Post by June Scarlet on Feb 28, 2023 21:33:46 GMT -5
Today at work I was learning about web accessibility. Very interesting stuff. It's a big subject with lots of details, but I wanted to talk about image accessibility in particular, for things like those using screenreaders, as an example. Alt text is what I already know about making an image accessible, though what to put in there, I never really knew. What I didn't know is that alt text is just one of the tools to make an image accessible. You can also have descriptive text, which is a paragraph about the image that goes with the flow of the piece the image is paired with. You can also have an empty alt text tag if the image is purely decorative. Leaving out the lat tag altogether though means that the screenreader will read the image file name, which often doesn't tell anything about the image. The context of the image matters, and that's going to change how you make the image accessible. There's good examples of image accessibility here as well as image accessibility examples here. What's not on there, however, is comics. Comics are a challenge because there's so many details and multiple panels per image. You can't stuff that into a 125-character alt text. So what do you do with them, then? Well, I did the research and found out. This article, Accessible Comics???, is a good resource, giving several ideas and ways to go about doing this. For me, the ideal was "Text transcript with details," where you have a section, perhaps defaulted to hidden, where you add in the transcript of your comic, the panels, what happens in the panels, who says what, and so on. This article, How To Write Alt Text For Digital Comics, is referenced in the prior article, and explains what to fill your descriptions with for comics. All that said, I'll be working on adding in transcripts for my comics on my website soon. This really was some interesting insight, and while I'm far from an expert, I'm going to work harder at making my comics accessible.
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Post by Twillie on Feb 28, 2023 21:46:31 GMT -5
This is something that's also crossed my mind a number of times before! I even found that second resource you linked some time ago and kept it open in a tab on my phone for the longest time, else I forget about it xD Now I've got a better means of referencing back to it and reading it in full, so thank you for that!
I've been wanting to do similar with making my comics accessible, imagining I'd do so when I had my own site for hosting things and presumably an original series kickstarted, similar to your setup now. But I still wanted to get a headstart on researching how to even go about it, because it could potentially be something I work towards even sooner. You'll have to let us know how it works for you as you start trying!
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Post by Kengplant on Feb 28, 2023 23:03:03 GMT -5
Ohh!! That's really handy June! Thank you for posting those. I've tried adding descriptive text for comics before and it's HARD. Especially when you've added some sort of background detail that's significant later on but you don't want to stand out too much.
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Post by June Scarlet on Mar 1, 2023 19:46:38 GMT -5
For your comics in particular, Twillie, I might go with the full-blown "Full description text," the last example in the "Accessible Comics???" article. At least with your Blossoms comics, you have so much details and imagery I don't think anything less would capture it all. I notice, though, that the examples provided for that aren't actually written by the comic artist or writer. Rather, a fan created them for another fan, and now it's just a part of the comic, still written by that fan. Maybe... I wonder... maybe we ( Kengplant too, I was going to reply to you later in the post, and also anyone else interested by this) could practice by writing descriptions for each other's comics. Not taking responsibility for an entire series, rather taking one single comic from it, or maybe a select few, and writing out the descriptions as practice. And then presenting it to the comic creator, so they can read what's seen from the outside. That way, we all could get a better idea of how we could make our comics more accessible. Keng, you mentioned background details being hard to hide, which is where I think something like this could be beneficial. Having someone else write it means it's what someone else sees and picks up on. It's an observation, not a fact if they notice it. At least with my one-off comics like Crime Show and Dinner with the Scarlets, I don't think I need a ton of description. I was going to throw in my my pared down comic scripts for now when I figure out how I want to add them into the website. Then go back and add in a more descriptive version when I figure out how I want to do that. But I don't have foreshadowing or overarching plots with comics like these, so I don't think I need to go to "Full Descriptive Text."
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Post by Kengplant on Mar 2, 2023 2:35:40 GMT -5
I just saw the bit describing the fan made transcript for the horror/mystery comic. The definitely feels like a more true experience than myself as the author describing everything.
As the artist I feel like I run both the risk of over and under explaining. "There's an intricately detailed drawer in the bg. Light shines off it. It's not important to anything, it's not even a red herring, but it took me a long time to draw so I'm mentioning it."
But yes! I would be interested in doing an exercise of that sort!
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Post by June Scarlet on Mar 2, 2023 20:47:37 GMT -5
Well, I've got the transcripts looking nice on Crime Show. It's defaulted to hidden, and the button toggles the visibility. Still researching if it's actually accessible, though. I found an Accessibility area in Firefox Inspector dev tools that shows what my website looks like from the words alone. From that, I'm not sure having the words hidden behind a button is the best. I found this tool a few weeks back that showed my website from the perspective of something like search engine or a bot. Which was half-broken because I was still working on it. I don't remember what that tool was, though. But I did find a different tool from Google that shows what the their search engine sees. Still looking into that. All that said, I still consider this a work-in-progress.
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Post by Stephanie (swordlilly) on Mar 2, 2023 22:31:53 GMT -5
I wonder if a comic series could fit into the Series section of the Neopian Times if the transcript was included after the image. Each part would need to be a minimum of 1,500 words, including the coding for the image. The image would need to be max 470px in width, but the height could potentially be longer than a standalone comic.
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Post by Twillie on Mar 2, 2023 23:19:49 GMT -5
Yeah, that sounds like a cool exercise to try, so I'd be up for it! I feel like I'd have the fear of giving too much away by pointing towards certain details that might have been subtle foreshadowing otherwise xD "And do take note that in the background in this panel, there's an Amulet resting on the table. Don't forget that it's there at this moment, because you never know what could happen ;3"
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Post by June Scarlet on Mar 4, 2023 22:04:25 GMT -5
Okay, got my comic ready for Sunday, so I'm good to get back to this discussion. Kengplant, Twillie, here's what I'm thinking. We'll start a three-person PM (or possibly a discord DM). Each of us will write a transcript for the other two. Once we have that settled, we'll discuss and bring our work back to the forum thread. Here's my questions: -Does the comic creator pick the comic, or does the transcriber? -Do the two transcribers transcribe the same comic, or different comics? -Do we want to create a separate thread for this, or just keep going here?
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Post by Twillie on Mar 5, 2023 22:09:50 GMT -5
-I don't think it'd be a big deal either way on who picks it. I'd say the creator just for ease of it, since we have the quickest access to our own files and know the selection best.
-I'd say the same comic for both transcribers to better compare final products.
-We can probably keep it in PM's for now, and perhaps report back once we've got the transcriptions.
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Post by Moni on Jul 20, 2024 22:12:37 GMT -5
supremely unhappy with how i draw and unsure how to fix it. feels like i'm just replicating mistakes again and again the moment i stop copying something.
(this is not compliment fishing. please do not give me compliments, advice please.)
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