
They say people who take backups seriously are those: who’ve lost their data before, or know someone who has. Avoid being the first guy by learning how to backup your website and computer with this one simple rule!
Tips and tutorials focused on webcomics. Includes stuff that Lazylonewolf found useful, like websites and tools.
They say people who take backups seriously are those: who’ve lost their data before, or know someone who has. Avoid being the first guy by learning how to backup your website and computer with this one simple rule!
This was originally going to be a post about the pros and cons between self-taught and taking classes, but I’ve decided to concentrate on educating yourself since I don’t have much experience with classes even with the few years in college taking Multimedia Arts. I do consider myself lucky that I had a Freehand Drawing professor who taught us concepts from the book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain (Amazon affiliate link), which now I own myself. It’s a literal lifechanger and I’ll always recommend reading it if you haven’t yet!
I do suggest attending classes/lessons/courses if they’re available, but it can be hard to tell if the teacher will be good. In some cases, it might actually make your art worse, so be careful!
Anyway enough about me, onwards with the post!
I’ve always wondered how many fans you actually need to make a decent living. Well, according to Kevin Kelly (founding executive editor of Wired magazine), it’s around a 1,000 True Fans. Anyone using Patreon or making a living through commissions should give his post a thorough read!
If you’re too lazy to read (lazier than me?!) here’s the gist of it:
↓ Read the rest of this entry…
Just changed my @wacom pen nib after years of using it. Maybe the change will help my drawing. Aaand I forgot I had these… pic.twitter.com/Gi8LVJlJhz
— Lazylonewolf (@thelazylonewolf) May 7, 2017
Just in case you didn’t know, the nib is that thing at the end of the pen which you use to draw or write.
Oh boy, I immediately noticed the difference! Everything’s so smooooth… too smooth now actually since I’ve gotten used to the old nib (I’ll get over it). And I don’t know why, but drawing is now more fun, quicker, and accurate. Huge time saver definitely; looking back, I had to redraw a lot (draw a line, erase/undo, draw line again until I get it right, etc.) because the sharper point of the older Wacom pen nib makes my strokes a little wobbly. Now I don’t have to do that often anymore!
I kinda feel stupid that it took all this time. I mean, obviously, if your pencil’s starting to become too short to be useful it’s time to replace it, but whatever! I’ll certainly stock up on the nibs (some Amazon links below) and change them from now on whenever it becomes too dull, and you should too! I think a year or so is a good time to replace it.
Now, if I can only do something about Adobe Flash’s long saving times then everything would be peachy. I save often cause it crashes often. Hmm, perhaps getting an SSD will help but those things are kind of expensive. Of course, there’s a way to help out with that wiiiink.
Finally, here’s a quick guide to purchasing nibs and some links to Amazon if you want to shop for them. Always remember to check first if they’re compatible with your drawing tablet before buying! And I’m an Amazon associate, so if you buy any stuff through these links, I’ll also earn money without any additional cost to you, so thank you!
Hey there everyone, here’s a pretty… handy tutorial about drawing hands shared by thebluemario in the chat. ↓ Read the rest of this entry…
I managed to remember to put aside the unfinished drawings, so here’s a quick tutorial about drawing using Adobe Flash. I use the Brush tool with pressure enabled, circular brush shape, and brush size turned up to the max. Enjoy!
So I’ve decided to write a series of posts about making comics, my way. Let’s get started with Step 1 by talking about… ideas!
Ever wonder how fast your website loads? Find out for free through Pingdom’s Website speed test! This handy tool not only shows you which files or objects affect your website’s speed, it also gives recommendations that can improve your site’s load time.
You might need some technical know-how to carry out some of the recommendations suggested by the tool, but for most (especially webcomics), the images in your website have the largest effect on speed.  That’s why I advise optimizing/compressing all of your images even at the expense of some quality, but trust me, most people won’t notice the difference at all – I suggest TinyPNG and TinyJPG which I use myself, or this all-in-one online tool compressor.io. compressor.io even has a lossless option, which will try to keep your image files from losing the least amount of quality possible.
Other things that can slow a site are advertisements, and extra stuff like chatboxes and Facebook/Twitter widgets. Consider removing these if they are affecting the speed too much, or if you don’t need them anymore.
Thanks to this, I’ve managed to make Cat Nine faster for everyone; now it loads in 2-6 seconds on average! How about you, how fast does your website load? Try posting your results in the comments below!
Public Enemy No. 1
If you have a WordPress website and using cPanel, be careful of HotLink Protection. It caused the mess earlier this morning, preventing everyone from loading or displaying any images, even on the website itself.
No images is disastrous in a web comic and since I lack the technical skills beyond HTML and CSS, I panicked a little to be honest… The tech support for my webhost was also a little unhelpful. At least I had my backups just in case I couldn’t fix it.
Cause
It seems there’s still an unfixed bug with cPanel’s HotLink Protection. Even if you disable it in the HotLink Protection page, it doesn’t seem to work. Apparently, HotLink Protection adds something to all the .htaccess files in your website directory.
How to fix this
1. Find and download all your .htaccess files in the public_html folder. If you have another website/subdomain, include them too.
2. Open them and look for something like this. In my case, I found it at the bottom.
RewriteRule .*\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|bmp)$ ^.* [R,NC]
3. Remove them, and then save your .htaccess files.
4. Upload your .htaccess files to wherever you found them.
5. Don’t use HotLink Protection anymore, and don’t open it up in cPanel.
Hope this helped someone else if they encounter this problem!
Copy-paste from my post in the Comic Fury forums
All this sitting around drawing, writing, coloring, etc. Yeah, it’s not good for your health. Even more so if your hobbies also involve a lot of sitting around (video games, reading, surfing, Facebook, etc).
So I just want to say to everybody, maybe take a walk, stretch a little, or even better, plan a regular exercise schedule! Just so you won’t encounter into any health problems later on. Mind you, I’m still a beginner at exercise, but boy do I feel great! Aaaand losing a bit of weight, and gaining some muscle certainly doesn’t hurt.
Welp, good luck to everyone on their comic, and stay healthy!