Art, "Art", and Almost "Art"
What qualifies as "art" in webcomics?
The beautiful thing about comics on the web is that they can be drawn in just about any style under the sun. Western style, manga, comic strips, indie drawings, freaky color schemes (yo), quite literally any style of art can be found in comics shy of cubism (though I'm still looking). But what if a creator decides to go outside the bounds of even drawing out his/her ideas? What if said creator can't draw and can't find a friend who's willing to collaborate with them? What are the options for a creator who has that magic idea, but needs the artwork to realize it?
There are many different ways creators use to circumvent the "art" creation in comics. Some methods are more acceptable than others, but some are just downright awful. What options are available and which of these options will have me calling you a lazy, talentless hack and an insult to the sequential art world at large?
Stick Figure Comics
Examples: XKCD (http://www.xkcd.com), Cyanide and Happiness (http://www.explosm.net/comics/new/), Order of the Stick (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0001.html)
Okay, we have a creator who's at least making an effort to draw out his or her comic, but they're just taking the easy way out and drawing stick figures. I highly discourage this method because IT. IS. LAZY. Rather than trying to improve one's art and at least making an attempt at drawing characters, stick figure comickers choose to draw the most haphazard crap in its place. This is a person who is not making an effort. The more lazy the artwork, the more terrible the comic is to look at. Order of the Stick gets somewhat of a reprieve because at least its creators are trying to make their characters more diverse and colorful. XKCD, however, is unabashed laziness, never even having established a regular cast, let alone a diverse one. Cyanide and Happiness is even worse because it's far stupider than XKCD. Creators, unless your writing is so amazing that readers will ignore your art and go straight for the joke, you don't stand a chance. And even if your comic, but some ridiculous fluke, gets popular, no real artist will respect you (and well they shouldn't).
Photo Comics
Examples: Irregular Webcomic (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/), Union of Heroes (http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/), Surviving the World (http://www.survivingtheworld.net)
Photo comics is the method by which the images are actually photographs of people, places, or things in lieu of drawn artwork. This can be done well, but it still requires an artistic eye to do it right. The best photo-based comics I've seen were actually paint-overs of existing photographs, where I wasn't entirely sure if what I was looking at was a comic or an elaborate painting. Titanium Rain (http://www.titanium-rain.net), while not a webcomic is an example of how to do a photo comic right. Each frame is intricately painted over and special effects are added to enhance the experience and really put the reader in the protagonist's cockpit. Other photo comics, like Irregular Webcomics and Union of Heroes, incorporate the use of special effects or painting and benefit from it, but then there are those lazy bastards who think a webcomic can be comprised of a single frame of a single photograph. Surviving the World does this, and while its content is actually pretty amusing, this DOES NOT qualify it as a webcomic. It's a photographic affirmation at best. The bottom line here is that photo comics work best when serious artistic skill is applied. Otherwise, it's just as lazy and contrived as stick figure comics.
Poser Comics
Examples: House of the Muses (http://houseofthemuses.com), The Legend of Lili Deacon (http://www.cartoonfrolics.com), Pron Quest (God, I'm not linking this, NSFW and horribly tasteless)
Poser (www.daz3d.com) is a software package that was developed to provide artists with canned, posable CG models from which to draw correctly. Since its inception, Poser has mushroomed into a tool for creating all kinds of CG pin up art with hundreds of pre-fabricated models, outfits and scenes to choose from. There are folks who have also figured out that said CG creation tool can also be put to work creating comics, and honestly, I'm not sure how to feel about this. I believe there is more effort that goes into a poser comic than, say, a stick figure comic, but we're still talking canned 3d models here. In a way, this is most similar to photo comics, and in that case, same rule applies: more artistic involvement means a better product. I've seen some poser art that's so thoroughly painted over it looked like a real CG model made from the ground up, but this is the exception, not the rule. In general, most Poser art I've seen is generally untouched from its original rendering and the characters end up with a "dead doll" look that is creepy and off-putting. Again, when a creator puts time and energy into painting over these models to make them look more lifelike, the result is just better. Overall, though, I don't recommend this method. With enough people using this tool, the result would be a crop of comics that all look the same, and I wouldn't be a very responsible comic artist if I advised that, now would I?
Hire an Artist
Examples: Hard Graft (http://hard-graft.net), Marilith (http://www.marilith.com/), Least I Could (http://www.leasticoulddo.com)
This is my favorite method because it produces the most genuine results, and it gets me work. Commissioned artwork looks like the real deal because it IS the real deal. It was drawn! By a person! And no stick figures need be necessary! Yes, there are writers out there who do the artwork the old fashioned way and simply pay someone else more qualified to do it. The results may vary, depending on the commissioned artist, but overall this is probably the best method to circumvent drawing your own art in a comic. And I'm not just saying this because I'm greedy and self-serving (though I am). There are some pitfalls to this, though. Sometimes, if an artist leaves a project for whatever reason and another one must be hired, the result is an inconsistent set of art. This is true of both Marilith and Least I Could Do. Also, artists in the first world tend to charge a lot of money to account for the standard of living here in the first world. The way to get around this is to look for overseas artists. I've seen beautiful work come out of artists in southeast Asia and South America, and if you can get around the language barrier, this is an affordable way to get professional-looking results. Ultimately, anything canned, pre-rendered, or lazily scrawled can't compare to the true creativity, quality, and beauty of a drawn, sequential page/strip, which is part of why we love comics in the first place.
In summary, there are many ways to get around drawing out a comic on your own, but in order to put out a good-looking product, it helps to still have an artistic eye to get it right. Otherwise, just pay someone with an artistic eye to do it for you because that's the American way. After all, one of the most important goals of doing a comic, web or otherwise, is to put out an attractive product and the most responsible thing a comic creator can do is to strive for nothing less
- Jules Rivera
Check out Jules Rivera's Series
www.marsh-rocket.com
Marsh Rocket is an action/black comedy web comic that takes place several centuries into the future. Marsh, a corporate hitman, must retrieve a mysterious briefcase for a sleazy loan shark at the risk of betraying his own people. With warring factions after Marsh, the briefcase, and each other, the blood, knives, and even breakfast foods are bound to fly.
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