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Description
New to this and want to take part?
Drawing Stories - free-to-join comics workshop

So here's the first drawing challenge!

I'm starting out light and simple, just trying to figure out who my characters are and how they move. This is something that's important to know when it comes to making a comic, where you might end up drawing a character in a dozen different poses from a dozen different angles in the space of just a few pages.

What's shorthand and why aren't we using it today?
"Visual shorthand" is my term for the language of symbols that we see in comics. In western comics, one of the more well known shorthand symbols is the dustcloud with fists coming out, which appears when two characters have gotten into a scuffle. People who read manga will be familiar with things like the sweatdrop to show perturbation, or the bubble-out-of-nose which means a character is sleeping. Putting these symbols into your drawings is a quick-fix way to get the message across. But can you show that a character is perturbed without using a sweatdrop? If you can, then the message of your drawings will be stronger than if you just slap a sweatdrop on and call it good enough.

Victory Fire generally does not use visual shorthand. That's not because shorthand is a bad thing - I just don't think it's a good match for VF's tone, which tends to be quite solemn.

Followup: Sulfurbunny's attempt

Description
New to this and want to take part?
Drawing Stories - free-to-join comics workshop

So here's the first drawing challenge!

I'm starting out light and simple, just trying to figure out who my characters are and how they move. This is something that's important to know when it comes to making a comic, where you might end up drawing a character in a dozen different poses from a dozen different angles in the space of just a few pages.

What's shorthand and why aren't we using it today?
"Visual shorthand" is my term for the language of symbols that we see in comics. In western comics, one of the more well known shorthand symbols is the dustcloud with fists coming out, which appears when two characters have gotten into a scuffle. People who read manga will be familiar with things like the sweatdrop to show perturbation, or the bubble-out-of-nose which means a character is sleeping. Putting these symbols into your drawings is a quick-fix way to get the message across. But can you show that a character is perturbed without using a sweatdrop? If you can, then the message of your drawings will be stronger than if you just slap a sweatdrop on and call it good enough.

Victory Fire generally does not use visual shorthand. That's not because shorthand is a bad thing - I just don't think it's a good match for VF's tone, which tends to be quite solemn.

Followup: Sulfurbunny's attempt