On Writing Romance

Heh. So, I remember back when I first started drawing the comic there was a scene where you guys were practically shouting in the comments section, "Now... KISS!" (Though, that was on Webtoon, not here. Here's the Webtoon link.

I thought this was mildly amusing because they officially met THAT DAY. I brought this up with my younger sister, who reads the comic frequently. I was practically laughing, but she said, dead serious: 

"Well, maybe it's been a day for them, but it's been two months for us."

That's when it hit me: When you have a medium like comics (especially a webcomic where you post maybe one page a week), the pacing of the story feels a lot slower. Maybe a couple days passed for your characters, but not so to the readers.

This made me swear to never again laugh at instant romance in films especially. From a creator's standpoint, maybe a real relationship takes months to develop (with some exceptions, a couple dear friends of mine celebrated their 25th anniversary... and they only knew each other for like a week before getting married), but if you have a movie where you have to tell the whole story in a couple hours at most, then you don't have much of a choice BUT an instant romance.

Inking Makes a HUGE Difference 

Have you ever learned something in class and thought, "Nah... it'll be fine."?

Inking was that for me. I didn't really see a point in it, at first because you're going to be shading with colors anyway. Inking was for old comics, after all that didn't have as many options for colors as we do today.

Boy was I wrong.

Lately, I learned about how the comic book industry sort of let inking fall by the wayside, and comics actually suffer as a result. They look flatter and lose a lot of character and contrast.

So I thought, "Eh, what the hell? Might as well give it a shot." 

Turns out I LOVE inking. It's very theraputic, relaxing, and it really does add a lot of character. Sure, it takes a bit of extra time, but I'm finding myself not worrying about blending colors so much as a result, so maybe it's saving time? Either way, if you notice a vast jump in improvement, that's why! I'm super proud of myself! I'm even studying the Grand Masters of inking to perfect my craft. Gentlemen? Meet Frank Frazetta: