Deja Vu
Colin: Those of you who have binged our backlog might recognize today’s comic. It’s a re-do of “Handbook of Heroes #1”. The art style has changed just a bit since those halcyon days. For example, shadows now exist. Lumberjack Explosion has knees this time. And as our as our equine avenger so rightly points out, Fighter’s face is slightly less stupid.
Since the subject of today’s comic is art, I think it’s only right that the illustrator gets a chance to speak. Before Laurel takes the mic though, I’d like to point out that an RPG campaign is like any other creative endeavor. If you stress too hard about making things perfect—if you psych yourself out or compare yourself too much to others—you’ll never work up the courage to go out and make something cool. We learn by doing. It’s hard work, but it’s the only way to improve.
Laurel: I have a love/hate relationship with the idea of art growth, especially in webcomics–on the one hand, I love being able to see an artist progress and improve over time, it’s really amazing to witness! On the other, I feel this ugly desire to prevent others from seeing that I was ever less practiced than I am at this current moment, and struggle to allow older comics to continue to see the light of day. I really hate that one of our first comics uses what I feel is our best joke (the “Never Split the Party” bathtub scene remains my favorite, but god do I ever want a second shot at it). I spent a decade drawing Chorus of the Neverborn and now quietly hope that no one ever goes to it after they read Handbook of Heroes. The fact that you can still buy my graphic novel on Amazon and see how painfully amateur it looks is humiliating. I feel this shame about them that is wholly unfounded, because I can also acknowledge that there’s nothing wrong with having improved–it’s a good thing, and I’m proud of the work that I’ve put in! I just also want to hide that work away from other people.
This isn’t just online. I have kept every sketchbook I’ve ever drawn, going back to my earliest comic attempts in elementary school. I would never want to deprive myself of the record of my journey as an artist, and I really like being able to look back and see old concepts that I can now revisit and improve upon now that I’m more skilled. I just also feel like I might have to stipulate in my will that these should all be burned before anyone so much as cracks open the first page so that no one else ever sees 13-year-old me’s embarrassing Sailor Moon OCs.
I think most creative people suffer from at least a little bit of Impostor Syndrome. We see people more talented than ourselves and feel as though our own efforts aren’t good enough, and having old work available for others to judge can amplify these feelings. It’s hard, but I resist the urge to take these things down, because I don’t want other people to feel this way about themselves, too. There’s a very obvious record out there of how long it took me to get where I am, and how much I struggled along the way, and I think it’s important to not pretend that it was easy, or that there weren’t times when I sucked.
All that being said, it felt pretty good today to prove to myself that I can redraw Handbook #1 and see exactly how much I’ve changed. Hopefully in five more years I can be super embarrassed about this version and produce a third copy that’s miles beyond what I can do now.
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
I’d like to think everyone has embarrassing OCs from their teenage years. I know they don’t but I like to think that.
I’m 27 and I have embarrassing OCs from, like, yesterday.
I never stopped making OCs, I just stopped showing them to other people. 😀
Yeah, I’m not much different. Truth be told, I’d like to recapture my creative energy from my teens and 20’s, minus some of the cringe.
I think a lot of it is time–once you have a job and responsibilities that take up most of your day, it’s hard to have the necessary supply of creativity, because it’s not a switch you can turn on and off.
Definitely. Studying history (with a side of culture and mythology) in college has been interesting, but it also leaves me totally drained of motivation. At first, I was able to creatively apply what I had been learning, but my battery eventually ran down.
It’s interesting to see web comic artists that go back and redo their earlier artwork. I can understand why they do it — as a software developer, I cringe at some of the things I wrote earlier in my career — but I’m not a fan of that kind of rework. Watching an artist’s style and skill evolving over time is part of the attraction…
I think it’s nice to feel like you get to ‘participate’ in the journey of the artist a little by reading them!
Exactly. You look at some of the oldest web comics, the ones that have been running twenty years or more… their earliest work is often terrible, because they’ve obviously started out with an idea, but no actual skill in drawing. And over the years, the art has improved as they’ve become more proficient — but beyond that, there’s also a lot of evolution in their style.
Any artist would be the same no matter the medium, I suppose, but the web comic format does make it very easy to observe…
Embrace your imposter syndrome. You are a trickster god that has fooled the masses.
As much as I like reading about capricious trickster gods, I would make a very bad one. I’d constantly be hiding in the corner fretting about whether or not I was a bad person for deceiving people.
That’s why I said you need to embrace it. Also thanks for turning me onto the Chorus of the Neverborn.
I hope that you enjoy it and don’t judge Kyle (who is the writer for Chorus) and I too harshly. It was very much a labor of love.
…Y’know, I think that would make an amazing D&D character! A trickster god who laughs in the face of the party as they pull off their dastardly schemes and convoluted pranks, then Misty Steps around the corner to breathe heavily into a paper bag and wonder why they took it soo far when they just wanted to be friends and open up with a tiny joke!
Not sure if they’d be a BBEG, PC, or Ally, but they’d certainly be a lot of fun to imagine or write for!
I agree, that sounds like something I should try to incorporate into a game sometime…
Not wise to advertise/link to your old shame and then say you don’t want anyone to look at it, Laurel!
Or wait, is this reverse psychology?
Colin linked those after I wrote it, the jerk!
But I didn’t link to your comic over on Amazon, because you specifically told me not to. See? I listen and stuff!
No need to be ashamed about your old art, Laurel! You have plenty of ‘patreon-exclusive’ comics and arts that will haunt you instead, for reasons entirely different than the artstyle/techniques/skill employed. :p
Or maybe that is more Colin’s shame, since he’s the writer / the one who thought all that content up.
Oh, man, there are PLENTY of sketchbooks that would fit right in with the patreon-exclusive comics, but the art is a decade old and I wasn’t quite sure how to draw certain anatomy features. XD
The kamasutra of noodle-arms!
I’m curious what Colin’s take on this very subject of ‘old shame’ is, from the writing perspective. Is there any particular literary work, joke, strip, line or gag in the old comics that he finds himself gagging or humiliated by, or otherwise going ‘what was I thinking?!’.
I regret nothing. Except possibly “Gather Information.”
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/gather-information
And that’s only because someone will binge the comic every few months and pause to yell at me about that one.
I finally made up a system for things like your scryphone: (Copypaste from my reddit post)
I base this item off of the rings of communique.
First, I would make it either a handheld wondrous item or else cause it to project a bright holographic screen of the person being called, as per the tech guide commset.
Next, I would eliminate its built-in range, and instead tie it to magical devices called “signal relay towers” that have an average radius of 60 miles (8000 gp to build, no other purpose than than to link these devices, larger or smaller variants have differing prices). These devices would have communication ability only within the radii of these towers, but multiple towers can “boost signals” and allow one device to link to another that is potentially far away. These signals can be blocked by lead or at least 5 ft. of stone or similar material.
Then, I would allow for magical “add-ons” to be purchased. These purchases could allow the modified item to employ new features, and would cost anything from 20 extra gp (continuous light spell or other minor cantrip) to 6000 extra gp (double the video/photo capacity of a tech guide camera, major image trideo function, etc etc) for features of varying quality and usefulness. The baseline item would now cost much less with all of these limitations– I leave you to determine exactly how much, but with all the setup needed to use them, I would price it at around 500 gp each.
Reminds me of the Clacks Towers in Discworld:
https://discworld.fandom.com/wiki/Clacks
And that’s a smart way to play it. You can still cut off communication underground, by blowing up a tower, or by simply having the adventure take place out of range. Very clever indeed!
Thanks! I personally really like the concept of “downloading” different capabilities onto one baseline item. For example, one of the features (25 extra gp) is connectivity to the Tapestry, basically magic internet. Another feature that a villain uses a lot in my games is a spell 3/day… set to Fireball >:)
What are some features you can think of?
I‘ve dropped a few comics with „better“* artwork simply because I didn’t like the art style. And I droped a few with excellent art style because the story didn‘t agree with me. Add to that those that stopped updating.
In summary: worrying about the art is overrated.
„better“ than some of the comics I‘m still reading.
I’m very picky about the webcomics I read–is it too much to ask for good art and a good story? I feel like so many have either one or the other…
I can’t speak to the art side of things (my drawing is roughly as terrible as it has ever been), but I know this is very much a thing on the writing side of things. I’ve heard it said that no writer can stand anything they’ve written more than five years ago. I seem to be an exception to that (I actually feel that my high school superhero fanfiction from like 8 years ago still holds up, and even my middle-school Pokémon-derived fantasy story has some good ideas I would like to revisit someday) but I can definitely understand the feeling.
(With some effort, I was able to dig up some old, unfinished work of mine that I am much less proud of, so… progress?)
It’s not a bad thing! There are still pieces I’ve done that are old that I’m proud of, but there are a lot I keep around for reference because the concept was interesting even if my execution was flawed. Keeping things to inspire you later is never a bad thing!
Until you run out of shelf space.
It’s the same in almost any endeavour… I work in software, and while I might not actually notice myself getting better, it becomes very obvious when forced to revisit something I did years early. I’ve long ago lost track of the number of times I’ve said something along the lines of “What idiot wrote this? Oh, wait… never mind.”
I can relate to the feeling of old art shame a bit too much – it’s completely unreasonable to think that my improvement is something to be ashamed of rather than proud, but here we are! The brain works in mysterious ways.
Better than not recognizing improvement at all.
You know how I’ll periodically tell stories about my GMing screwups? I have to fight hard to keep from believing them. I mean, they’re all true, but they’re not representative of my actual skills behind a screen. It can be hard to remember that sometimes.
If you want to take another pass at Never Split The Party, why not take one? Perhaps you could include the full party (crowding the tub enough to provide many ways to cover Wizard’s new naughty bits), and the below-comic talk might be about perils or developments that important NPCs might go through when off-screen, even while accompanying the party (and thus, possibly not technically split off but things still happen to them).
I’ve been thinking about re-doing it for a t-shirt design–just gotta find the time to take a crack at it!
Are you sure you want to do the full party?
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/the-full-party
You didn’t seem to love it the first time. 😛
Don’t you start!
Colin makes a good point. How could you be satisfied with just that much? Clearly the only acceptable choice here is to include the full cast of all previous characters, monsters, and objects. =P
Laurel, be proud of your work, from the bad to the good to the superb. You are a great artist 😀
Looking at old work can be problematic. On one hand you say: “How much i have grow!”, on the other you say: “How much my art sucked then!”. It can be complicated. I make the plot and setting for my group, my work is more intangible than a draw. Yet remembering back bygone eras i too feel how much i have grow and how much i can grow still. Good i am the only witness of that. Some plots aren’t that good. Once i was making a setting but i dropped it because it was too much like Naruto. You got all that material, enjoy it, the good and bad, is your work and be proud of it. There is always a something more that can be done. Let me adjust that line. No, the posse is kinda awkward, i am gonna redone it. Oh, no, i forgot that shadow over there. For a true artist no piece is ever done 😀
Also be glad that you got Colin answering the messages which frees time for you to live and be happy 😛
By the way if you want to do a Chorus of the Neverborn: Remastered – Author’s cut. I completely support you 😀
Thank you! I am proud of it, really, I just simultaneously want to keep the older stuff to myself. XD And I don’t know that I’d ever want to redo Chorus–it’d be such a project!–but maybe I might do another story in the Exalted setting. I’ve got a lot of stories to draw from for inspiration!
No, thanks to you for your art, for the handbook and for sharing it 😀
Another story would be great. I really enjoyed the Chorus 🙂
Wow, Ms. Laurel. Your words feel so very, very relatable to me. ^^;
But isn’t it a great feeling when you look at your work and can say: “Hey, looks like I levelled up!”
(This is not just an RPG-related joke. I really did see that when last I saw I’d improved…)
It’s a great feeling to see the results of your hard work! But I’m glad I’m not alone in feeling this way <3
Honestly, I’ve found the art of this comic a selling point from the first comic. Everything being nicely colored, well-formed, and having that nice texture is pretty big for someone like myself who’s much more amateur at making art. Not to say I haven’t perceived significant improvements over the years, but it took noticing the link to the side-by-side comparison to see just how much has changed. There’s something to be said for everything being relative and creators usually being their own harshest critics.
Of course, I have my own skeleton closet of silly work from younger years, including a small collection of stories I later greatly regretted deleting. I overshare by default, but after a certain point I can understand not wanting others to see such work — even if I wish I could still see it. (I made some summaries of what I remembered happening years later, at least, but it’s obviously not the same.) Taking whatever pride is possible in progress and keeping older work around for its promise and inspiration is a good way to go.
I’m glad you like it! And I hope that you keep drawing–it’s really just practice, I think that ‘talent’ is sort of a misnomer when it comes to the arts. Sure, some people may start a little ahead, but it’s the folks who keep at it and work every day on their craft who eventually become the masters <3
I’m so sad that you lost those! I really treasure keeping my old work around, and at one point I had a hard-drive melt down with all the files from my first webcomic/graphic novel series and I freaked out about losing them. Fortunately, I have a very good friend who is an IT wizard who managed to recover my files, but it was very scary to think that’d I’d lost a record of 4 years of work. I learned my lesson about multiple backups that day!
I’ve heard that’s a very similar sentiment about artists. I for one am glad when people don’t let themselves fuss over their old work, especially in favor of just putting that productivity into new things. I know I certainly enjoyed Chorus quite a bit.
Sadly I can’t actually relate to those feelings. On a scale of 1-10 my artistic talent ranks approximately at -7. I have on multiple occasions failed to draw a straight line with the line tool in paint and that’s a fairly adequate depiction of my capabilities.
In terms of creativity, honestly I’m pretty sure my brain was better at coming up with new and interesting ideas ten years ago than it is today.
It occurs to me that while the early comics look more crude, they also kind of look like they really could have come from a page of a medieval book.
Art evolution is one of the most interesting part of webcomics, because you can easily see how the art was at the beginning and how it is now. When there’s a lot of progress, it just feels good.
There are two things that are sad wrt. art evolution in webcomics. The first is when there’s no evolution at all, and you get 20 years of stagnation. It feels like a missed opportunity.
The other is kind of the opposite, when the artist spends their time redrawing the same early chapters instead of actually progressing their story forward. At best you can get a good start with nice art and stuff and then it stops on a cliffhanger with a message telling you the story will continue once the fourth redraw-everything-so-far is finished.