My MEGA ART REFERENCE post

I mostly use my tumblr as a library of references, inspirations, and others that help me with my work. I figured others might want to use it that way too? Here are my tags on my tumblr where you can find them.

Inspiration - This is the biggest one and it’s filled with mostly things that inspire me. Maybe some of it will inspire you too.

Reference - It’s filled with tutorials, references, rooms, poses, and objects I need references from. The 2nd biggest. It’s a catch all.

Then there’s the tags that pinpoint a thing I need:

Poses - Take poses from real life, other works, sports, selfies, or fashion blogs. It will help your people look more interesting than just standing around.

Men - I have trouble drawing them so they get their own tag.

Color - tutorials on how to color your work, as well as color themes, color palettes and work who’s choices or use of color are amazing.

Lighting - How to and inspiration on using lighting in your illustrations, rooms, etc.

Fashion - Get inspired by clothing and mix and match outfits for your people. 3rd biggest tag on my tumblr. Although, a lot of it is my style you might get some inspiration from them.

Rooms - If you need to draw a room to place your characters in, here you go. Reference a room! It also has tutorials to draw rooms or things in a room. Also, kitchens, bathrooms, bedrooms, libraries, fictional rooms, vintage rooms, themed rooms, closets, kids rooms, adult rooms, hotel rooms, minimalist and maximalist rooms, etc.

Hands - Hands are hard. This will help.

Feet - Feet are hard too.

Body - Lots of tutorials on drawing bodies with some references for different body types. Some are also under bodies.

Hair - Give me lots of hair. Long beautiful hair! As well as black hair, short hair, POC hair, braids, afros, all sorts of hair reference and tutorials on drawing hair!

Expressions - You faces need a mood, so use this. I also made a handy chart for reference here! May also be under Expression.

Inking - Cool inks.

Composition - Mostly cool comics and illustrations as well as composition tutorials.

Perspective - For perspective. I also recommend Amy Reeder’s Perspective in Storytelling on tumblr!

Storyboards - Storyboard help!

Props - A newer one with props to draw.

Important - Not just art stuff but mental health too.

Background / Backgrounds / nature / cities / buildings = all inspiration for backgrounds

I hope this helps you on your art journey like does mine!

Idk if yall have seen this but

The music in trollz slaps and there was an unreleased cd

um. Bi flag

Gifset of Onyx cos she is my fave

Trollz (2005)

this comment made me laugh so I tried to draw it

friend was lamenting the lack of girls in the shonen she was watching so I had some advice for her

Who else was obsessed with the Celestial pattern in the 90s?

actually im just gonna make my own post about it: please read more webcomics. please try them. every time people make posts about “aw man i wish SOMEone would WRITE about FLAVOR OF QUEER THING/TRAUMA OR ABUSE BUT IN SPECIFIC WAYS I CAN RELATE TO/WHATEVER” and then it gets reblogged into a giant thread of people agreeing with it and demanding Content i die because whatever it is is definitely being painstakingly created by an indie author who would really like for people to consume it and every time i point this out people suddenly can’t read lmao

it is out there it is free it is being made from firsthand experiences by people who care very very deeply who would be DELIGHTED to hear that it’s resonating with anybody at all, please throw some of that enthusiasm and support at people who will actually appreciate it

if you’re an indie comic person and any of this applies to you i encourage you to reblog this with a link to your comic and a short synopsis so people can browse the notes and find shit they’re looking for. or make your own post on your own blog if you don’t want to fool with other people i don’t care this is a sign from the universe that you should be louder about what you’re working on because people can’t fucking find it apparently.

i’ll go first i make kidd commander and it’s about an ensemble cast of queers on their way to kill god, they live on an airship and they’re all too pissed off to die. it’s free to read and it’s in the middle of its third arc right now. it lives here http://kiddcommander.com/

go go go

on second thought gonna add if you’re a READER and you’ve had Feelings about a webcomic feel free to recommend it here too

In addition to Kidd Commander, I enjoy:

Dumbing of Age - semi-autobiographical webcomic by an ex-Christian fundamentalist; explores a wide bevy of social justice issues in more nuanced ways than I often see, especially in regards to abuse

Monster Pulse - A group of kids (some of them explicitly queer) have their body parts turn into monsters; great analyses of trauma and transhumanism

Leftover Soup - slice-of-life story about the most philosophically inclined 20somethings in the world, seriously they spiral off into fascinating discussions all the time, this is basically Having Difficult Conversations: The Webcomic; the opening is terrible but stick with it

Forward - I’m just gonna link to the author’s artist’s statement and you can decide for yourself if it’s for you

i follow a lot of podcasts, i can put together a curated list.

http://ohumanstar.com/ is incredible, it’s about trans robots (in minneapolis! not a huge plot point, but it’s where i’m from). it finished recently, so you can have a completed reading experience.

https://www.baldwinpage.com/spacetrawler/2010/01/01/spacetrawler-4/ spacetrawler started as the story of six humans kidnapped by an incompetent alien to help free the eebs, an enslaved alien race. it’s very good, sometimes it hits very hard. the first and second series are complete, the third series is updating currently.

http://www.rice-boy.com/see/ rice boy is a “brightly colored and surreal fantasy adventure story”. bittersweet chosen one stuff. also by the same author is the order of tales (completed) and vattu (on going, i think it’s near completion)

https://www.egscomics.com/ very queer cast of magical teens. starts out very rough, but that was 19 years ago. lots of gender transformation magic and magical hijinks, with a helping of tragic backstories and nerd stuff.

https://www.gunnerkrigg.com/?p=1 about a couple of weird magic british school children at a weird british boarding school. there are a couple chapters in particular that hit hard. also, it’s just very well drawn and written and it always updates MWF, which is more than most webcomics can say.

http://diggercomic.com/ digger is just a good comic, i should reread it again, it’s been awhile. it’s about a “take-no-nonsense” wombat who finds herself dealing with a talking buddha statue, a tribe of the best anthropomorphic hyenas you’ll see, and a dead god.

boy have i got good news for YOU

the good news is that on this list (to my limited knowledge) both my comic and gunnerkrigg court feature wlw protagonists!

the other good news is there are TONS of us working outside the aggregate sites, please please don’t assume those companies are indicative of everything going on in webcomics as a genre. my thoughts on that could fill a whole other post but i wanted to bring it up here at least.

I also just remembered there’s the website https://archivebinge.com , which is FANTASTIC if you’re looking for something specific. It’s limited by the fact that the creator needs to post the comic themself, but it’s got a great tagging system for both genres and content warnings:

and lets you know when new posts go up even on independent sites! Extremely useful for finding and reading a bunch of comics without taking agency from the creators.

i read a shitton of webcomics but here are my recs specifically for ones that aren’t on networks like hiveworks so they need more love (on mobile so sorry if formatting gets weird)

Softies i can’t summarize better than page one sorry. there’s a bit about a stubbed toe that will hit you like a freight train to the feels.

Job Satisfaction is slice of life about queers and demons and queer demons.

Radio Silence is a coming of age story about a British band on tour.

Ingress Adventuring Company is about Professor Toivo Kissa. He is an elf and he goes on adventures instead of doing his job, which is professoring.

Skin Deep is about a girl who goes to college and finds out she’s a sphinx (i feel like everyone reads skin deep but also not enough people read skin deep).

Sfeer Theory has a magical university for a very complicated magic system, if you’re into Lore.

Outliers takes place in a superhero world but these boys are just trying to be happily married in peace.

Some LGBT webcomics just off the top of my head

Muted - fantasy comic about a gay, poly witch in New Orleans.

Paranatural - All ages fantasy comic about middle schoolers who fight ghosts.

2 Slices - Classic, trope-y romance comic with a queer spin

Alice and the nighmare - Fantasy/sci-fi retelling of Alice in Wonderland.

Sleepless Domain - Magical Girl genre deconstruction. In a mysterious fantasy/sci-fi world where teenage girls sometimes have superpowers, how are those girls treated and valued? Content warning: This comic is usually pretty cute but has some serious violence early on.

Chaos Life - autobiographical slice-of-life comics about an agender illistrator and their gay, disabled wife.

Boy In Pink Earmuffs - All ages comic about two best friends who solve mysteries together and are also crushing on eachother.

Magical Boy - Fantasy comic about a trans boy who finds out he’s descended from a long line of magical girls and is destined to save the world. (tapas exclusive)

what’s up if you’re in the notes looking for recs you can’t see most of them because tumblr hides anything with a link in it, view this reblog to see a big ol’ list of webcomic links

tiger tiger is so gorgeous and funny! a girl steals her twin brother’s identity and jaunts off with his ship to study sea sponges. really amazing.

skinhorse it’s been a long time since i caught up but i’ve admired garrity since i was reading narbonic in middle school. skinhorse is about a government department full of weirdos that tries to regulate nonhuman intelligences and it’s also just very funny and cute.

kill six billion demons is extremely dense, extremely gorgeous. a woman wakes up in hell with a magic thingy in her forehead and it only gets weirder from there.

Do you want ass kicking nuns? Do you want badass witches? Do you want every single person in the webcomic you’re reading to be queer?

Then you want to read Sister Claire by @yamino!

I don’t even remember when/where I picked up this webcomic but it’s been going for YEARS now, and I have loved every single thing the artist has ever done.

Aside from the main webcomic (updated twice weekly I think?), there are the missing moments, short stories about the world and characters that fill in a TON of lore and are well worth a read.

Yamino has also done some zines about elastigirl and stratogale that have changed the canon of the incredibles for me, not to mention the awesome sailor moon polycule content on patreon.

My runner up suggestion is Questionable Content by Jeph. It’s a little slow to get started and there’s a LOT to catch up on, but it’s updated every weekday and it just gets queerer and queerer as time goes on. Also quirky robots (seriously Melon is my absolute fave).

(src)

TICHINA ARNOLD, MICHELLE WEEKS and TISHA CAMPBELL as Crystal, Ronette and Chiffon

LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS (1986)

They haven’t been to the right Monster Truck Madness chatrooms. (PC Gamer #35, Apr. 1997)

Retro Atari Classics

“3 Graffiti Legends tag 10 Atari Classics” (Nintendo Power #191, May 2005)

Sony PlayStation

“If you still want a Saturn your head is in Uranus.” (Electronic Gaming Monthly #76, Nov. 1995)

Video Game Wars - Who Will Be The Big Winner After The Video Game Companies Finish Slugging It Out? (You will!) (Video Games Player #1, Fall 1982)