I'm going to be honest with you Alan, your illustrations are not very good but still serviceable for an indie comic. If you want you can already try to start a comic at your current level or you can try improving a bit before doing that. That's up to you now. I'll get to improving your illustration skill but there's something more important to be noted first. I see all the examples here are just fanart, which makes me question if you are really capable of creating your own characters and concepts. In order to make an original comic you not only need raw drawing skills, but you also need to do character designs, writing and other things. If you were only doing fanart so far, then you might have overlooked this and never even learned to do character designs. If so, then you need to study writing and design first. And my advice for improving your drawing, practice the fundamentals first. Your anatomy looks overall fine enough to me (until I get to the detail), but you are very weak with the basics. I said it's serviceable, but your shapes and forms still look very off. So you might want to go back and practice the basics if you really want to improve.

I think the general style and angle you are going for here is cool, and mostly I suggest keep practicing, especially with structure and continuing to work on anatomy. If you are looking for a course here on Proko I suggest the Figure Drawing Basics course as well as some perspective practice. I do think the perspective work in these is fine on objects, but some of the figures are reading a bit “flat” in parts. Mostly I just think perspective is always good to practice. :) The only other thing I would suggest is you might want to knock some of the saturation out of the color palette. I think it works, but I’d experiment with different saturation levels. It looks REALLY bright. I get what you are going for, but to my eye it seems pushed a bit too far. Really though, I think you’ve got some cool stuff here and mostly I’d say keep going! I think you are really on the right track, and I’d say just keep refining and learning. It’s a solid foundation and a cool idea. I also think the gestures are pretty nice, I especially like the girl with the guitar. I really believe she is sitting there. That’s probably my favorite one of the bunch. Maybe check out Orange Cone Comics. I just did a couple pages for thier “Cthulhu Meets” series and it might be something to look in to or try to contribute to. I think it’s a good fit for what you are up to.

1. They're a little stiff, yeah. Slides five, 12, and 13 feel much nicer compared to the others, but you would probably benefit from studying gesture, quicksketch, Mike Mattesi's FORCE, etc. The point is to loosen up a bit and get those poses as exaggerated as you can stand. You can get away with so much in a cartooning context because nobody's expecting true realism. 2. Not at all! In fact, I'd say the linework is among your strong suits. 3. Yeah, anatomy is tricky. This really depends on how much realism you're going for. I mean, technically you can make a cartoon about a pillow or a toaster and have it read and emote and everything necessary to tell a story. But if you're going for a more comic book style with believable anatomy (albiet greatly exaggerated), then yes, you must study this extensively. No way around it, really. Slide 13 is your best overall work here regarding believable comic-like anatomy. Wolverine in slide one is pretty rough, as well as Elvira in 10. The non-human characters are generally better than the humans. This is one of the toughest parts of figure drawing! Don't be discouraged! 4. Color is so subjective. In my opinion, your sense of color is fine. You seem to understand color theory pretty well. I like the bold choices of bright and highly saturated colors set against more muted colors. 5. Master studies. I always go back to the golden age animations from the 30s-50s for cartoons. You don't have to want to be an animator to learn from the greatest cartoonists ever (IMO). As for tutorials, Patrick Jones has a course on drawing for animation, and Aaron Blaise makes a ton of cartooning/animation tutorials over on his website. What I would suggest is finding your favorite comics or cartoons in the style that's closest to what you want to pursue and just do a ton of master studies from them. You'll learn just as much doing this as you will from following any videos or courses. If you're leaning more towards a Marvel/DC comic book style, then David Finch makes the best comic-book themed tutorials on the net. His YouTube channel is unbelievably awesome. The Marvel course here on Proko is also an epic source of knowledge for everything to do with comics. I would suggest additional studies in anatomy and basic figure drawing (gesture especially) and perspective. 6. Trying to think what would suit your style... I see you know the 1981 animated movie Heavy Metal. Fire and Ice for more believable style could be good too. 90s cartoons for sure, maybe for more stylized stuff. Gargoyles. A Pup Named Scooby-Doo. Courage the Cowardly Dog. Batman: The Animated Series. TMNT. X-Men: The Animated Series. Some cartoon names... Kevin Eastman. Peter Laird. Bruce Timm. Genndy Tartakovsky for Primal and Samurai Jack. John R. Dilworth. I'd take stills from these shows and do master studies. Horror comic artists... I mean, there's so many... Bernie Wrightson is the GOAT. Bill Sienkiewicz. Mike Mignola. Jack Davis' work for Tales from the Crypt. Junji Ito. Take your pick! This is something you're really going to have to dig into yourself to find the art that speaks the loudest to you. Then study from that! Overall, I'd just say don't get discouraged! Your stuff is wonderful already, Alan. This is practically pro-level as it is. By adding some hardcore study to the mix and brushing up on the fundamentals, I think you'll be even more formidable! Good luck and, most importantly, don't forget to have fun with it all!

The cartooning itself is good except sometimes the composition is a bit off. To make a horror comic in that style would be a challenge but try using psychological techniques like cognitive dissonance, uncanny familiarity and negative space framing. Look those up if you don’t already know them (search specifically for negative space used in psychological horror if you don’t know what it is) Stephen King wrote a “children’s book” that was quite good. (Called Charlie the Choo Choo I think…) check that out maybe. Scottie young also has done some cool, dark stuff with a cartoon art style. Anyway, good luck and Godspeed.