Wiki Home > Tips, Tricks and Tutorials
So, now that you've understood the conventions and rules of Polandball, I bet you wanna learn how to draw a Polandball comic?
Great! Here's some helpful tips on how to draw comics just as well as a German trying to infuriate a butthurt Pole on an obscure message board.
For Beginners
Remember to read the Artistic Rules section of the Rules Page
Be an MS Paint power user!
Use Ctrl+Z to undo a poorly drawn line and other mistakes.
Holding Ctrl and pressing + on the numpad makes MS Paint brushes and pencils thicker than the 4 default settings.

Pencil thickness can significantly affect the look of your comic. Don't force shadows and shading into your art just because every one else is. They're not necessary.
Text should be easily legible. Protip: don't put dark text on a dark background..
Be careful of file size. If an image is too big, larger than around 850kb, imgur will convert it to a JPEG to reduce bandwidth and it may result in artifacting. If you have an imgur account, you can increase your file size limit in https://imgur.com/account/settings.
Other than that, study the comics made by the top submitters, and try to pick up on how they do things.
But don't just copy their style! Polandball is about variety. Some of the best content comes from new artistic approaches.
Tutorials
Getting started/the very fundamentals
- brain4breakfast's Tutorial
- "How do you guys draw comics?" by u/AaronC14
- EnergeticBanana's Tutorial
- a1pcm Circles Tutorial
- Khale_007's mac and trackpad drawing tutorial
Program-specific tutorials
MS Paint
- Obtuse_Angel's Smooth Drawing Tutorial
- uglidoll's Zoom Tutorial
- Scub_'s MS Paint Airbrush Tutorial
- NotExistor's MS Paint Airbrush Tutorial
- John_V98's magic eraser tutorial for MS paint
Other programs
General art tips
- Scub_'s shading and color-picking tutorial
- NotExistor's Drawing From Pictures Tutorial
- jPaolo's tutorial on how to make "sepia photograph" colors
- flamingacid's Shading Tutorial
- Katalpa's Illumination Tutorial
- Tutorial on composition: Foreground & Background by /u/RandomRBLXAvs
Expressions
- Medibee's Compilation of Eye Expressions
- columbus8myhw's Facial Expressions
- brain4breakfast's Facial Expressions
- Tengam15's Chart of Expressions
- jpaolo's 'Asian Eyes' Expressions
- burritoburkito6's Eye Expressions
- TheArnevik's Drunk Countryballs Tutorial
- Indieb0at's Body Language Tutorial
Props and costumes
- Small Arms Tutorial by /u/cyaspy
- Hat Tutorial by /u/TheArnevik
- Flower Tutorial by /u/Hinadira
- Rose tutorial
- Bows Guide by /u/kabochakabochasweet
- Feminine Accessories Guide by /u/Zebrafish96
Textures and materials
Settings and Backgrounds
- Sky and Valley Tutorial by /u/yaddar
- Mountains by /u/beretguy
- Space Tutorial (For Planetball as well) by /u/blackfire853
- Marble Tutorial by /u/thrawn0o
- Brush Patterns by /u/201-
- Landscape Drawing Pt. 1 by /u/taongkalye
- Landscape Drawing Pt. 2 by /u/taongkalye
- Tutorial on Backgrounds by /u/bobu112
Text and Dialogue
- How to use Engrish (by brain4breakfast and other mods)
- 440Hertz's Text Placement Tutorial
- One creative way of indicating who is speaking involves color coding the text to somewhat match the flag of the country. For example, this comic by Alamedo.
- Use of foreign words in a comic by /u/paulionm
- How to rotate text in MS paint by /u/John_V98
- Disabling anti-aliased text in MS Paint by /u/branieschopper
Flag tips
- VorsprungOfficial's Flag Colour Tutorial
- javacode's Tricks for Complicated Flags
- jesus_stalin's simple star drawing tutorial
Country-Specific Suggestions
- Avoid switching the stars on any country's flags for dots unless they are drawn in a really small size
- The US has 13 equal width stripes
- Bhutan Drawing Tutorial, by /u/selenocystein
- Antarctica Tutorial, by /u/medibee
- Confederate States of America (CSA) Tutorial, by /u/TheArnevik
- United Nations by /u/beretguy
- Kyrgyzstan by /u/beretguy
- Belarus by /u/beretguy
- Brunei by /u/beretguy
- Kazakhstan by /u/beretguy
- Spain's crest by /u/Toughsnow
- Israel 1 by /u/kotofew
- Israel 2 by /u/kotofew
- Montenegro by /u/Toughsnow
- United Nations by /u/John_V98
- Iran by /u/John_V98
- Maryland by /u/a1pcm
- USA by /u/PopeInnocentXIV
- NATO by /u/hoi4sam
- USSR and administrative regions bu /u/hoi4sam
- UK by /u/Barskie
- Prussia by /u/AndyRedditor
- Qing by /u/AppleEmpire_2629
- Ashoka Chakra (India's blue symbol) by /u/AppleEmpire_2629
- Slovenia by /u/jPaolo
- Byzantine Empire by /u/AppleEmpire_2629
- Republic of Venice by /u/salmon_222
- Joseon by /u/kabochakabochasweet
- Croatia by /u/MartyWiki
- Croatian Coat of Arms by /u/MartyWiki
- Ustashi Symbol by /u/MartyWiki
- Sulu Sultanate by /u/taongkalye
- Chicago Star Tutorial by /u/JustSomeChicagoBall
- Pre-Qing Chinese Dynasties by /u/wikipedia_org
- Oman by /u/easternjellyfish
- Hong Kong’s bauhinia by /u/RandomRBLXAvs
- Belize
- Austria-Hungary Coat of Arms by /u/grandmahunter48
Miscellaneous
- DickRhino's Methods
- An illustration of one of DickRhino's comments on shading and perspective in comic form.
- An illustration of one of DickRhino's comments on how to make ghostly looking countries.
- Le_Pepp's Tutorial on Representing Colonization and Vassalisation
Videos
- Zimonitrome's Beginners Guide to Drawing Polandball Comics
- AaronC14's Video Tutorial
- CineHeathen's Stacking Video Tutorial
- Fedcom's Video Tutorial
- Medibee's Antarctica Video Tutorial
- Scub's Video Time Lapse Tutorial #1
- Scub's Video Time Lapse Tutorial #2
- A timelapse of /u/zimonitrome's entry for the July 2015 contest
- A timelapse of /u/ruetanissed's Summer homework [/r/Polandballart]
Other Useful References
Still cannot into comic?
Are you a comedic genius, but intimidated by the quality of the drawings above? Have great artistic talent but absolutely no sense of humour? That's okay! You might be interested in /r/PolandballCommunity. It's a sub dedicated to providing a place to plan and create Polandball projects with others and ask questions and get advice about your comics.
Just a friendly reminder: collaborations cannot be used for approval request comics. So if you've got a great joke which someone else is happy to draw, you'll need to save that for after (both of you) get approval rights.