#comic making

[greykolla-art]

have you ever shared your comic making process? im super interested in seeing how you go about everything from start to finish!

[pink-onyx-au]

90% sure you've been asked this before but do you have any advice or resources on how to like. Plan a long term comic like this? How to write stuff out before getting to drawing and all that jazz

That’s ok! My best resource is just practice, and a tip from Rebecca Sugar about making a ‘roadmap’, basically the idea of what you want to do.

My advice for any story-maker is first know what you wanna accomplish for the comic/story you make. Do you want silly pointless action? Do you want deep topics? Both? Do you want a moral? Get that idea established first.

Once you know what you wanna do with the comic/story, plan the big picture. Point A to point B stuff. "I want protag to talk to antag and they fight, but verbal, no hitting. They agree but on one condition. Make it about X or Y" (that is literally how this comic was pieced together more or less. If your big-picture makes sense, you can fill in the journey to those points so much easier.

Once you get into the finer details, do a roadmap for the episode. Bullet points. Even write a short story. I do a mix of both. If I want something to happen but i dunno how, bullet points. If I can see the story already? I just write it down with prose and all.

Then, STORYBOARDS~

My sketching process is a hot, steaming mess, but that is because I sketch just to get the vibe, not perfection. I go in with the idea that it can -always- be changed.

This is episode 13 as we speak. I just finished sketching all the positional stuff so I can start putting the dialog in. Making sure it visually fits. If it doesn’t, then I’m not editing a huge picture into something. It is still flexible.

After this stage, I draw my roughs, then my lines, then color and background, and then post! I like to work on a whole episode at 1 time for consistency purposes and if I go ahead 4 pages I can look back and go ‘Ah crap the cup is in that frame but i forgot it on page 9’ or "oh shoot he isn’t supposed to have his jacket in page 12 because he got rid of it in page 3" long before the episode goes live.

Hope that helps!

[igotthis-egg]

Doing page dimension tests before I begin inking bunker of the bleak, here’s a little N doodle I made to make sure my resolution is okay!

[oonaluna-art]

always “When is the update, Oona?” but never “How is the update, Oona?”

[My Ko-Fi] [Patreon]

[thephooka]

Happy Webcomic Day! My webcomic White Noise is a labor of love--according to Procreate, this page took me 15.5 hours to complete.* Here's a look into that process!

Some other notes:

The thumbnails are done on graph paper and I script while I do them--there is no separate written script for White Noise. I usually spent a couple hours on weekends as needed thumbnailing, sometimes at a coffee shop or at home listening to records.

I then set up the file in Photoshop, so I can lay in the text and use the template I have with bleeds already set up. The text is rasterized and I shuttle the file over to my iPad via Airdrop.

The bulk of the actual work is done in Procreate, which records timelapses that I sometimes share to my Patreon. I usually spend a couple hours most nights after my day job or on the bus commuting doing this.

Once everything art-wise is done, I shuttle the file back over to my desktop to re-set in the text, add a stroke around the speech bubbles (Procreate doesn't have that took fsr) and do the resizing/exporting for web.

On Sunday mornings I get up, queue the page and write the page descriptions. I don't spend any time on the page descriptions outside of that.

Also, this process goes for the whole first arc of White Noise. I'm done with that arc (which means you can binge the whole thing I'm js!!) and am experimenting with some different methods these days, but my workflow is still generally the same.

*Some more talk about the labor (and burnout) involved below the cut:

This particular page (and most of the pages I did in 2023) took a lot longer than normal because I was heading into a burnout period that I'm still lowkey in/recovering from. It's obvious to me now in retrospect watching the timelapse here and seeing how much noodling I'm doing and how much I'm struggling with the process, but at the time I was just very frustrated generally. When I'm not burned tf out pages take maybe 10 hours max.

2023 was a pretty stressful year--lots of big life changes, uncertainty, pet death, health issues--so it's no wonder it propelled me into burnout, but it just goes to show that even the slowest and steadiest pace is not sustainable forever. I've been doing one page a week following this general process for over a decade! And I stuck to that pace because I knew it was one I could maintain. But even so, by the end of this arc I found myself working more and more slowly, not really looking forward to the work, feeling anxious about being behind, unhappy with the finished work, and extremely annoyed with myself for not being able to give it my all right there at the finish line.

I did stop for a while after the epilogue and took a more or less complete break from drawing for about a month--the longest I have EVER gone without drawing, much less working on White Noise--which did help, but these days my ability to work is...inconsistent. I should probably take another total break, but I'm reluctant. What if my passion never comes back? What if people forget about WN? It's already pretty obscure, and with the general social media collapse, it's harder than ever to get people to read my work. Now that I've left Hiveworks, WN doesn't even get the benefit of being linked to other comics (although objectively very, very few readers actually got referred to my comic that way.) And frankly, I'm also just too proud to go too long without comic updates. I've always told myself, I might not be the best artist or the fastest worker or make a popular comic, but I'm consistent. Difficult to let that go.

This is all to say that webcomics are hard. We do them because we love them, we have stories to tell, we are seized with the human compulsion to create. We spend hours of our time, almost always on top of the paying work that allows us to eat, to make something that we then give away for free. It has consequences on us that the reader doesn't often see, no matter how careful we are about it. If you ask me, webcomics deserve to be valued more.

Happy Webcomic Day! Read webcomics!

[darkostudios-blog]

The bear art I did awhile back. (kimscomics_ on insta for more art! :3)

[theoryofwhatnow]

i’m almost finished with all of the sketches for the comic and so i humbly offer you: a frame of sleeping alex.

i’ve got 6/11 pages that are entirely finished with the sketching process and i’ve got only two more to do (that don’t need any touch ups or anything). silently celebrating but unfortunately, i bring more notes below the cut

-the comic is partially set in a different time period. when? i don’t know. don’t ask me (dear god please don’t ask me). i’ve taken design inspiration from several different centuries. all you need to know is that it’s set during a time where they still publicly executed people for revolting against the church. could’ve been as long ago as the 12th century, or it could’ve been as soon as the 1800’s, idfk.

-it will obviously be in a slightly different art style than you’re used to seeing on my posts. i don’t think i have it in me to draw 32 frames in that art style without any references. i just can’t do it, but ^here’s a little tasty taste of what its gonna look like^ however, it honestly might not end up looking any different at all when everything’s said and done. that is a real possibility.

-i’ve almost got it figured out concerning how i’m going to post it, however, that means that the full comic (nsfw and all) will be posted first and the censored version will come later or even on a different social media. i won’t be censoring any of the gore though. if you’ve seen the movie, you’ll be fine lmao.

anyway, now i’m just gonna ramble because i’ve been locked away in my room and drawing relentlessly for the last six days. i’m in a dark place. it’s relatively lonely. there are scratch marks on my walls and i don’t know who put them there.

as i keep working on this, i keep finding like 12 different ways to bring this to life that i wish i would’ve gone with rather than what i did. it’s quite troubling but onward we march, fellas. so don’t be surprised if i end up posting a second issue. (i’ve already started writing it [why do i do this to myself??]) i’m literally writing this because i strongly believe in creating the content that you wish to consume. that’s why i have five accounts dedicated to this fuckass movie. i still don’t have a fuCKING NAME FOR THE COMIC ITSELF THOUGH. OH MY GAAD. why is this literally the hardest part?? throw me literally any suggestions you have. like, okay, if YOU were to name like minds, what would you call it? because i’m about to just go with one of the other obscure names for the film that greg picked out.

*plucking the word ‘Symbiosis’ out of a jar and shoving it in my pocket* “you’re coming with me”

the movie is about ongoing cycles of madness and obsession (in brevity), the comic is about ongoing cycles of madness and obsession. h e l p m e o u t h e r e g u y s , i ‘ m l o s i n g i t .

[tellsfromninjago]

I work in ibispaint for a big chunk of the art in my comic making process. It lets you make these videos that you see here. It pretty cool. For this first part of Hidden Scars I decided to do all the art in ibispaint thinking it would make it quicker. However I forgot I'm way more proficient with pencil and paper and I enjoy it more too.

This is page 7 I think. It's my favorite one in part 1. For ones I really enjoyed doing the backgrounds on this. I gave the walls scribbles from past residents just for fun and also to show the place has history.

[memory-and-sky]

need suggestions for a dir en grey doujinshi i’m planning on making. family friendly/appropriate stuff only please…

it’ll probably be for a school project, so no yaoi!!

lol i love this picture of them

[venbetta]

...I spent the whole day cooking

Uhm.. yeh :3

[mushki-art]

dyslexia friendly comic fonts!

I made some dyslexia-friendly fonts for comics specifically~ They're free to use for whatever you want, but if anyone wants to give me a tip, that would be much appreciated <3 (i'm disabled and cant work, but can't stomach the thought keeping them behind a paywall, just cause they're so desperately needed)

(im not a pro at font making, so there might be kerning issues, but they work well for me~)

You can get them on my ko-fi!

[greykolla-art]

Incorect quotes and such from our graphic novel!

I’m still deep in the trenches of advertisement, LOOK AT THIS FREAKSHOW!

[chaos-potat]

Chaos! HOW DO YOU MAKE COMICS!

asking for a friend... totally not making a comic

👀👀

My ways are unorthodox and probably wrong so idk man

the way I do it is first is I type out a rough draft (Using my last comic as an example)

a lot of things end up changing, like Tim's Mom's name

I start out sketching the characters and then the lines, I try to get them to fit in, definitely draw in the text, drawing characters first sometimes keeps the text from fitting in

Next I draw the divider thingies

Then I line characters on one or two layers depending on if they touch (You should get backgrounds down first, not like me lol)

then on another layer I do the faces and text, I put the faces on another layer because I end up editing them so much it's easier then editing the entire face when I want to erase a small bit (It's probably a better idea to line the text earlier)

I do the lines I plan on coloring on another layer (Like the eyes, backpack details, and those people back there)

Next, I get the base color for the whole canvas, not everyone does this but I like darker colors, it's a bit easier on the eyes to me

Then ofc I color

Then I do the background colors, I like the colors to reflect the mood a bit, I also color the background details I also do a little bubble for the text so it's easier to read

And that's about it, there are probably easier ways to do this, I did not look into comic making a lot before I started making mine

This turned real long, I didn't really think to breakdown how I make comics, but yah, this is how I do it

[leavingautumn13]

a tutorial-adjacent thing about how i make comics

this is just a general guide on how i personally do things, and i'm gonna keep it pretty simple. let's get into it!

for this tutorial i'm gonna be drawing some trainers trying to find a particular pokémon.

i'm gonna jump ahead a little here and show my finished sketch for the full page, so we can see the end goal.

the best advice i have is to treat panels as part of the composition. make them work for you. reading a bunch of comics will help inspire you--there are so many creative things you can do with panels.

next, placing dialogue bubbles! these are a bit more complex than they seem at first glance.

once you've got all that sorted, you can move onto the fun stuff, like lining and coloring. keep in mind that you can partially cover dialogue bubbles, break panel lines, etc. do whatever gets your message across. like so:

you can also apply these guidelines to much simpler comics, too. really, flow is the most important thing, in my opinion. it's like a line of action when you're drawing poses. here's a comic i did that's basically just talking heads, but the bubbles and art still flow together to draw the reader's eye along a path. here's a jokey little scribble comic that does something similar. making a good comic is not about polish at all. it's more about readability, composition, and making your dialogue and art work together.

scott mccloud's book making comics has a lot more useful information than what i can fit on one post. it's been a hot minute since i read it (and by that i mean like. twelve years) but it's a solid resource. you can also just read comics or webcomics that you like and see how those illustrators do it. one of my personal favorites is cucumber quest. it starts off very simple, but by chapter 3 (especially near the end) the artwork, panel choices, effects, etc all work together to make every page a stunning work of art.

anyway, as always please feel free to reach out if there's any part of this that you'd like elaborated on, clarified, if you just have questions, etc. i'm not a teacher by any stretch of the imagination but i love helping people with this sort of thing, so please don't hesitate!

[this post is for @tanlotts <3]

[sleepyzzzi]

Two sneak peeks in one day!

DO NOT USE, STEAL, COPY, TRACE.

SFW INTERACTION ONLY.