At what point did you start drawing your comic?

[FlutterbyBubbles]

Hi, so I'm making a comic, and I'm wondering how much of the story was developed before you started drawing and publishing?
I have the bare bones of my story done, which is basically just the general stuff that happens in each chapter, but I only have about five pages scripted. I was wondering at what point should I start drawing? Did you have three chapters scripted? The entire story? Does it even matter?

[SleepingPoppy]

Pretty much it’s up to you. My story, or as much of it as I plan to make into the comic, was finished before I actually decided to make the comic. I edit and script a chapter ahead of drawing, and had drawn and colored 30+ pages before I started publishing. Sadly my buffer has dwindled, but yeah.

I think it’s useful to have an over arching view of your comic, because it’s nice for the viewers to get a complete story instead of investing in something that peters out as the artist runs out of ideas/steam. BUT everyone had their own method, so the only wrong answer is to never start.

[A-weird-girler]

When I decided: "Hey, you know what will really piss those snakes off?"

[DiegoPalacios]

Hi Flutterby!, when i made my story i made sure to have the basics of the structure: A clear idea about the important events and how i wanted the story to end. Is not neccesary to know every single thing, but the important points are relevant.

After that i started making pages. Personally i write a "script" with dialogues and notes about specific stuff, like certain gestures or a detail in the background

Also is vital the characterization. To have clear the personality and motivations of your main cast of characters.
An audience get hooked into a story if they care about the character and/or are interested in them.

Don`t focus on making everything perfect or you will end up postponing your work infinite times.
Focus in making it good.

And the most important point: Do a story you personally enjoy. The fun you have with your story will help you with the strenght to continue it.

I would recommend you to start when you developed the habit to work weekly at least 2 pages per week(so you can do one weekly and build a buffer at the same time). It may vary depending of how fast you work.

Hope this helps!

[joannekwan]

I usually like to have the script at least 75% done before starting.
Because I will know if a story is worth drawing if I've figured that much out for it and I have plenty of script to work through while drawing and am more likely to complete the written portion before the drawn pages catch up.

[indagold]

My advice write the entire story out, start to finish. I made a mistake not to do that too many times and my work suffered because of it. It doesn't matter how you do it, whether you want to write a novel or draw thumbnails on paper napkins, just get it out. And always go back and reread it and edit it just to be 100% sure you're happy but don't take years editing it for perfection. Best bet if this is your first few comics, don't make it a 1000 page epic. Start small and be realistic.

Also It helps to have character/environment sheets or anything else you can use for back up. And always have a large number of pages finished before you post it online. That way less hiatuses, less infrequent updating and a set schedule. That way you can plan ahead when you would need to start working on your next buffer.

[jpnakashima]

How long is your story? Is it a long series or something shorter?

I only write, but from my side of things, I like to have all of the story planned (at least a year or two if it's an ongoing series) in a good amount of detail so I can talk with my partner artist and develop from there. Just when it's settled I start writing and they start drawing.

From a publishing side, I like to have between four and seven months of content stocked before I start posting, just to have a good margin of error in case life comes in the way and we start getting late with our work. Example, my friend who draws our series here on Tapas has broken his wrist, so it's cool to be so ahead that we don't have to worry about delays for now.

[MST3KFan]

Truthfully, I never started writing my comic's story initially as it was going to be a 'gag-a-day' comic, but eventually it evolved more into a kind of slice of life/comedy/occasional gag-a-day comic.

I do have ideas for story arcs in my head as well as if I were to end the comic, but otherwise, nothing written. Go fig.

[fakey]

I was about halfway done with the first draft before I decided to go back and write it again with the intent to expand on the plot. Once I had the general story beats down I started working on seriously drawing it. Even now as I work on the final version I'm still changing things though. I decided to drop a scene that happens later on because it didn't add anything of substance to the story.

[Starfestival]

It depends on how you wanna approach it. My first comic I started when I was 14, had no clue what I was doing I just made up some characters and started drawing. I had a bunch of random characters that fell out of relevance entirely once I figured out an actual plot and backstory for the world. That ones on Hiatus. The comic I'm working on now I only have 3 pages drawn. I've just been designing the world, characters, who knows what, who does what and how this works. It's gone a lot smoother so far.

[KSlinger]

I dived right in without much direction. For the first few pages the script was improvised, then I tried to work out what might be motivating the characters to say those things. I worked backwards from there and very quickly had the whole of the first chapter plotted out. No script though. Just an idea of where everyone was and what their motivations were. From there the rest of the story came together. If I had tried to script the whole thing before starting or had tried to regiment the work, I'd never have done it, I know that for a fact.

[spadesart]

i had up to chapter 5 outlined and ch1 scripted, and up to the end of season 1's big plot points bulleted. also had some character art done. worldbuilding wise tho i'd been sitting on it for about a year.

[Chronitis]

The only thing I had sort of thought out was the beginning and main concept. My plan was to leave it character focused until I could get more done, but over time (thanks to small hiatuses) I began to flesh out the story, lore, and characters more and more.

A lot of people told me it's best to jump right in and hope you learn to swim quickly. It's taken me almost a year to get the story to where it is now (even though it's still not too great) and I am more comfortable with it now than I was a while ago.

[ChanYE]

Ive been developing this story atleast for a year. But i switched the main character so many times and changed the plot so many times ive got atleast 5 differnt hashed stories that i wont be using. When i started to hold off on the story building and just created characters, it was so much easier to base a story around that. And a couple more character developing, storying structering and here i am now with ‘did you water the flowers?’

[Rhonder]

Hmm, take this with a grain of salt since I'm pretty new to this as well, but this has been my experience:

• When I was younger (like elementary school/middle school), I used to draw a lot of really short comics, usually fan-fiction. They would end up being like 5-10 pages long before I got side tracked and I would never think the story out very much in advance, I'd just start drawing. Looking back, I feel like it was really hard to just blindly rush forth when you don't really know where the story is going.

• After that, from like middle school to highschool, I started writing out a longer novel with the intention of adapting it into a comic. Writing it all out just seemed like the best way to get a feel for the story. I ended up writing... 7 chapters or so, and drew 1-2 chapters. I felt that it was effective to have the written chapter first because then you know what you're drawing towards/can get a feel for the story pacing. This project mostly failed because I got caught in the rut of continuously going back and re-drawing the first chapter over and over every time I'd improve my art a little... I swear I have like 8 versions of chapter 1 sitting in a drawer LOL

• Flash forward to now, I'm hoping to actually debut a comic soon! I'm currently in the concept art/writing phase, with most of the characters designed, a few of the locations worked out, and the rough draft of the whole story completed (I'm aiming for a 40ish page one-shot). I'm planning on getting the story to a point I'm comfortable with first, then sketching out a storyboard of the whole thing to show some friends/peers and get feedback on, then start drawing the comic afterwards. This might be overkill, I dunno, but I'm hoping to polish this into something decent xD

So, after all of this, I guess the conclusion that I came to is that I like having a "chunk" of the story being written out/complete before starting to draw. How much that chunk is depends on the story/person. Maybe you write out a single chapter fully before starting to draw, and then work on the next chapter part way through that. Maybe you write out the whole story first like I'm doing with my one-shot. Maybe you write out a several chapter arc? idk. But I think it helps to have a destination in mind to help guide your drawings/pacing :]

[yurineseventeen]

IT DOES MATTER!!!

I made a mistake in the past by drawing the comic pages after scripting only two chapters (and I posted them online too ugh). After that, I had a really tough time planning the story while drawing. Hiatuses just couldn't be avoided. Mind you, I already knew the ending and the rough conflicts but I didn't know how to execute them in the way that would make sense.

Luckily I learned from my mistake and now I do these two steps before drawing comic pages:

1) Finish (and I mean finish!) the story line and scripts. Yes this could take months and years. I make sure that the conflicts in my story contribute to character development. I also need to understand my character's personality so that I can be consistent in how they behave throughout the story. Dialogues and any special gestures are detailed in my scripts, because that will help me a lot in the next step:

2) Storyboard!!!
THIS. Storyboarding is "the most important phase in a comic page", "the rest are just decorations" (quoted from a Tumblr post) and I couldn't agree more.

However, there is no need to plan out the whole series' storyboards just to start drawing. I draw my comic pages after I finish each chapter's storyboard.

---

Yes holy shit these are goddamn troublesome, but I am sure the creators of all those great comics/novels out there go through an even more complicated process. They really do plan every single thing, why this and that happen and most importantly, it has to make sense.

TL;DR: In creating a story, clarity is very important to you and the readers, so give a little more time to plan your entire story before drawing the comic pages

[AmysGames]

I started my comic as a very naïve 14-year-old who thought I could make up the story as I went. Please, please do not make that mistake—getting writer's block when the next page is due is awful, lol.

If you're making a long comic, I would recommend having at least a general outline of your plot before you start it. If you're making a short comic, I would recommend scripting out the entire thing in advance.

[shazzbaa]

It's gonna be different for everyone. Some folks talk about how scripting everything ahead of time was just procrastination, and the comic couldn't really start until they were able to just jump in; other folks talk about how they did so much better when they worked out the script ahead of time and were confident that they knew exactly where they were going.

For me, I had a rough outline of the basic beats whole thing, a one sentence summary of What Happens On Each Page for chapter 1 (which changed A LOT later on), and a finished script for the first 10 pages.

If I had finished the entire script, I think it would've been wasted work. I absolutely would want to finish more than that before starting if I created a new story today.... but for the first story-based comic I wrote myself, I needed a lot of room to change and tweak things based on the pages I made and the things I learned from making them.
Knowing where I'm going without having the exact details also helps me stay focused in the long run -- since my story will take years to complete, getting to sit down before each new chapter and hammer out the details is something that helps me to be excited about the upcoming chapter, and not burn out drawing ten years of storyboards.

That's not going to be true for everyone! For some folks, finishing the whole darn thing ahead of time makes them much more comfortable and happy with their work. So, absolutely listen to others' experiences, but don't believe that there's ONE correct way to do it!!

[Zugaikotsu]

My comic started as a book, so basically everything is planned, tho I use to leave some space to change minor bits. I dont recomend to start without a good idea of what your story is about, or you'll end up seriously lost and desperate, specially if your comic becomes a hit (lets never forget what happened to BLEACH).

[punkarsenic]

do sketches, do thumbnails, do practice pages and then rewrite those practice pages if you really wanna be intricate.

id recommend having your entire first chapter scripted, rewrite it a couple times if you need (dont delete anything) and sketch out thumbnails for every page, before you start. so you know where you are. having complete chapters thumbnailed is the ideal, tbh. in thumbnailing, i tend to test four different layouts, and two to three different images within my favourite layout, before drawing the final sketch.

you dont have to always be so intricate, but i recommend it with the first chapter - its one of the only times when youre going to have as long as you want to work on it, and a strong start makes all the difference.