hey, I was, I wanted to ask you all if writing a script is require to do a web comic. I struggle with this a lot as i feel scared just drawing it outright rather than planning things a bit.
Sep '18
Feb '19
Yes and no. It's going to really depend on the individual, but as a rule of thumb I think more planning tends to be better than less. I'm working off a finished story, but convert it over to script form and edit that as I go. It would be way harder to make my comic without a script! And the actual script is pretty informal; if it's only for you, it only needs to work for you.
Follow the script up with thumbnails/sketches before your final pages. It helps.
But some wing it, and some like working from prose. And you could have a bare bones script, or a very detailed and formal one. You just go with what helps you be creative and move forward.
Not required technically but I personally don't make my comics without a script beforehand.
The script itself can be prose or written more like a screenplay, whichever suits you best when you translate description to image.
I'm an advocate of planning before ever starting the actual drawing. This means knowing the story you're going to tell and having concept art so you're used to drawing the characters long before you have to have them emote in the comic.
Remember that Story is king. You can always improve with art but if you want reader retention, know the story you want to tell well.
nothings explicitly required (besides making sequential images that can be uploaded to the web) to make a webcomic. theres no rules (besides the definition of comics and their presence on the internet) to making webcomics.
scriptwriting is useful to many people, its really useful if the writer and artist are different people. its useful to be able to detail all your thoughts verbally, but also cant fully communicate your comic vision. its a potentially useful step of many - and every comic creator does scripting differently.
personally, i used to translate prose to an adapted script to thumbnails to pages. adapting prose to comics proved difficult in a lot of ways, and i think both my comics and prose suffered for the relationship a bit. nowadays i jot out the happenings, create a page by page of events - page 1 steve goes to the fridge, page 2 steve looks for milk, page 3 aliens attack. from there i script as i draw, and the script is more of a verbal aid to the visual aid - a jotting down of visuals, order, key details, and dialogue.
im sure it would be possible to make a comic with zero scripting at all, just thumbnails and sketches and more sketches - for a short i made / am making, which starts with essentially a montage, i developed a list of potential visuals and then went straight into thumbnailing and arranging. but it was a nonverbal scene - the next scene has a script attached.
this all said - i dont think its a good idea to make a webcomic without planning of some kind. that doesnt need to be scripting, it can be several layers of thumbnailing and editing, it can be 100% visual with no words. it can be various notes and jottings that only make sense to you. however you work - but just sitting down with your page file and going for it is gonna be a painful way to work.
speaking of things without scripts though, this is a really interesting video on how mad max: fury road was way more storyboard based than script based, and how that aided the visual language of the film. the storyboards, it looks like, can arguably be considered a comic (as all storyboards can)
Mostly yeah... But you don't have to fully finish the script to start. You can have a half finished script and start, so long as you have a full plot mapped out and most of the major scenes written.
Nothing is REQUIRED, but OMG is it helpful! It helps me figure out how many panels I need, the flow, which lines are more important and deserve more focus.... things like that.
i like to visualize the comic page/panels as I'm writing the script; it makes the thumbnail step much easier!
Adding my voice to the "nothing's required, but scripts help" refrain!
What "script" means is going to vary from person to person, though! Some people are just gonna write a basic "Page 1: Shaun walks through the city and spots Kelly arguing with would-be thieves, Page 2: Shaun walks over and threatens them and starts a fight while Kelly sighs loudly" and after that, all the rest of their planning is in thumbnails -- while others are going to write up the full "page 1, panel 1: [a bird's eye shot of the city, Shaun walking along the sidewalk] Shaun: "Wow, what a great way to start a webcomic!""
I tend to start with an outline, then break that down into a list of scenes, then break those scenes down into "what happens on each page," THEN write up a script based on that, so that I have a good idea of where I'm going.
Some people stick closely to full scripts, others just have a rough outline and aren't even writing dialogue until the page is drawn, others write up a full script but inevitably change things and rewrite the dialogue as they draw the page. Whatever works best for you!
I find that scripting helps:
I always draw my comics with using script. I think it helps a lot. You can plan exactly what to be in the chapter, and on a page. Plus you can count how many chapters long will be your comic. And it can be relaxing too, when you are not in the mood to draw, but want to make something productive. Sometimes I even draw tiny doodles between the lines if I feel I want something similar on the finished pages. When I started drawing my comics, I haven't got finished scripts, but since I started a long time ago, now I work from finished ones. But most of the time I change a little on them when I am about to actualy write in the speech bubbles, and sometimes I even change whole scenes, to fit more in the story. So I think scripts are really useful to have a more clear picture about your story, but it does not need to take it too serious. I don't know how others can work without it, but if someone prefer to just draw what popped out of his head, that's okay too 
absolutely in my case yes, even if i dont think so i definitely have the memory of a goldfish and my dialogue would be a huge stumbling mess if i didnt have something i can review and polish. the comic i was writing before mine failed after 14 pages because i didn't know what i was doing or where anything was going.
I used to plan ahead less and was comfortable with that, and extremely uncomfortable with limiting myself too much.
Now that I have a tight as fuck schedule with deadlines to the left and right I am left panicking when I notice I am running out of finished script to work with.
I have always had dialogue prepared before working on a page though. Dialogue is how I guide my story in its entirety, I can't make a page with just an "ish" sense of what will be said and make the dialogue up afterwards.
Specific actions however are disposable and replacable in my mind. Maybe I'm just a very verbal person.
I think the answer depends entirely on the person and the situation you are in. You could be a "no" guy in this regard at one part of your life, and become a "yes" guy later on, and maybe then go back to not needing much of a script after a while.
If your story is a simples life of life thing with out much real plot then you probably wont need much of a script. If you have something more split driven with twists and turns you may at least want a script to keep the details straight. Maybe notes on how major events happen? when plot heavy items appear and disappear.
Or it could be something to track how personalities clash. especially if two characters have similar personalities with only slight differences in beliefs.
In my opinion yes- dialogue can be an extremely important factor in your story if you write it well. Also I mean it’s part of the planning process, too. I write scripts for several scenes in a chapter at once so I can make connections between them.
What is needed is the story about the readers who love to read what you have for them and what you have in your mind to use in comic script writing1 in the near future because the children love to read new comics as this is the time for them to read what they need as after that they have to follow the rules of the Universities and the colleges.
Scripts of conversation could be temporary, but the brief plot paraghraphs and images are nessesary for making comics. You need to place things and panels thoughtfully, and the text of stories and illustrations will be the answers. There are a lot of things you need to consider when you are drawing comics. Not only the quality of art and the plots, but also how easy to read and understand the panels. By considering how the readers' sight will be move, by foreshadowing things or emphasizing things what you wanna show.
I generally have an idea of what I want the chapter to include and storyboard it. Sometimes while I’m storybording, new ideas come and I end up with more panels than originally planned which is fine by me! I mainly think storybording helps me keep the flow in my story and prevents me from making choppy scenes, if that makes sense. Plus I can whip it out quicker and smoother if I already have a script in mind.
