Coming up with your comic

[brokenrobot]

How did you do it? What went through your mind before you went: "Aha!"? What prior art experience did you have before starting?

For writers: I want to start making a comic, but how do I come up with a genre, a theme, characters, a story? How do you plan out your comic?

For artists: How did you learn how to use the computer for art, or do you use the computer for art? I for one cannot for the love of all that is beautiful draw on the computer.

ARGH so many questions so little time.

[TrustyShamrock]

hmmmMMM i think for most of those questions ya just gotta start doing somethin and see where it goes. like i learned digital art stuff just by messing around with photoshop. and i suuuucked at it when i started.
with writing ya should probably just come up with a plot first. but then start writing and see what happens and what characters ya need for it to work. but if ya like planning junk out you could make a outline or somethin before you actually do the writing part itself

[muhdreams]

My comic actually started out when I doing silly gag-comics for the school newspaper. No art/writing experience what-so-ever, just something fun to do during university! Then a friend suggested that I throw them all online and see how that goes.. yeah lol

[ghostnxs]

I'm not a very good planner, I find planning rather boring. I do plan very minimal things because I've indecisive and the story changes per page. I wrote an entire script for a chapter but by the time I drew it I changed the way it looked. Even when writing a novel, I do the same thing, my story doesn't stay same from original concept. This is why I don't really care if my comic becomes popular or makes money because I'm not trying that hard. As an Artist I learned to draw on computer after I learned to draw traditionally so I didn't suck I just transferred my skills over to the computer and learned the basics of Photoshop.

I don't plan on making art my career because all I want to do is create my stories with no interference, so take my answers with less than a grain of salt.
My upcoming comic is a combination of ideas and stories, that I thought this would be cool as a story. And so I'm making it, and I'm not even going to write a script either. I'm starting with limited character profiles, a short synopsis, and few character designs. So don't trust me. I've returned to the fun of art.

[Monstrosaur]

Have someone to spit ball ideas at and write each on down. Even if they just sit there blank face, being able to hear your own voice say random things will eventually spark something. If you don't know where to start, start talking about the environments of your favorite shows and go off on every weird and random tangent and i promise you you'll find something that you like. Do that for a while and write down your thoughts. Then look at you notes and see what you like. This only really helps with concepts and environment, but hey, its a start!

[ErithEl]

Interesting thread!

To answer your questions in order:

1) I was very experienced in traditional art when I started my comic...it took forever to learn the hand-eye coordination or working digitally (and I felt like such an idiot at first!). I'm still learning photoshop, but I at least have the basics down, now, and it's going pretty well.

2) This can be one of the most tedious (and also the most fun) processes. For me, it took a while before an actual plot came together in a way that made sense. Once I had a basic idea, I started to expand on the characters, the world, etc. In the past I've always just gone off a general idea, but more recently, I've found it much more helpful if I actually lay out the key plot points beforehand because it can get a little tricky keeping track of everything if you don't have an outline.

3) @brokenrobot what programs have you tried to use? As I mentioned before, it can take a while to learn digital art, but it can be really helpful when you do. I've been working with photoshop and there are some aspects I feel like I can't live without, now! Most of what I've learned is through trail and error, but there are also a MILLION youtube tutorial videos that help in a pinch as well.

I actually got the idea for Burning Bright while I was bored once day and had been sketching random characters. I'd been watching a lot of anime, and so I ended up sketching some badass looking fighter guys and women with interesting hair and strange tattoos and markings, like they might have magical powers. And then, smack-dab in the middle of these characters was a random girl with a ponytail, a school teeshirt and a backpack. So the real reason I started the comic at all was because I looked at all the characters I'd drawn and thought to myself, "now, wouldn't this be an interesting story with all these crazy characters...and this one random, modern girl?"

[rc360]

I'm a writer and I had ZERO experience writing for comics, but so far it's received a lot of positive feedback from comic creators that I've shown it to and even an offer to submit to a local publisher and make it into a series. This is just off one-third of the final artwork being completed. I can give you advice on if you were to find an artist to work with.

I had to find an artist to work with, which is no easy feat. I consider myself extremely lucky to have found an artist in a few weeks on DeviantArt. I met a novelist at a convention over the weekend and wanted to turn his story into a graphic novel and he's been looking for six years. If you go the route of starting a collab with or hiring an artist, here and DeviantArt ,through journals or its forums under projects, are good starting points. r/ComicBookCollabs is another good place to find artists. Writers looking for artists are more common, but there will be the occasional artist looking for a writer so you'll have to search every day.

After finding an artist to work with for a one-shot manga, I realized that none of my story ideas that I have written down would fit the mold of what she wanted to do. What I did was think about what genre should I go for and as long as the art and the story was good it didn't matter if it was manga or western style and so far, it's proving to be true to the comic creators I've been showing. Whether that holds true when it's released is another story.

I eventually went with the high school genre (slice of life, drama, romance, etc.). When that was done, I started writing down what it should be about. From there, I came up with what kind of characters would fit and help progress the story. Once I had a good summary of how the story would go, I started writing the script like you would read a novel or a short story essay.

If you work with an artist and want to get your vision across, learn to format your script so you can get everything from how scenes in the panel are set up to the character's emotions. It really helps when the artist gets into the storyboard process. Stan Lee's How to Write Comics was a great help when it came to formatting the script and I gave sent pictures of the emotion I wanted a character portray.

After you're done formatting the script, keep checking for spelling and grammatical errors. They're there, even if you miss it three times. Keep in touch with your artist, even though most of your work is done. I mentioned it before, but show other comic creators at conventions a preview of what you're working on, once pages get completed. I leave them off at a cliffhanger so they want to know more of what happens. That's when I can get their contact info and offer to send them a link when the comic goes live. Whether their indy creators, or pros who work for Marvel or Dark Horse, don't be afraid to showcase yourself.

Hope that answers your questions!

[gearpunk]

Oh goodness, I don't even know. I had both my main characters for years, one of them is almost 15 years old and branched off into the second character in 2009 and I managed to make them both two completely different people, and eventually I had this idea and spent a long time fussing over it. Eventually I discovered my friend was really good at brainstorming and we bounced idea's of one another and then boom. Before I knew it I had the first book storyboarded and the second one is already being blocked out.

I guess I just kind of went with it and let the idea's come and go and pushed out as much concept work as I could until I was happy with what I had. It's changed a lot over the past 8 months (I've been working on this since the start of this year).

As for the artwork half of it; I've been doing digital work for about 9-10 years, so I've had some practice. But I'm not done learning yet, and still have a long way to go. : D

In the end I found the best thing to help with improvement is to have others look at your work, and work with close people to help with brainstorming! Find someone who has similar interests with you and get them to help you out! It makes things fun and exciting too.

[jackieuy127]

OH MY GOSH YES THIS TOPIC

ok so school was always really boring so I made OC's all the time and I was like ok these guys are gonna fall in love but i need a story. And I used to write a lot of original short stories from middle school and freshman year so I took the few bits and pieces I liked from each one and combined them together. Lol and I was so bad at drawing before starting, i figured out like i drew extra biceps and stuff i was bad i never looked at refs but thank god i know better now...

if you want to come up with characters and themes and stuff, take inspiration from people around you and your experiences!! i think it's easy to write from your own experiences and in terms of planning it out make sure it has basic story elements like an exposition, conflict, climax, resolution... if you're doing slice of life i guess you don't need that though...

and for drawing on the computer: PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE!!! it's incredible to look back and see how far you've come

[AnnaLandin]

In the case of Grassblades, I'd been reading far too much Blade of the Immortal, Vagabond, Usagi Yojimbo, Bleach, Lone Wolf and Cub and Hellboy - and watching too many EastAsian costume-dramas. So the thought of wanting to draw a comic about samurai was sparked in my head.

It sort of grew from there. However, I've been drawing comics for years - Grassblades is just my first long-format webcomic that got to be more than 2 chapters or so. So I have prior experience making comics - and I've been drawing for most of my life. I draw both traditionally (pen on paper, watercolour, ink, acrylics, etc.) and digitally, but Grassblades is 100% digital - not counting the thumbnails for the pages.

As for your specific questions....

How to come up with ideas: This one varies from person to person, so I can't give you a definitive answer. All I can tell you is to sit down with a pencil and a piece of paper, and start scribbling down ideas. It doesn't have to be huge, or complicated, or even particularly well defined. Grassblades literally began with a drawing of a grumpy dude and the thought "Hey, samurais are cool - I should do something with samurais" - and now it's this giant, complex, intricate thing. Once you've got a bunch of ideas down, read through them and see if any of them fit together. If they don't, rattle them around a bit and see what falls out.

Put smaller ideas together, and they're more likely to become big, inter-connected ideas - a bit like little bits of mercury pooling together until you've got a great big puddle of it.

Say you want to do a scifi-story. Why? What kind of things interest you with the scifi-genre? In my case, the answer is adventure, exploration and discovery, and themes about what makes us human and what doesn't - so when I make a scifi comic, those are the kinds of themes I like to explore. Having settled on that - what kind of characters would you need to make that story happen? Etc., etc.

Of course, you can go the other way around and come up with an interesting character and then craft the plot around them - it's all up to you.

How to plan a comic Again, this varies. Some people like to write pages and pages of script - others like making stuff up on the fly. I'm somewhere in the middle, as I work mainly with a rough outline of events, and then only really write the comic (dialogue, etc.) at the same time that I plan my page-layouts. I need to see what the comic will look like before I can settle 100% on the dialogue.

I've got an outline for the entire comic, but I only storyboard - i.e: page-layouts and dialogue - one chapter at the time. This leaves me space to tweak and adjust things as I go.

How to learn to draw digitally Pick a tablet, pick a software, start practising. Every drawing-program is different, and has its own challenges and limitationsI do most of my drawing in Manga Studio 5, but there are people who draw in Photoshop, Paint Tool Sai, GIMP, etc.,. It is possible to draw digital art with a mouse instead of a tablet, but it's a LOT harder, and can be hell on your wrist.

I use Manga Studio, as I said, as well as doing certain things in Paint Tool Sai, and I draw with an Wacom Cintiq 21UX, but there are plenty of cheaper options that are perfectly good for digital art.

[mg78]

when i started do comics, i was able to draw (skill level: kid) but i was without any experiance in comic making. same story for doing script.
me & a friend of mine was having fun with a story, in a moment we said each other: lets start. and we started lol. it was dunno, close to 20y ago... and i still got that pages today!

since then, i used to learn to plan.
plan everything. and its started to like more to do the comic itself, lol.

so, ive got an idea or something i want to tell about. then i start to think about what could be better, as a real world or a fantasy world... i try to image everything, from the best to the worst scenary, just to see how they could fit in it. when i find something of good, i sketch &/or i take a notes. when im full of notes or ketch i move all in files to make some good order. i try to keep the classical base like: "who, when, where, how, why" it help me to find a logic or a minimum to understand if it s plausible.

for the programs, there is scrivner (not freeware) very good. or using some html program freeware to build with order all the work.

[Aloredd]

As a writer, I suck by myself. I lose the trail fairly easily and writer's block is my worst enemy. Luckily, my older sister is a writer as well, though she kind of has the same problem. Years ago we started a story where we both had our characters (she made hers and I made mine and we tied them all together somehow). She'd write one chapter and I'd write the next chapter, so on and so forth. That way we'd write off of each other's ideas, and we got to 174 pages in MS Word. (reading it now is like trying to make sense of "If I have 10 ice cubes and you have 11 apples how many pancakes can fit on the roof? Purple. Because aliens don't wear hats"....it was really that disjointed and random in some places). Now that we're both older and better writers we've evolved the idea into https://sites.google.com/site/adestria2/. This way we still bounce off of each other's ideas, but write our own stories. Our two main characters, Aqua (hers) and Quixel (mine) have even met within our stories, but they are two different stories. Aqua even helped Quixel decide what his 'purpose in life' is. When I get stuck in a spot she'll write a couple of sentences for me, and vice versa...even one sentence is sometimes enough for us to lose the writer's block.

To plan out my comic, I honestly write it by imagining it as a comic or cartoon. By rereading it I remember the scenes I saw in my head while writing it so I can easily translate it to comic format since I wrote it by imagining it so. It's probably not the best of ideas or methods, but it works for me. (unfortunately I can't art so planning the layout of the pages is about all I can do)

[keii4ii]

Imitation. As a youngster, I rapidly consumed various jRPGs, manga and manhwa, and to use a gross metaphor, I pooped out what I ate. I produced icky, inferior imitations of what I consumed.

Over time, I learned to do better than just poop; I began to learn how to cook. I began to learn how to make my own stories that other people could consume without gagging. Even though I still consider myself a beginner at 30+ years of age, I no longer consider myself a mere pooper, and that is a huge accomplishment.

More than 20 years ago, Heart of Keol began as a stinky pile of Japanese/Korean pop culture tropes. Tropes aren't inherently bad, but I was using them without understanding them. I was using NOTHING but tropes. It's hilarious how bad it was. The story was incoherent because I just spammed my favorite tropes whenever and whereever I felt like it.

Today, Heart of Keol is so different from that pile of tropes, that I might as well have come up with them separately. The fact that they're related is simply how I work. I keep revising and revising and revising until I get that feeling: this is a story worth drawing. this is a coherent story with characters that interest me, and themes that speak to me. This is a story I want to tell, need to tell. That feeling right there is essential.

So what happened between the crappy first version and what I have now? That "keep revising and revising" part? I keep asking questions. Why this [barebone idea of a story] in this setting? How does this world even work? Why is this character such a jerk, and why is this other character so idealistic? What happened in their lives that helped shape who they are? What secrets are they hiding... from others, from themselves? As I do this, flesh gets added to the bare bone; sometimes I perform a massive surgery in which huge chunks of the flesh gets cut out and replaced. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Discover.

Eventually, I either put the story in the back burner or end up with something that speaks to me.

[KSlinger]

The first panel of West was something I drew to pass the time one day. Then I began to wonder who the man I drew actually was, what he was doing, where he was going etc. and had my first page a week or so later. The story itself has grown on it's own. I'm big on improv (not the stand up kind) and was totally comfortable figuring the finer details out as I went along. It began with imagining situations-- moments on the open sea, or in a bar, or on the road, not just for Jed but for others as well-- and after thinking of a handful of those I began stringing things together.

I'm not a great believer in extreme characters with one core purpose or another, and I'm not very good at writing them, either. For me the heroes and villains in West are just normal people making decisions that seem logical to them, so the plot was born of common sense rather than my own desire to convey a certain message. I actually found that the looser my hold was over the plot of West and the more I let go of control, the quicker and more obviously the TRUE message rose up. I can see it clearly now, and it surprises me.

As for actual planning, there is nothing written on paper for any part of West (scary!). Very few details are set in stone and I withhold the right to change anything at the last possible moment. Sometimes things will seem 'right' to me, and those things do not change. One of the newest characters to the story is blonde and he was always going to be blonde whether I wanted it or not; it wouldn't have been right to do anything otherwise. Alternatively, there are characters whose personalities and plot lines are fully formed, but their appearances will come down to a flip of a coin, ranging wildly between shapes, ages and ethnicities.

So, in short...I don't plan! I go with my gut and omit details, allowing readers to fill the gaps themselves, for better or worse.

[Doubtcent]

I had come up with character designs galore, but had no idea what or how or where to go. So, I started with something simple. A 4 panel comic, starring a character that was easy to draw. I then went from there, seeing how far I could go. I'm now on episode 78 with a definite idea that keeps evolving.

The biggest thing is just to jump in and try something. Experiment. Keep trying. And when you feel like you're satisfied, go one step further. Keep going. By then hopefully you'll have an idea.

[CaptainJuuter]

I think everyone has their own way to go about things when it comes to creating a story.
For me I create stories around characters. I will have countless pages of concept art and character design, and from there I build a world off of them (could be a single character or group of characters). But there are many other ways to come up with a story: what kind of story are you in the mood to make, that will not only will it grab viewers attention, but will also be able to hold your attention/motivation so that you wont grow tired of creating your comic.

As for Planning my comics and working out what goes on/will happen in the story, I briefly map out the story from start to finish. What is the main focus/goal? How will it start? How to I want it to end? Any significant events that I want to include in-between? Then from there its just connecting the dots and filling in the blanks. Of course this is just a brief plot, room for changes additions/deletions and editing. (This is just an example of my strategy, It might not work for everyone, but it does help out with organizing ones thoughts)

For art, there can be many approaches. I think computer art is the most used/favored approach. All the comics I've seen/read have used computer art. But computer art does take time to learn and is frustrating at the start. I've discovered a cheat for people to still be able to draw by hand, but have the look of computer art. All you need is a scanner and a computer art program. You can easily draw your comic on paper, scan the image on the computer and upload it onto the art program. BAM linework is all done, and you can computeristically color your page and add the dialogue.

[Vikiro_Hop]

Oh man good topic.

As for writing the ideas were always easy enough for me. (Sorry to gloat, but it's literally the only thing that seemed to come natural for me.) The best advice I can give is to see every bit of entertainment you take in as possible research. As for choosing that is just a whole bunch of what you like. Maybe I like the Dynamic perspectives in Game of thrones, the dark humor and scifi setting of Firefly and the strange invasive narration of Princess Bride. That could be a possible jumping off point for a novel, but at the same time you have to incorporate your own tastes. Just use things you like and are passionate about and work them into ideas you like from others content. But it can be really easy to end up making a clone of original works rather than something you actually created. As far as that goes it mostly comes down to intuition and self awareness. (Did I just create something cool and new? Or is it just Game of thrones in space?) Take inspiration from everywhere and don't draw upon just one source and you will be fine.

As for digital drawing I literally started with my first comic, I did alot of editing to my traditional work using sai before, but I only started using my tablet really when I started up my comic. It is tough. For me it was almost like learning to draw all over again. I just stuck with it, looked up a couple of tutorials online (saved me so much strife.) and now I am much more comfortable using my tablet.

[qcbl]

As for story inspiration try to figure out what you enjoy and what you know a lot about. (i.e. It's hard to write about a video game you never played) There is no set way to do it so just keep trying. Try to come up with good characters or an interesting situation and go from there. Start with a genre you are comfortable with then you can always branch out later. I find the more you've read in an area the more ideas you will have to do something different or better.

As for digital art I've found many resources online and youtube videos to help. Once you use those to get started you can develop a personal style that works for you.

[Bii0]

I wanted to make something to get me experience before working on stories I really wanted to do, and do decently, also I knew a comic would force me to practice stuff I wouldn't usually with illustration (like proper perspective and using a ruler). Then I thought slice of life was the most bland, non-creative thing I could do for the practice I needed since it doesn't involve as much stuff as the fantasy stories I want to work on, so my current comic was created.
Even though I hate working with slice of life, the process has grown on me enough and it has helped me with quite a bit as far as how the visual storytelling process works, so it's doing it's job rather well.

Artist question: I don't draw on the computer, it's a pain, hate every moment of it. I'll just draw everything traditionally, then clean and resize it on the computer via photoshop.

[williamjbowles]

My comic, Outcast Kingdom, was originally a role playing game I invented. Or rather, a mod for an existing role playing game. Or rather, a mod for an existing role playing game that I never got around to finishing.
Anyways, I liked the idea, general plot, and most of all the world I had created so much that I had to tell the story despite the game never seeing the light of day.

As a writer: There's no one thing that always comes first. Sometimes, you have an idea for a world that's so strange and interesting that you have to tell a story that takes place in it. Sometimes, you come up with a cast of characters so interesting and lovable that you have to tell about their lives and/or adventures. Sometimes you come up with a general plot, or an on-going theme, or some other aspect of the story, and everything else expands out from it.
Think about the kind of story you'd want to read, and tell that sort of story.

As an artist: I am not very good at drawing from my computer-- there is nothing unusual about that. I draw out my pages on sheets of paper, then I ink them, then scan them into my computer and edit them from there. Some people do everything digitally, but I prefer traditional media, at least to some extent.

Well, I hope you get it worked out. Good luck!