How did you come up with your story?

[HNLEE]

I'm curious to know how others got their ideas for their webcomics.
I also want to know any details like how did you get that first strike of inspiration or was the story different in the initial conceptualization.

For me I knew I wanted to write a story about things that I loved so I thought 'nature' and 'girls' and that was how I thought up Sundaze. Of course I added a few more elements to that but I don't want to spoil hehe

So how did you make your story?

[AnnaLandin]

The birth of Grassblades is a pretty long-winded story, so I'll spare you most of the nitty details. I've posted elsewhere about it, but I can always have another go.

I have always enjoyed epic storytelling in general - LOTR, grand fairytales, etc., etc. - and I've always had a fondness for East Asian costume-dramas (House of Flying Daggers, Reign of Assassins, etc.,), and some of its reoccurring themes - lone wandering swordsmen, tales of revenge and loss, so on and so forth. So I've wanted to make something like that for a very long time. The specific idea that became Grassblades first started showing up in my sketchbooks 3-4 years ago, drawing more immediate inspiration from comics like Usagi Yojimbo, Hellboy, 365 Samurai and A Few Bowls of Rice, Blade of the Immortal and Lone Wolf and Cub.

I wanted swordfights, I wanted people with mysterious pasts and strange present lives, I wanted rootless journeys through beautiful landscapes, I wanted drama and betrayal and high stakes and really, really grumpy dudes being awkward adoptive dads to cute little girls. So that's what I did.

It took a long time getting to where it is today - I didn't figure out a primary antagonist or end to the story until september last year! - but I'm happy so say it's turning out pretty much the way I wanted it to, with some minor differences.

[SandraMJ]

My boyfriend and I were looking for a good situation to make a "your mother" joke and somehow that developed into a deeper story. I'm not even joking here ;w;

[DeadAccount]

Drugs and Wires started as a series of doodles about this miserable guy who just fails at all things ever. The character himself dates back to my teen years, but I "revived" him after getting my first "proper" job just so I could have something to do in the evenings - it basically served as an outlet for all my frustrations. From there I started building the world around him, cramming all of my likes and interests in there along the way - interests being 90's and 80's retrofuture and cyberpunk : D

[scottwuming]

A story about things you love is a good start!

Usually, random keywords just come to my head then suddenly, new words arrive until I form an idea. This miracle commonly occurs when I'm busy with stuff on the earthly bathroom throne, when I'm showering or when I'm washing the dishes.
The following comics started with the keywords/phrases:
Not yours, am I? replacement (in fact, that's the name of its folder in my computer.), twins, drama
Face the Consequences! the making-the-same-face-as-the-one-you-are-drawing phenomenon.
the ScrewBalls naming inanimate objects
Growing Banana Trees my life's failures

[Ayumi]

I don't remember well that my first comic (Dreamcatchers) where exactly came from, but I was kinda like Sohiru in school... wanted to spend my time with the popular girls, and be like them. My sister said that I wear strange clothes, and I was kinda resentful... so I thought I wanna make a story about a girl like me, and I've been always interested in dreams... so something began.

Aaaand Furusato House came from a dream! XD I like to write down my interesting dreams, because those can always give inspirations. It's the same with Furusato House. I had a dream with an old House, with the Lord of the House, and an other boy (Hiroki). In the morning I wrote down some details, and ideas just came, and came!

[getsuart]

Hummm... Echo started because I wanted to do a comi since I always tried and never finished anything. I was a story I did for school, and changed it how i wanted, and... drew it.
For the story at school, we had two themes (medieval or egyptian) for our games, so I chose medieval and started to think about things. I thought to myself that I like mythology, so I should look into it, and started to dig, see if some ideas were already known and taken, added things to what I really wanted and other ideas.
And Echo is mute because it's pretty ironic to be called Echo and being mute.
... No, i don't have other explanations about it. :'D

[ghostnxs]

The idea for my comic comes from science theories and speculation and things I think are cool.

[punkarsenic]

How Breakout came into existence is interesting. I had just finished watching the entire Spiderman franchise (originals, not tasm) for the first time, and I was pumped about superheros, and movies. So I texted my friend who lives nearby like 'bro we need to make a superhero movie' and it was off. We each designed a character that we could play (theirs was the main character), then started talking about plot. It was gonna be awesome, really, we were gonna submit the script to the BBC. But then my friend realised they'd have to come out to their parents to make it happen. No way.
In the mean time, I'd devised a story for my character, pre- and post- movie, and had started scripting a sequel about my character, Mirrormask, who's in Breakout.
From there, after realising we couldn't make the movie, it morphed into something bigger. Mirrormask was no longer the main character, or even the leader, and it became a group comic. Maybe one day Mirrormask will get a solo comic, but I doubt it.

[winglesscomic]

Used to be 4 separate storylines for my Ragnarok Online server that I kinda just pulled out of my ass because I was too busy coding to really come up with a cohesive story

Then I adapted it into webcomic format after a lot of changes, then I was like uhh shit I need a name

Then Wingless was born!

[joannekwan]

For Demon House I came up with it several months ago when I saw a lot of demon-related things on tumblr so I thought I'd join in the fun. I designed two demons, Haxan and Fawn, who just floated around aimlessly with no story attached. Then one morning I was on a train into the city and we passed a bunch of apartment buildings and the idea for a girl renting out a place inhabited by demons popped into my head. I immediately assigned the two demons I had to this story and began developing the story.

For Heavy Horns, I was just doodling around one night and came up with a guy with bull horns. I drew him as another character without a story attached for a while. Then I came up with a new character while doodling, a redhead, and thought, "crap, I made a farmer for my cow" and that was when I started thinking about the two as a couple. I started to write a backstory for the them, why the one has horns and so forth, and then with a shot in the dark I posted a chapter image as part of a new series here on Tap. I got an overwhelmingly positive response and had to write a script in a week. So this story was pretty much developed on the fly.

[Jrej]

I draw Shades Of Men which follows the story of two long-time hobos living in Paris.
I found inspiration in every day life while I was living in Paris.
I've seen specific scenes happening and I wonder what were the events leading to this.
I started building a story arch and including my own characters and experiences.

I hope this brings a layer of realism to the whole story.

[Raven_C]

Basically last summer I was slowly getting tired of my Animal Crossing phase (which I had an art blog for), so I decided to stop drawing AC fanart stuff, but I realized I still wanted to draw really cute anthropomorphic animals, and that was how the comic idea essentially came to life.

Originally, my comic Morsel was supposed to feature all kinds of animals as characters (like Animal Crossing), but I was like, "nah, that's too hard lol" so I just went with cats. I love cats. Also, I wanted to write about siblings/family and their little life adventures.

[keii4ii]

The origin of Heart of Keol is tied to my fascination with exploring different worlds.

When I first came up with it in 1994 (yes, I'm old), it was about a modern day schoolgirl who gets pulled into an ancient Asia-like world where a great destiny awaits her. It was meant to be a choose-your-own-adventure story with multiple endings and many, many story branches. The "player's" choices would affect many things, including which guy the main character ends up with!

Years later, I randomly dug up that story and somehow ended up with this entirely different comic -- BUT WAIT, that is not Heart of Keol. It's a different comic altogether.

More years pass, filling me with a yearning for what inspired the very first version of the story: exploring another world, one that looks like ancient Asia. So I dug up that story again and rebuilt it from the ground up. There you have it!

[fanyart]

That's some interesting stories here

For Trivia from Nature I find inspiration while listening to a lecture (like the Longisquama episode - I'm a student of geology), or watching documentaries on tv (like how the heck did Galapagos iguanas learn they can eat in the sea? - not published yet) or having a casual dialogue with someone about how what we learn at school is something a normal person can't check out for themselves and that it all can be a completely different way (like the first episode).

[brunoharm3]

I love to draw and to write, and I did it very sporadically. Then I got some "how to draw" books for my six year old from the library, and one of them was a "how to create a comic strip". So somehow that tipped my random bits of stories and doodling into this new direction. I was working on a cyberpunk Noir kind of thing, and hit this realization that I didn't want to do the dark murder type stuff, even though it's a genre I enjoy. so this kind of trickled into the Idea for Bruno Harm. Sort of taking the crime dramas I'm addicted to, and putting them in a funny, gag type strip. It's been amazing. I haven't created this much since college, and It's been downright therapeutic.

[SpavVy]

It's a long story >.< some of my inspirations were based off of dreams even.

[GFalconDX]

For The Chronicles of SolLuna, oddly enough, started with a random image that I drew a long time ago. However, from there, I tried and redraw the character again and a story began to evolve from that one single image. Originally, it was supposed to be a cyberpunk themed story with Gothic tones, but then I accidentally discovered steampunk...and the rest is history.

[elixiadragmire]

for me it's actually a long process to get to Silversong!!

In college I drafted a story with a girl who would be a prophet but the setting so techo/fantasy the girl was rebellious and wild and it had a lot of cliche and stereotypes in it XD then I got enthralled with fantasy thanks to my hubby (then BF) and we played DND, made a group, 3 artists and a writer we decided to homebrew a world. It was a melting pot of ideas and was a lot of fun to play in. we did that for 5 years, all along i was cooking up characters, baddies, plots and whatnot and adding them in or reserving them for a future campaign.

Then came 3 years ago where our writer friend DM'ed a campaign in our homebrew. it was the beginning of the end. He was going through some really rough stuff in his life, unemployed, suffering from GAD and getting angry at the world. This all poured out in his sessions, we faced stupidly tough monsters, the world was oppressive, every victory was snatched away the moment we saw it in sight and it started to kill my creativity. After that campaign I had to wrestle with some demons of my own, and to do so I had to segregate myself from this long term collab I'd grown to resent. I took all my ideas and started to rebuild a world of my own, something I could pour myself into and hopeful rekindle my creativity again. 2 years later I had the foundations of Silversong using my old college story but with plenty of new elements and different characters.

[maelstrom51210]

Demon King was inspired by this dream I had of this guy and his grampa fighting demons. I woke up and thought "what a cool idea for some kind of horror comic". Then I stirred in some elements from Lovecraft's The Dunwich Horror and old horror movies and added an actual plot.