while pre production is really important to making something thatll last, be careful not to get stuck in limbo. if you start thinking 'i cant start until ive done x and i cant do x until ive done y, and i cant do y until ive done z' - youre in limbo, and should just get started. not posting publicly started, but start writing or drawing.
my planning process is uh... a little bit 'as i go.' a lot 'as i go.' for my current webcomic, There was a War, it was more or less my first time making a comic and after about a year of developing the story, i figured out scene 1 and jumped in head first. figured it all out after. and then again. and again. i need to stop and figure things out again in the coming months - not exactly because i keep getting into knots (i do), but largely because im at a point in my life where my artistic goals and understanding keep developing, and my projects are struggling to keep up.
however, i really enjoyed the process of writing myself into a bit of a hole for a few chapters, and then sitting down to dig back out. thats more or less what a first draft is for - and webcomics tend to find themselves being all first draft (maybe each chapter is drafted, but how far in the future can you think when making a serialised story on your own, on the side, often for the first time?) i liked throwing myself headfirst in and then being able to step back and look at the foundations. what i really wish is that i hadnt got myself to a place where i had to just keep up the momentum, leaving myself little time to keep tinkering and editing.
right now, im making a short sci fi pilot that i developed as part of a college project, so i got to do the 'starting' process all over. i started with research - into art, films, other comics and comic theory - and then brainstormed concepts and ran with what formed most organically in my mind. i kept holding myself back from working because i thought 'no, i need worldbuilding' 'no, i need character sheets' 'no, i need this research and that research'
what i actually found was that it was so much easier to just throw yourself into the drafting stage, and do the research / developing when you get to it. my project was on urban landscapes, so i went round my city and took a craptonne of pictures, and that was the only worldbuilding research i had at the beginning - besides my own experiences in london. when i hit a point where i needed to develop some side characters or a particular aspect of my world, i developed a moodboard for that part, fiddled around to see what i liked, and then carried on drafting. once the draft was all complete, i could get it together and tweak it.
i think if i was to go ahead with a theoretical project today, my process would be:
1: lay out concept and goals, and keep referring back to them
2: meet my main characters, spend some time with them in my head or on the page
3: moodboard - in the project above, this would be my photos of london and various collections of crap i pulled off pinterest. for twaw this is more in my head, pulling from studies of scottish coast and celtic jewellery
4: draft! this process is different for everyone - for twaw i like to write first, thumbnail later, but for any other project id write as i thumbnailed.
~~~~4a: a good method ive tried recently is to mark out how many pages youll allow for a scene, and then go through page by page deciding what develops in each page. it gives you a really good idea of how much detail you can go into, and makes you think way more economically about what you include, and how. so it leads to better storytelling. that said, i do like to set myself off on a freewrite and then cut down when im really stumped.
tbh, id even prioritise getting a full draft of your first chapter over getting a full outline of the series at large (if it is a series). while having an outline is really important for not getting lost and knowing what it is you need to set up, i find that getting a version of chapter / scene / episode one out of your head and into the physical plane gives you a far more concrete ground work to start forming your overarching plan with.
... man, this is reminding me of so many things i need to be doing this summer