Tutorial 2

This is what I usually do. I put in enough effort that people say "Wow! That's so professional!" And I look at them like "WHAT are you talking about???" Hehehe...anyways..

1. You need a pencil and decent, unlined paper. A good felt tip or gel pen if you want to ink. If you want color, decent coloring mediums can be colored pencils, markers (though I don't recommend them), or coloring a scanned image on the computer.

2. Depending on how you want to start, you may or may not have a specific storyline. Having a plot idea is important. It's hard to do a comic without some story idea.

3. Start sketchy. You might draw out all the panels first if you're worried about panel layout. Or you might draw them as you feel. Either way, do a light sketch first in pencil so you can erase and change things as you like. Use a ruler to draw the panel sides. Keep a distance of about 1/2 or 3/4 of an inch for a nice border on the outside of the page. Do not ink yet.

4. Figure out where you want your text to go so you leave enough room for it, this way you don't have to scrunchitallin, if it doesn't fit. Print neatly. If you're really worried, place a sheet of lined paper under your drawing so you can keeping writing from slantly and have it spaced nicely.

5. Have you added backgrounds? They are usually important. Though for people like me I don't always add backgrounds before getting the characters and foreground refined. Then I'll put in a background. It's up to you. If you're just doing pencils, refine all your lines, darken what you want people to notice the most. You're done here. Or you can continue and...

6. Ink! Use a ruler and draw the borders for your panels first. Then continue on within the panels. You may want to vary the line widths or not. It all depends on how much time you want to spend. Varying line widths looks cool, but it takes longer.

7. Once it's all inked, get rid of your pencil lines. Use a nice soft eraser, either a kneaded or gum eraser. Rub gently. Paper crinkles. =P Oh! And be sure your ink is fully dry so you don't smear it, be wary of large areas of ink or places where lines overlap, like panel corners, they take longer to dry. If you're only inking, you're done here. OR you can continue to...

8. Color! Choose your medium.

Computer coloring (CG) is a nice way of coloring, especially if you want to show your comic online. Markers and colored pencils don't always scan the way you want. I recommend Adobe programs. Though those aren't the only programs, there's Painter and Corel programs too. Practice is important for coloring on the computer, but with enough time and skill, you can get some lovely work. Again it depends on how much time you want to spend. Another thing you can do on the computer is replace handwritten text with typed text. But be sure to "KILL". Keep It Large and Legible. Finally, for online use save the image as either a .jpg or a .gif at 72dpi resolution. If you want to print you comic in color, save it as a .tiff or .eps in CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black). Look at help menus in art programs if you have no idea what these terms mean.

9. Show off your comic! Do not eat it! ER..I mean..keep it in a safe place. Yeah...

Examples

Ok. I'm sorry, this is old, I drew this in 1999 or 2000. It was a comic based on a roleplay from the TRHQ board, and while I really enjoyed drawing it, it was just too long! I drew about 11 pages and wasn't even a fourth of the way done. Lots of ruler usage on this one. There's also line width variation! Well..sometimes

A more recent comic. I'm drawing this totally by computer, but I'm still using sketchlines and taking my time. I'm drawing this on an oekaki board which is like an advanced version of MSPaint. I'm trying to keep my coloring simple, but I'm such a perfectionist sometimes. ^_^;

"I dunno...what else do you got?"