04-27-2013, 06:31 AM
I was really excited when Monkeybread told me about this forum, theres a lot to cover for the subject of how to make comics. When it comes down to it, comics (graphic novels, sequential art...I call them comics because its shorter) are their own form of media separate from pure writing or art- because you're having to seamlessly tie the things that you say in words and pictures, with the things between panels that you leave up to the imagination. And then theres the tricky parts like pacing the read of the page, creating action, and making interesting layouts! There's a TON of things that combine to make all of it work- take it from someone who's made just about every mistake possible and come out of it with a webcomic that is beginning to toe the line of respectable!
Seems like a lot of people are focusing on planning their stories right now, so I'll start there!
To be frank, when it comes to comics, story trumps art, hands down. By comparison to what I'm able to pull off now, I wasn't much of an artist when I first started my comic- I was decent, and pulled off some interesting pages from time to time, but thats all you can say. But if the plot is strong and well written, it can carry the art a long way- and if you have both, well, thats when you really start to go from "cult following" to "underground hit". So focus on story first, for sure, but don't neglect the art either.
First bit of advice: Write a rough draft in COMIC FORMAT.
I wrote out the first three "books" of my comic this way at the start, and it was probably the smartest thing I ever did. I'm a free-form writer myself, and I hate outlines- but writing ahead is a whole different thing. Embrace that free-flow of ideas-its where the best writing comes from- but do it in a way that works for what you're trying to end up with: a comic!
I highly recommend writing out your plot in a pseudo-comic format: plan out dialogue and art simultaneously, and make sure that it can actually fit in the space you have assigned to it. If you can't sketch a vague thumbnail of what you want in a panel in a few seconds, write into the panel what goes there and move on to the next so that you don't loose your train of thought- I find that the space needed for the art and the space needed for the description in words of that art are pretty well related. The more details, characters, and actions you put in a panel, the more room it takes to describe it, so it can at least give you a rough idea of the space that panel needs to occupy on the page if you want it to read properly.
When you can manage to do it without breaking your story-telling groove, actually draw panels in a quickly in a gesture or silhouette style, and move on. Its a great way to practice drawing your characters recognizably over and over quickly, and to identify characters that you can't draw without a reference sheet and a protractor. If you find one of those, their design needs to be tweaked to something you can draw the first time, every time, in at least a rough way. Otherwise, the three-hundredth time you have start over a panel because you screwed them up AGAIN you will begin to consider killing off that character just so you don't have to draw them anymore. Trust me, I am not exaggerating. I finally broke down and did a "Darrin swap" style (google "bewitched", kiddos) redesign on one of my main characters to make her easier to draw after hitting this point- left some of my readers a little confused for a while, but ended the migranes and improved the comic in the long run. I should have done it at the start, though, when I was already having issues drawing her reliably and easily. Most important, though, is that having a plan of some sort for the art on a page, even a written description, is a godsend on days when you feel like you couldn't be creative if your life depended on it- it might not end up being your best page, but it will exist and you can always rework it later for the print edition. For those wanting to make a webcomic, skipping posting days is the fastest way to kill your comic- it kills your momentum, and frustrates your core readers who look forward to new pages.
The other thing planning stuff out gives you a chance to do is edit. Forshadowing only becomes possible when you already know whats going to happen, for starters, so you almost have to do some planning to write with any sort of depth, even if its just setting yourself up for a punchline in a comic strip. I've rearranged entire chapters of my story to improve pacing, removed panels, pages, and entire scenes that I realized were rambling and/or unnessesary after I read through the rough draft a few times, expanded other scenes(sometimes from single panels to multiple pages!), and even had sudden inspirations for page layouts, characters, and sub-plots that have become some of my reader's favorites. I would never even have thought of some of those if I hadn't had the rough draft to tinker with, and spent the time I did revising it.
One of the biggest things writing ahead will save you from, though, is the dreaded "continutity break" or worse...the phrase "Because I wrote it that way". "BIWITW" makes your most trusting fans die a little inside, and is a rallying call for cynics to pelt you with rotten vegetable matter- especially because you have some fans who are both, which will net you hate mail. Readers WILL catch these things- there are more of them than there are of you, and fans nitpick endlessly on stuff like why vampires don't die under moonlight, if its reflected sunlight. Have answers ready, even if its a "because the properties of moondust filter out the particular wavelengths of the sun's rays that disrupt vampires magical energies" answer, or as a stopgap, directly address it in the universe as a "mystery of the universe" until you can think of something better. (sometimes fans will even do this for you, if you get lucky- fans noticed "the numbers" in Lost first, and the writers ran with it once it was pointed out, because it helped tie together some loose ends in the lore they were still pinning down at that point!)
Basically, fans love universes with some semblance of rules, even totally off the wall rules that you break by invoking "The One is not bound by the Matrix" type clauses. As long as there IS an explantion of some sort for why you can't feed the mogwai after midnight, and you stick to the rules you establish most of the time, you will have a fandom that will be willing to trust that you have some sort of plan for the story (most of the time). Think of the shows and stories that start violating their own rules too often or following them too closely, and you probably are thinking of a series that has jumped the shark. Obey your rules, but break them just enough to keep people guessing. This collection of rules and exceptions for your world is what you call an "invisible book"- the stuff that only the one or ones writing the story know, (or at least convincingly pretend to know) about that universe, and which is referenced only indirectly.-things like what Master Chief looks like with his helmet off, or what size unobtanium batteries you put in a lightsaber. I recomend you write anything significant, complicated, or particularly cool from your invisible book down, as the invisible versions are prone to getting forgotten and/or changing gradually. Having a detailed, visible-on-paper, invisible book is a good thing, if only because it can be a great source of ideas for bending the rules, like a trillionaire vampire spending vast amounts of money to buy, steal, or retrieve moon rocks with the goal of creating a waterproof moondust sunscreen so that he can move freely in daylight as long as he reapplies every 3 hours.
Hope that wall-o-text helps some people!
Next, I'm working on some stuff about page layout-
getting people to read your panels in the order you want, creating motion and action flow, how to work with panels without letting them run your comic, how to keep text from taking over completely... that sort of stuff.
I can't find the tutorial anymore, but when I first started I found one with a lot of the stuff I'm putting into the one I'm working on, and it was extremely useful. ^_^
Seems like a lot of people are focusing on planning their stories right now, so I'll start there!
Quote:If you're doing what we're doing it is probably overkill. Comics don't really delve that far into complexity for the most part. I'm a fan of organisation as long as it doesn't constrain you from developing solutions to problems. A tool is just a tool, it's how you use it that matters.Totally right- but the other side of the coin is that you can make the plot and world as complex as you want it to be, and as long as you explain it well you're only benefiting from it! You'd be surprised how much thought goes into a lot of comics not just in the indy sector, or the arthouse publishers like dark horse, but even in the industry giants like Marvel and DC- they may have standard formulas and templates for storylines and characters, but their most celebrated artists and authors have mastered the art of painting veritable Sistine Chapels inside the box by playing with the lore and rules for different series like toys. Of all the series though, the ones that people flock to almost always have something in common: intricate plots, lore, and worlds, that are revealed in an understandable and interesting way. (Or characters like She-hulk's cleavage. But thats a whole different discussion. XD)
To be frank, when it comes to comics, story trumps art, hands down. By comparison to what I'm able to pull off now, I wasn't much of an artist when I first started my comic- I was decent, and pulled off some interesting pages from time to time, but thats all you can say. But if the plot is strong and well written, it can carry the art a long way- and if you have both, well, thats when you really start to go from "cult following" to "underground hit". So focus on story first, for sure, but don't neglect the art either.
First bit of advice: Write a rough draft in COMIC FORMAT.
I wrote out the first three "books" of my comic this way at the start, and it was probably the smartest thing I ever did. I'm a free-form writer myself, and I hate outlines- but writing ahead is a whole different thing. Embrace that free-flow of ideas-its where the best writing comes from- but do it in a way that works for what you're trying to end up with: a comic!
I highly recommend writing out your plot in a pseudo-comic format: plan out dialogue and art simultaneously, and make sure that it can actually fit in the space you have assigned to it. If you can't sketch a vague thumbnail of what you want in a panel in a few seconds, write into the panel what goes there and move on to the next so that you don't loose your train of thought- I find that the space needed for the art and the space needed for the description in words of that art are pretty well related. The more details, characters, and actions you put in a panel, the more room it takes to describe it, so it can at least give you a rough idea of the space that panel needs to occupy on the page if you want it to read properly.
When you can manage to do it without breaking your story-telling groove, actually draw panels in a quickly in a gesture or silhouette style, and move on. Its a great way to practice drawing your characters recognizably over and over quickly, and to identify characters that you can't draw without a reference sheet and a protractor. If you find one of those, their design needs to be tweaked to something you can draw the first time, every time, in at least a rough way. Otherwise, the three-hundredth time you have start over a panel because you screwed them up AGAIN you will begin to consider killing off that character just so you don't have to draw them anymore. Trust me, I am not exaggerating. I finally broke down and did a "Darrin swap" style (google "bewitched", kiddos) redesign on one of my main characters to make her easier to draw after hitting this point- left some of my readers a little confused for a while, but ended the migranes and improved the comic in the long run. I should have done it at the start, though, when I was already having issues drawing her reliably and easily. Most important, though, is that having a plan of some sort for the art on a page, even a written description, is a godsend on days when you feel like you couldn't be creative if your life depended on it- it might not end up being your best page, but it will exist and you can always rework it later for the print edition. For those wanting to make a webcomic, skipping posting days is the fastest way to kill your comic- it kills your momentum, and frustrates your core readers who look forward to new pages.
The other thing planning stuff out gives you a chance to do is edit. Forshadowing only becomes possible when you already know whats going to happen, for starters, so you almost have to do some planning to write with any sort of depth, even if its just setting yourself up for a punchline in a comic strip. I've rearranged entire chapters of my story to improve pacing, removed panels, pages, and entire scenes that I realized were rambling and/or unnessesary after I read through the rough draft a few times, expanded other scenes(sometimes from single panels to multiple pages!), and even had sudden inspirations for page layouts, characters, and sub-plots that have become some of my reader's favorites. I would never even have thought of some of those if I hadn't had the rough draft to tinker with, and spent the time I did revising it.
One of the biggest things writing ahead will save you from, though, is the dreaded "continutity break" or worse...the phrase "Because I wrote it that way". "BIWITW" makes your most trusting fans die a little inside, and is a rallying call for cynics to pelt you with rotten vegetable matter- especially because you have some fans who are both, which will net you hate mail. Readers WILL catch these things- there are more of them than there are of you, and fans nitpick endlessly on stuff like why vampires don't die under moonlight, if its reflected sunlight. Have answers ready, even if its a "because the properties of moondust filter out the particular wavelengths of the sun's rays that disrupt vampires magical energies" answer, or as a stopgap, directly address it in the universe as a "mystery of the universe" until you can think of something better. (sometimes fans will even do this for you, if you get lucky- fans noticed "the numbers" in Lost first, and the writers ran with it once it was pointed out, because it helped tie together some loose ends in the lore they were still pinning down at that point!)
Basically, fans love universes with some semblance of rules, even totally off the wall rules that you break by invoking "The One is not bound by the Matrix" type clauses. As long as there IS an explantion of some sort for why you can't feed the mogwai after midnight, and you stick to the rules you establish most of the time, you will have a fandom that will be willing to trust that you have some sort of plan for the story (most of the time). Think of the shows and stories that start violating their own rules too often or following them too closely, and you probably are thinking of a series that has jumped the shark. Obey your rules, but break them just enough to keep people guessing. This collection of rules and exceptions for your world is what you call an "invisible book"- the stuff that only the one or ones writing the story know, (or at least convincingly pretend to know) about that universe, and which is referenced only indirectly.-things like what Master Chief looks like with his helmet off, or what size unobtanium batteries you put in a lightsaber. I recomend you write anything significant, complicated, or particularly cool from your invisible book down, as the invisible versions are prone to getting forgotten and/or changing gradually. Having a detailed, visible-on-paper, invisible book is a good thing, if only because it can be a great source of ideas for bending the rules, like a trillionaire vampire spending vast amounts of money to buy, steal, or retrieve moon rocks with the goal of creating a waterproof moondust sunscreen so that he can move freely in daylight as long as he reapplies every 3 hours.
Hope that wall-o-text helps some people!
Next, I'm working on some stuff about page layout-
getting people to read your panels in the order you want, creating motion and action flow, how to work with panels without letting them run your comic, how to keep text from taking over completely... that sort of stuff.
I can't find the tutorial anymore, but when I first started I found one with a lot of the stuff I'm putting into the one I'm working on, and it was extremely useful. ^_^