Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

Resources

The Most Badass Tools for Inking Comics

by

I’ve talked about the tools of the trade in other videos, but this time I want to dig deep on some of the some of the classic tools for comics inking and show the different style in lines you get from a marker vs. a brush or a quill.

As a companion to this video artist Michael Johnson Curry (mikejc.com) has provided a handful of his pencils that you can print out and try your own inking skills on.

You can find the printouts at the bottom of the resources page.

Let me know if that’s helpful and I can see about maybe doing more of that type of stuff.

Amazon affiliate links to tools mentioned in this video:

Wacom Cintiq

Wacom board

Pentel Brush Pen

Sumi ink

Staedtler Lumocolor Marker

Winsor & Newton Cotman Water Colour Synthetic Brush – Round #4:

Sharpie markers

Posca white acrylic marker

Pentel Twist-Erase III Mechanical Pencil, 0.7mm

Two free one-sheets for freelance artists

by 3 Comments

As told in this article on Muddy Colors, artists Lauren Panepinto and Marc Sheff are putting together a book for freelance artists called Make Art Work – in their own words: “a guide that gives artists the most specific information in the simplest  language possible”. The two held an Art Business Bootcamp at Spectrum Live and some pretty valuable info came out of that, as these two one-sheets will tell.

“There’s not one absolute rule that works for everyone, but these one sheets  present a good place to start, and a general consensus on a lot of the questions  that we Art Directors hear repeated from con, to con, to panel, to email, etc.”

I agree completely! And hereby present you with the two PDF’s for your convenience:

ONESHEET-BOOTCAMP1-226x300

ONESHEET-BOOTCAMP1

ONESHEET-BOOTCAMP2-228x300

ONESHEET-BOOTCAMP2

You can learn more about the book here and sign up to the newsletter at http://www.drawnanddrafted.com/ and stay in the loop about their upcoming Kickstarter campaign for the book.

5 great online resources for comics creators

by Leave a Comment

online-comics-resources

You can spend hours, days, even months scouring the web for information or resources on how to make comics. Here are five good places to go (other than this site, of course!)

Jimzub.com

Comics writer Jim Zubkavich (Samurai Jack, Skullkickers) dishes out a ton of great advice for aspiring writers and artists, both on the craft and the business side of comics. I interviewed him for the podcast at New York Comic Con 2013 on why he creates these tutorials and gives away all this valuable information – and trust me, it’s gold.

Blambot.com

A good comics font can be hard to find – and even harder to create from scratch – but the folks at Blambot have done the hard work for you! Their fonts are not all free. Some are license, so you pay a one-time fee, usually $20-25. A good deal for something you could end up using daily.

iFanboy makecomics podcast

Short podcasts about the craft, featuring Andy Schmidt (no relation!) of Comics Experience. The podcast sound quality isn’t always great, but there’s a lot of food for thought for creators, both newbies and seasoned pros. I sat on a panel with Andy at this year’s SDCC and he was every bit as smart and nice in  person.

Remind blog

Writer/artist Jason Brubaker shares his experiences and tools for creating his comic reMIND. Brubaker started the site Making Comics as well, where I did a few guest posts, but I would recommend going to remindblog.com first and devouring all you can.

Posemanics

A great online resource for artists who don’t have access to life drawing classes is pose maniacs.com. There are tons of reference models on the site and a timer function for doing 30 second sketches from random images. There is even an app for it and the resource is FREE.