Comics for Beginners

How to Write & Draw Comics

storytelling

Steal With Intention

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In his great book Steal like an artist Austin Kleon recommends stealing from various sources in order to create your own unique artistic expression. I wholly endorse this message! But how do I practically implement this advice?

I recently tried out another form of stealing. I’m writing a YA novel in between other gigs and interruptions and often find it hard to get back in the groove, when I finally have the time to work on my story. It’s easy to feel stuck or disconnected from the story.

So I started stealing with intention.

Every time I watch a movie, read a comic or a chapter in the kids book I’m reading aloud to my daughter, I look for one thing I can lift for my own story. It could be anything; a particular conflict (mom vs. daughter), piece of clothing (someone wearing a Nirvana t-shirt), an activity (building a treehouse or playing cards), a tic or a trait. I’ll ask myself what this could be in my story. And like the kids in the story building a tree house out of old planks, something new will start to take shape in my story, even though some of the raw materials is from somewhere else. It also keeps my mind sharp and awake, not just consuming a tv-show or a museum exhibition. I’m looking for something to steal.

You too can try setting this as a sort of dogma rule for yourself, to always look for one thing that you can implement. Treat it like a game! If you can find just one thing to steal from a movie, it can be a bad movie and you still win.

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Step-by-Step Guide: My Comics Process

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This is my next graphic novel project! Filling in the blanks should be no biggie, right? Well, there’s a little more to it than that.

I recently posted this picture on Instagram and Facebook that got a lot of likes – and a lot of questions! So I thought I’d elaborate a bit on how I actually tackle the creation of a comic or graphic novel. I go into detail with certain elements in my premium 10-video tutorial series, but these are the basic steps I go through every time.

1: Script

Having a finished script before you start drawing increases your chance of actually finishing with about 3000 percent. The first 2 videos of the premium series covers this (and those episodes are free). Sometimes I’ll get a script from another writer but I often work off my own or have to break the story down into pages.

2: Thumbnails

This is little scribbles just to get a grip of the page breakdowns. I don’t neccesarily do it for every page but it can be very helpful. The more I plan before I start drawing, the more smoothly the rest of the process. There is a podcast episode about making those hard choices here.

3: Rough sketches

Once I know sort of what the layout of the page will look like, I can start rough sketching pictures. As you’ll notice, this is bare bones storytelling, just enough for others to make out what is going on. No more, no less. I usually sketch on half pages, not full size. No need for bigger format when I’m not doing details – in fact the smaller format often helps in creating a clear layout.

4: Borders and lettering

After scanning my rough sketches, I put them in an InDesign document. If it’s an issue of a comic, I’ll make seperate 22-page files that stick to the same template. I’ll start by creating a standard border for the entire project and just plunk that in between all the frames. Then I’ll put the lettering in where it needs to go. Please note, that this is not the final document! I can adjust the lettering once I have the finished art. For full breakdown of this process go here.

5: Borders and balloons

Using a print-out of my now lettered rough sketches, I am ready to draw the actual pages. BUT, since I might need my borders and speech balloons in a clean format, I do the boring work of inking that part first. This is what the image I posted on Instagram portrayed – I can see why there was some confusion as to how I actually worked!

After I’ve traced the borders and balloons on the board I intend to do the rest of the artwork on, I scan the whole thing. Why? I’ll explain in step #8.

6: Sketching

Using my rough sketches as a guide, I’ll sketch the pages going into more detail, especially on backgrounds and stuff. A picture might change from my original ideas, but I always stick within the frames I already decided on. There’s a video of that process here.

7: Inking

Using a lightbox I trace my skectched pages on the boards that already has the borders and balloons. I can adjust the images a bit if needed. Sometimes I do painted art and other times I ink with black markers. There’s a video of me inking a page of Thomas Alsop here.

I don’t need to worry about paiting outside the borders in this stage because I’ve already scanned the clean pages with just balloons and borders, and no art.

8: Scanning and clean-up.

Remember when I said I might need the borders clean? This is the step. I used to I scan my inked pages and clean up mistakes where I painted outside the frames or over speech balloons. Now I just use the already scanned borders. I just smack my clean borders over the finished art in Photoshop, turn the opacity down a bit so I can see what I’m doing and adjust the corners. It took me a while to figure this out, because sometimes a scanner will skew things a little bit. But I discovered that if I do a “free transform” and focus on the four outer corners of the borders, the rest will sort itself out.

Once the two layers match up, I’ll select all the white within the frames on the top layer and delete that. Then I turn the opacity of the layer back up to 100% and viola! I now have a layer with nice, clean borders and balloons on top, and whatever mistakes (painting outside the borders) I made are hidden underneath. I flatten the file and export it, usually as a high-res tiff file.

8.1: Coloring (optional)

I’m not gonna go into detail here, but you might want to check out this post on coloring in Photoshop.

9: Repeal and replace!

Admitted, I don’t really call it that. But I do have to go through my already lettered InDesign file and delete all the border blocks and replace my rough sketch with the finished art. Some adjusting to the lettering is usually neccesary but then I have the entire book or issue ready to send to the graphic designer or export as a PDF directly for print.

10: Celebrate

I usually skip this step, honestly. But having typed up this post and seeing how much work goes into creating a graphic novel, I feel like I should make a point of this going forward.

Hopefully this answered some of your questions and gave you a few ideas to implement in your own process. Please share this post if you found it helpful!

 

 

Bonus Video: A Most Productive Year

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If you thought I was lying on a beach somewhere, you are thoroughly mistaken! Here’s part of what I’ve been up to this past year or so. Probably the busiest time of my life ever – and still is. Watch the video to find out why.

ProFile: Lukas Ketner

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Lukas-Ketner-ProFile

Lukas Ketner is the artist and co-creator of Witch Doctor, the hit launch title for Robert Kirkman’s Skybound imprint at Image Comics. He was a 2009 nominee for the Russ Manning Award for his Witch Doctor work, which has earned praise from fans and creators alike. Other work includes stories for Dark Horse Comics’ Creepy Comics and Supersized: Strange Tales From a Fast-Food Culture, along with covers for BOOM! Studios’ Hellraiser title. He has twice won entry into the Communication Arts Illustration Annual for his album artwork. He survived a successful full-body transplant from his hometown in Anchorage, AK to Portland, OR in 2000 where he currently resides. You can check out his work and drop him a line on Facebook.

What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?

For me, it was the realization that I could tell stories as well, if not better than prose and film — both of which I tried my hand at, and NO you may not see the results, they’re awful 😉 For me, comics can tell a story as well (if not better) than any other medium, and all it requires is ink, paper, and time. Sure, money helps, but that’s an obstacle that’s easier to overcome in the digital age to reach an audience.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?

Well, challenging and frustrating aren’t always the same thing, although they do overlap quite a bit 😉 For me story flow and lining up shots is very challenging and non-intuitive for me, but very fun and rewarding, much like solving a puzzle. It’s frustrating when I’m inking that same page and I can’t do it fast enough because I’ve added detail to areas that don’t need as much attention as I’ve given them. Then, that elegant puzzle I solved previously turns into a 2-3 day grind that’s totally unnecessary— comics pages shouldn’t take that long for a monthly horror book. It’s a mistake that I’m slowly making less and less, but it still happens. I really admire artists whose styles are more economical, but still great to look at. My studio-mates Jonathan Case and Steve Leiber come to mind, along with Sean Murphy. Murphy does have a very detailed style, but you’ll notice it’s rarely more detail than necessary to make the image really sing.

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?

A rule I learned in design school, “Very Little, Very Well Done.” If you’re trying to get noticed, do a “done-in-one”, the comics equivalent of a short film. Make it one issue tops to start with, and NO cliffhangers. It’s got to be a full story, start to finish, no “prologues” or “to be continued”. That doesn’t mean it can’t take place in a world that you’d like to explore further in the future, but it needs a satisfying conclusion, and maybe a hint that there’s more story to tell (if that’s relevant). Print it up! Put it online for free. Put it everywhere that people can see it. You can sell it at shows to try to recoup some expenses, but don’t expect to make a profit. It’s proof that you can do the work and do it well; that’s what’s important. Get some interest behind you, and as much feedback as you can possibly get from editors and other successful creators. Maybe do another, again, done-in-one applying what you’ve learned. Why such small bites? Because you don’t want your first work to be a 12-issue epic, and then find out via feedback that you’re doing it wrong story-wise after you’ve put out two issues of hard work, and editors need to see that you can complete a story in a satisfying manner. I guess that’s a bit long for ‘one piece of advice’, but there it is 🙂

 

ProFile: Jason Brubaker

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ProFile-Jason-BrubakerJason Brubaker began his career in graphic novels in 2011 with the Xeric Award winning reMIND which also got on the Great Graphic Novels for Teens list 2012. In 2014 he quit his full-time job as a Visual Development artist at Dreamworks Animation to pursue publishing his own comics. You can support Jason’s work here: patreon.com/jasonbrubaker

What made you decide to work in the medium of comics?

I grew up loving comics and always wanted to draw sequential art. But when I started working as a professional artist I put aside comics because I thought they were for kids. 10 years later I was convinced to give comics a try again and I’m glad I did because now I realize how powerful and effective they are at telling stories and getting a message across. I love comics because they are the perfect medium for solo artist/writers to tell their stories.

What part of the process is the most challenging or frustrating to you?

I think the most challenging part is the marketing part, or social media part. These are just so unnatural for me as an artist and sometimes I just want to ignore it all and just work on the books but at the end of the day I need to put my stuff out there in a social way to that others can see it and respond to it.

If you could give one piece of advice to an aspiring comics creator, what would that be?

Make sure you really believe in what you are trying to say in your story. It takes a lot of commitment to get a full comic story finished and if you don’t believe your own message then it’s going to be near impossible to put in all the work to finish it and it will also be hard to put your best work into it too.

Writing the first draft

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plan your story with post-its
Using post-it notes or index cards can be very helpful in planning your story

When you’re writing your script, it’s important to take the pressure off and ban your inner critic from meddling.

Writing a script for my comics was the lesson that took my process to the next level. And after I learned to write a script, the next most important lesson was to think of my script in terms of drafts. After all, if it’s a first draft, you don’t have to be Alan Moore right from the go!

Here are some pointers for getting that first draft done:

  • Empty your head as fast as you can. Get it on paper, beginning, middle and end. You can always change the particulars later.
  • Perfection is not what you’re going for. It’s a first draft and it will be edited later! Don’t worry about grammar or mull over character names or location description, just get the story beats down.
  • Resist the urge to show your writing to anyone before the first draft is finished. Stephen King talks about writing with the door closed or door open in his book On Writing (which I can highly recommend). This means the first draft is yours and yours alone. If you have people critizing or asking the wrong questions it can totally derail your process. Write your first draft with the door closed.
  • Think through scenes before you sit down to write them. Take notes or just run through the scene in your head. The good thing is you can do this anywhere, anytime. And it makes the actual writing SO much easier.
  • Break it down into manageable parts if you feel looking at your entire story is overwhelming. 1st act, 2nd act, 3rd, act, individual scenes. Decide how many scenes is necessary to get from point A to point B and deal with each scene as its own little story, with beginning, middle and end.
  • Always be moving forward. Force yourself to get to the end before you go back and change things in what you’ve already written. Take notes of what you want to change but save the editing for the second draft.
  • Know the ending before you write the beginning. No, you don’t need to know the particulars but have an idea, a destination. At least know if it ends on a happy note or if it’s a tragic journey you’re setting out on.
  • Bonus tip: When you DO get to the end and write that the way it’s supposed to be, go back and rewrite the beginning so you can put in little clues about the ending!

Now, as I say in episode 2 of the tutorial videos, it’s time to put your script in a drawer and forget about it!

Related video: Writing your script