Make Your Own Comic Book: Getting started
A lot of would be Cartoonists fail to produce anything substantial - myself included - and I always wondered why that is. We love to draw, We love comic books, and yet every time we set out to try and make one, we fail. This leaves us asking ourselves, Why is it so hard to make your own comic book? I thought about it and to make a comic book, one first has to understand what comic books are all about. Recently I reread my edition of Scott McCloud's Understanding comics to help my understanding. Basically comics are the pairing of words and images in such away as to tell a story. The images are paired in an order that tells a story sequentially. For a better understanding I suggests reading Scott McCloud's book Understanding comics.
- For those asking How to make a manga the principles should transfer over to your feild as well.
So A comic(book) consists mainly of two parts the story, and the artwork(pictures). Without one the other elements fall apart. Of the two the most important aspect is the story. Without a solid story the comic will flop. This is true even for graphic novels without words. - Gon comes to mind - If story is the most important element how do we make the best possible story?
This is rather like asking ourselves how does one eat an elephant? The answer of course is one bite at a time.To work on making a viable comic one has to take it one step at a time. Sounds simple and it seems that way for some, but for a lot of us - yes myself included - we rush head long into our projects without first fleshing them out properly. So the absolute first part in getting a comic off the ground has to be in developing the story.
A lot of would be Cartoonists fail to produce anything substantial - myself included - and I always wondered why that is. We love to draw, We love comic books, and yet every time we set out to try and make one, we fail. This leaves us asking ourselves, Why is it so hard to make your own comic book? I thought about it and to make a comic book, one first has to understand what comic books are all about. Recently I reread my edition of Scott McCloud's Understanding comics to help my understanding. Basically comics are the pairing of words and images in such away as to tell a story. The images are paired in an order that tells a story sequentially. For a better understanding I suggests reading Scott McCloud's book Understanding comics.
- For those asking How to make a manga the principles should transfer over to your feild as well.
So A comic(book) consists mainly of two parts the story, and the artwork(pictures). Without one the other elements fall apart. Of the two the most important aspect is the story. Without a solid story the comic will flop. This is true even for graphic novels without words. - Gon comes to mind - If story is the most important element how do we make the best possible story?
This is rather like asking ourselves how does one eat an elephant? The answer of course is one bite at a time.To work on making a viable comic one has to take it one step at a time. Sounds simple and it seems that way for some, but for a lot of us - yes myself included - we rush head long into our projects without first fleshing them out properly. So the absolute first part in getting a comic off the ground has to be in developing the story.
I'll be tackling story development in my next few posts. Stay Tuned.
