Guide on creating your own web comic

Spoiler: All you really need is your desire to create a web comic

Last week I wrote about why I draw daily webcomics, and today I gonna give you some tips on how you can create your own online comics series in a few simple steps.

Let’s go:

1 — Come up with the comics idea

Everything starts with a good idea. Before you sit to draw, you have to decide on these questions:

• will you comic strips be real life based or completely fictional?
• will the episodes be related with one another, or will every piece have an isolated plot?
• who will be the main character(s) of your comic strips?

There are several types of web comics, and yours might belong to one of the following categories:

• funny/sarcastic (ex. Diego Draws Butts, Mr Lovenstein)
• political (Cartoonmovement)
• romantic (Catana, YEHUDA DeVIR)
• horror (Silent Horror, Dark Box)
• slice of life (Plamondon, Annet Planet, and mine of course=) _

Many comic series are a combination of two or more genres, like Deep Dark Fears — real based comics episodes about different irregular fears (slice of life + a bit of horror), or world famous Sarah’s Scribbles — funny stories taking place in a daily life (funny + slice of life).

Taking the slice of life genre as a basis for your comics series is always the best strategy.

You will never experience the lack of ideas as life keeps throwing you new ideas every day.

Also, this sort of comics talks to the audience and finds a good response within people’s hearts as most of us face similar situations in life, and we all love reading about ourselves more than about anything else.

2 — Select the tools

Today, most cartoonists draw digitally using graphic tablet or iPad. It makes the process more flexible and less time-consuming as you can make as many iterations as needed, and you feel free to experiment with colors, lines and styles.

It’s also cheaper in the long run, especially if you already have all the hard and software needed for drawing (like if you are a designer or illustrator, and are already using al of these for your job). Art supplies, especially good ones, are quite expensive, and the worst thing about them is that they often need to be replenished.

However, I prefer traditional drawing. It gives me more control as I feel more freely when hand drawing. It’s also more satisfying in my opinion. And finally I’m really art supplies addict.

So I draw and color comics by hand, and then digitize them and do some post-production in Photoshop before posting.

If you’re starting from scratch, it might be easier for you to start with traditional drawing as you’ll need only a pad of paper or as sketchbook and something to draw with (like a pen, a pencil, a marker etc.).

Here’s a piece of my comics drawing process (sorry for poor quality of video):

You can expand the arsenal of your tools later, and in the very beginning you’ll have a lot of space to experimenting.

3 — Define the drawing style

Even if you’re not really good in drawing as was I in the beginning, you can start drawing a comic any moment. Just keep it as simple as possible.

Some of the best comics series are incredibly simple like Poorly Drawn Lines, Cyanide & Happiness, Things in Squares and a lot of other.

So do not be obsessed with your drawing skills. You’d better pay attention to improving your writing and storytelling artistry first.

Scott McCloud in his book ‘Understanding comics’ explains that readers are easier to relate themselves with a very simply drawn character than with a detailed and realistic ones.

That’s why many comic artists draw their antagonists simpler than protagonists, so that the reader could relate closer with the main character and felt distanced from the villain.

4 — Create a good story

I already mentioned in the previous paragraph you don’t have to be an artist to start your comics.

Moreover, good comics is not about drawing at all.

The key to a great comics is a great story, a catchy plot with unexpected twists. The drawing quality is far from the first place in this list.

Four-panels comic strip is a good point to start as you have enough space to develop a plot, and you’re still limited so it’s harder to spoil the story.

People today mostly scroll over the content, and if your story is too complicated, most of the readers will not read it till the end.

But a four-panels comic strip is very likely to be read and understood by a big amount of people. It’s also quite convenient for you to plan a plot:

• 1st panel: Setting and characters. Here you introduce the readers to the situation.
• 2nd panel: Story development. Something catchy and intriguing happens, which fuels the readers’ interest and pushes them to read on.
• 3rd panel: Plot heightening. Situation gets to its highest point.
• 4th panel: Ending. Situation resolves.

Here’s a piece of my comics page created according to this pattern:

There are a lot of ways to develop a good story, and they largely depend on your comics genre. I will not be giving any universal tips on storytelling today, but I’ll pay more attention to this topic in one of the further articles.

5 — Show your work

Don’t wait to become perfect cartoonist before you start posting your comics online.

Getting in contact with your audience is one of the best ways to master your skills. It will allow you to find out how the audience reacts to your comics, what they like or don’t like. You’ll get a lot of insights on what could be improved.

I also recommend you sharing your comics strips within online cartoonists communities so that you could get a feedback from your mates.

Sharing your work will also stimulate you to create it consistently. As soon as you get the first readers, you’ll feel obliged to give them more content on regular basis.

Finally, after posting several pieces of comics, you’ll notice a consistent pattern of who is reading your comics. Who is your real target audience.

It will help you to get in touch with the right people later, when you’ll start promoting your webcomics purposefully. And also, since you will know who’s reading you, you will understand netter what they want to read. It will be easier for you to choose plots and topics for your further strips.

6 — Read other’s webcomics

Actually, this tip is supposed to be the first one, as to create something good you should first fill up with a worthy content created by others.

Good writer starts with a good readers. Good cartoonist is the most devoted webcomics fan.

Find several web comics you really enjoy. Read as many of them as you can. Try to figure out what exactly you like about them.

It’s OK if you will imitate your favorite cartoonists for the first time. All the great masters started with imitation.

Good artists copy; great artists steal. (Pavlo Picasso)

In a while, you will develop your own style, though it would partially consist of everything you saw and read before. But namely the unique mixture of your interests will make it special because the combination will be unique.

Do not shelve the idea of creating your own web comics series. Start right now! And share your comics with me, I’m sure I’ll enjoy reading them=)

Thanks for reading and I’ll be happy if you join me in this journey. I post comics daily:

• In English — Sasha’s comics on Instagram
• In Ukrainian — Sasha’s comics on Facebook
• and in Russian — Telegram channel for Sasha’s comics

Follow me here on Medium, too. I’ll keep updating my story and share my discoveries and insights.