Choose a concept. Comics don’t have to be funny or about superheroes. It can be anything you want. Just about any story - long or short, happy or sad, silly or kind of serious - can be told in comic form.
Write your stories and make thumbnails for it. This doesn’t need to be a full script based on what you’ve written. Thumbnails are small, sketchy versions of each page. Use the thumbnails for your “plot breakdown” - decide how much of the story you will tell on each page and in each panel. Think about how to compose each panel and how to make your point to the reader. Don’t be afraid to try lots of different thumbnails, organizing your story in different ways. Since they’re small and sketchy, you won’t have to spend as much time on them as you would a fully drawn page.
# Practice drawing the characters, locations, and objects that will be in your story. The pros call these “model sheets.” The more you practice, the more consistent the drawings will be, making it easier for your reader to “read” your artwork. Making sure you know how each character looks from all angles will help your readers identify them, even if there’s a lot of action around them on your pages.
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Look at the flow of the story in your final thumbnails and place the text in each panel. This includes dialogue, thoughts, narration, and sound effects. You may want to write this out in a script.
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Draw the panel borders for your final pages. Use your final thumbnails as a guide. This can be loose at this stage, as you begin to place your final artwork in the space of the page. You may decide something from the thumbnail needs to be slightly larger, or smaller, or be emphasized more or less. This is the time to make those last second decisions.
Lightly write in the lettering. You may be tempted to start drawing first, but you need to make sure there’s room for your text boxes and word or thought balloons. Planning the placement of your copy now will save you many headaches later.
Sketch in the drawings. Make sure that everything in each panel is clear and works the way you want it to. Are drawings crowding the lettering so it’s smushed into one corner and hard to read? Is a word balloon covering an important detail in your artwork? Is everything clear and easy to understand? This is called “penciling.” Try to use a sharpened pencil so people can read your comic. Maybe a mechanical pencil would be good. Some artists use non-repro blue pencils to rough in their characters and panel designs. The reason is that this very light blue pencil is invisible to photocopiers and black and white printing processes, so there’s no need to erase them later. Then you can refine the artwork with your pencil. Work light - any lines that overlap your ink work will show in the final comic pages.
Finish up your pencils. Add details to the characters, objects, and backgrounds.
Ink your finished pages if desired. Some artists just leave the work in pencils (“Herobear and the Kid” is one example). Most comics, however, are inked over the finished pencils. Use whatever you feel most comfortable with - or consider handing the pages off to someone else to be inked (like the big companies do). Using Penstix, Rapidograph, or quills, brushes and India ink will bring life to the work. Pay close attention to line weight - generally, outside or defining lines are thicker, while details like facial lines and fabric wrinkles are lighter and more delicate. Ink in the lines of the borders.
Set your type or ink your letters in. Lettering is extremely important - it tells half of your story, while the pictures tell the other half. Hand lettering can be time consuming and difficult, but it looks superb when done by a talented calligrapher. Use pencil to rough in your letters - nothing looks worse than running out of room in a word balloon. Or consider using Word or something similar, and a font like Comic Sans to make your letters perfect and legible. Don’t forget to spell check!!
Continue doing this with every page until the comic is finished.
