Thinking about comics

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I am a fan of web comics.  Lately I have been reading a bunch and feel inspired to make my own.  Except, I am a perfectionist so I want to do it right the first time, which makes it unlikely to happen.  Anyhow it is still fun to think about.

In the last couple weeks I looked up a number of finished comics and read them start to finish.  In the past I read a lot of finished manga.  I prefer finished works to continuing ones because I like to be able to read all the way to the end.  I grew up reading novels, so reading something and then coming to a sudden stop where I can read no more is frustrating for me.  I do read some ongoing comics too, although often I drop off after a while and have to come back and catch up later.

Part of the reason I want to do a comic is to improve my art and storytelling.  I recently finished reading Zap! www.zapcomic.com/ which I thoroughly enjoyed, and was impressed by the improvement in artwork.  I immediately started looking up guides on making webcomics and began to realize that Zap was a really well put together comic, compared to the little one that I had started in university.  It had separated panels, good story flow, nice speech bubbles, consistent font, etc.  I'm sure that is part of the reason I liked it, it also had an excellent story.  

That is the step that I seem to be stuck on.  I feel like I need to come up with a good story first. Beginning, middle, end.  Otherwise it will just get lost after the first bunch of pages like the one I started in university did, or I will lose interest in it because I'm not interested enough in the story.  That isn't the only thing though, there are lots of things I'm uncertain of.  Perfectionist here.

Or, I could just dive right in and try to do something, anything, just to get drawing again.  I actually enjoyed the thumbnail-like comic I did in university.  I managed to get 67 pages out of that one (so far) and I was quite pleased with myself for sticking with it for so long.  I am actually working on scanning it and putting in the dialog now.  I might even post what I have (as bad as it is).  It started out very very rough and ended up not too bad, but was never meant to be a finished product per-se, just a rough to get the story and shots down.

Anyhow, that is my story on comics.  I would love to make one, but probably never will... I should start with getting a proper sketchbook, I never got another proper one after I filled my last one...
Cheers,

~SunCat~
© 2014 - 2024 SunCatRune
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Yes, definitely write the story out first. We've been writing ours out in a screenplay format so basic action and all dialog is done. You'll find out how dumb some character's motivations are only when they open their mouths, so it's good to have more than JUST an outline so that those issues bubble to the surface.

Good news is that you can still work out the character design while writing the story, so it's not like you are doing nothing but writing. :)