Almost everyone grew up reading comic books and magazines, whether it’s the adventures of a superhero or a surreal story from the fiction of an artist’s mind. Almost everyone wants to draw his or her own comic book and gain some material or artistic value out of it, but not everyone knows where to start and how to sustain the project. Here are some tips to help you make your own comic book.

Writing Tips

All good comic books start with a written outline or a story that defines the course of the series or the anthology. Continuity is key especially in serialized comic books, so that readers and fans can follow the course of the story:

• Develop the plot. Unlike fiction, you can use the visual elements of the comic panels to describe the setting, so focus your creative energies on the plot.
• Flesh out the characters. Most comic books, particularly those that deal with superheroes, deal with the antagonistic relationship between the good guy and the bad guy (Get ideas on the Top Ten Comic book villains). One way to improve this characterization is to make your characters as multi-dimensional as possible.
• Strengthen the dialog. The flow of stories in comic books rely on speech balloons, which indicate a conversation taking place. When writing the script for your comic book, focus on the dialog, and the way it moves seamlessly across scenes.

Sketching Tips

The panels of comic books begin with good pencil or ink sketches that define the limits of color and texture:

• Repetition. For beginners to sketching, you can start by tracing over a picture that you have chosen as a model. Repeat the process until you have perfected your tracing skills. Once you’re very good with sketching, you can replace the tracing paper with thicker, more opaque paper, and move out of the tracing medium, and draw your own.
• Clean up your lines. While many comic books may look very good with rough lines, it still pays to keep your final sketch lines clean, especially if you’re going to color the spaces in between. If you’re going to scan your comic panel with a scanner, dirty and untidy lines become a chore to remove and to work with.

Coloring Tips

Coloring a comic book may be done by hand, or with the aid of imaging programs:

• Have a color scheme. The way a comic book looks depends on the artist’s preferences and the mood of the story. Some people prefer to leave the sketch lines as is, or use a monochromatic color scheme for the panels.
• Experiment with different media. The standard for the comics industry is to use computer imaging technology to color scanned comics panels, but you can also use traditional media like watercolor (Learn how to paint with water colors), acrylic, or crayon.

Making a comic book requires a lot of commitment, and many publishers are very keen on discovering new talents in the world of comic books and graphic novels. With these tips, you can be well on your way to becoming the next legend in the artistic realm of producing comic books.

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How to make a Comic Book

Drawing Comics : How to Make a Comic Book