How to create a graphic novel/ comic?

[Dark Raven]

Has anyone ever created a graphic novel or comic and had it printed/ published?

If so, did you manually draw everything out on hard copy storyboards or did you do it online?

Or did you draw individual pictures and then later assemble it using some kind of program where you could place each picture in a panel?

What kinds of computer programs are out there where you can create advanced comic layouts and panels? Can anyone recommend anything?

And should each picture be much larger than will be finally printed so that it can be scaled appropriately?

Any helpful suggestions appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Anita18]

Published a short comic once in an anthology. Hand-drawn/painted panels laid out and cleaned up in Photoshop. From what I understand, this is pretty standard. They recommend you use at least 300dpi. 600 dpi is preferable. You don't need to scale it up in dimension as long as it's high resolution.

Never did a comic again because of how much work it was. My writer is networking for her normal career stuff and handing out our old business cards because she ran out of her usual ones. And now people are asking why we didn't do more comics. It's a lot of work and we weren't motivated for a second round.

So good luck!

 

[Dark Raven]

Thanks for the response Anita.

When you say it was a lot of work and you weren't motivated for a follow up, is that because you didn't see enough returns on the first one? If you did get a much larger response and knew there was more of a possibility of success, wouldn't you still try it again even if it is a lot of work?

Do you have an online link to your work?

Also, when you say you hand painted the pictures, was that using gouache or another medium? I could do gouache, but I fear it would take too long for so many pictures so Photoshop might ultimately be a better solution, especially if I need to correct things.

Did you lay out the panels manually in photoshop just placing them wherever you saw fit? I could do that, but would like to have a program that would allow me to change the layout very quickly and drop pictures into it.

I came across Manga Studio in my searches today. I don't know if this would be the kind of thing that would suit my needs. I haven't ever used it before so I would have to try it out. There's a free demo for 30 days. I wonder if that would speed up the process at all?

Was everything lettered by computer?

Thanks

 

[Anita18]

Thanks for the response Anita.

When you say it was a lot of work and you weren't motivated for a follow up, is that because you didn't see enough returns on the first one? If you did get a much larger response and knew there was more of a possibility of success, wouldn't you still try it again even if it is a lot of work?

Do you have an online link to your work?

Also, when you say you hand painted the pictures, was that using gouache or another medium? I could do gouache, but I fear it would take too long for so many pictures so Photoshop might ultimately be a better solution, especially if I need to correct things.

Did you lay out the panels manually in photoshop just placing them wherever you saw fit? I could do that, but would like to have a program that would allow me to change the layout very quickly and drop pictures into it.

I came across Manga Studio in my searches today. I don't know if this would be the kind of thing that would suit my needs. I haven't ever used it before so I would have to try it out. There's a free demo for 30 days. I wonder if that would speed up the process at all?

Was everything lettered by computer?

Thanks

Let's just put it this way - it was mostly for fun and we had other things we decided to put our energies into. My writer is now a lawyer/aspiring screenwriter and I'm taking classes for graphic design and want to get into the more technical side of web design. None of us harbored any real dreams for fame and glory getting into comics, although we did get positive feedback for that strip. Unfortunately our website domain went defunct recently so I can't show you anything unless I email it to you.

A number of people do comics for fun, but if you don't have the energy or motivation to really work on it, it mostly turns out crappy. And we're both too perfectionist to let our names get onto anything crappy, so it's mostly nonexistent instead. Nonexistent is better than crappy, in our eyes. And we're not the Type A personalities who can do a billion things well, we really devote our energies into one or two things that we want to pursue. Writing while networking for law while working a full-time job is enough for her, and taking design classes while making websites while working a full-time job is enough for me.

So it's not that we didn't see returns or positive feedback, it was just that we weren't internally driven to keep going. You really need that to make it in this business, let alone writing/drawing your own graphic novel. It was enough work doing a 7-pg spread, but you really do have to be internally motivated to do your own graphic novel. We simply had other things we wanted to do.

At any rate, I was the artist so I can tell you what I did for the art. Although, our comic was a retelling of the Mulan story so I chose to do Chinese watercolor painting for it. Not a very typical comic style, so...yeah. We had a very specific style in mind, so I painted everything by hand, and then lay it out in Photoshop. My writer had pretty nice handwriting so she lettered it and I laid it out in Photoshop.

I didn't brainstorm the layout in Photoshop, that takes too long. I think most people still do most of their brainstorming on paper. It would have been completely unwieldy for me at any rate, since I painted the panels in pieces and had to be sure what the entire page would look like before embarking on painting it.

From what I've read, most comic artists pencil on paper and then scan it into Photoshop and do all the inking/coloring there. (Some artists even simply darken their penciling in Photoshop and call that inking. Depends on the style you're going for.) This makes the most sense, especially if you have a pen and tablet. If you don't, get one, especially if you want to work on art on the computer. I mean, if you want to work in Adobe Illustrator, you can get away with not using one, but if you want to draw or color like you're using a brush, you neeeed a pen and tablet. There's no way to replicate it otherwise with a mouse. You can get a used one on Craigslist for pretty cheap, they last a long time. My Wacom Intuos2 died on me after like, 5 years and I managed to get a used Intuos3 that same weekend for under $200 USD.

If you want the specific look that gouache provides, it's a lot easier to do it by hand and then scan it. You can always clean it up in Photoshop, but it's difficult to get the distinctive hand-painted look without actually hand-painting it.

So yeah, short answer is, depends on the art style you want or is required by your story. There are still people out there who do everything by hand because they like the process. It takes a long time, but if you're internally driven, you'll do what it takes.

 

[Dark Raven]

Thanks again for the response. Now that you mention the Wacom tablet, I think we've had a discussion on this before - you advised me on it about a year ago. I'm still planning to get one eventually, as I kind of got sidetracked before and didn't end up getting one.

Did you use watercolour paper for the Chinese watercolour painting? Normally, that ought to be obvious, but I wondered if when scanned into a computer the texture of the paper would show up so you might've wanted something smoother. Do artists use watercolour paper for Gouache for illustration work? That's going to cost a lot for each page if they do use special paper.

I think I would prefer to letter the speech bubbles on the computer so that it's easy to make a correction if necessary without it being set in stone on the actual comic panel.

 

[jaymes_e06]

I have never but always wanted to publish a GN that was loosely based on my Aunt's life and times as a US marshall trainee (that was plucked to become a cia operative) but has to leave her family and friends including a daughter to do so.

 

[Anita18]

Thanks again for the response. Now that you mention the Wacom tablet, I think we've had a discussion on this before - you advised me on it about a year ago. I'm still planning to get one eventually, as I kind of got sidetracked before and didn't end up getting one.

Did you use watercolour paper for the Chinese watercolour painting? Normally, that ought to be obvious, but I wondered if when scanned into a computer the texture of the paper would show up so you might've wanted something smoother. Do artists use watercolour paper for Gouache for illustration work? That's going to cost a lot for each page if they do use special paper.

I think I would prefer to letter the speech bubbles on the computer so that it's easy to make a correction if necessary without it being set in stone on the actual comic panel.

I did use regular watercolor paper for the background (buildings and such), and rice paper for the characters because I wanted the style to be different. The texture was part of the look I was going for. If your gouache isn't too light you could easily take that out with Photoshop by changing the curves.

But yes, watercolor paper is expensive. I'm taking an illustration class right now and our teacher (a professional illustrator) does most of his gouache work on vellum-textured bristol paper. It's still pricey, but not nearly as bad as watercolor paper.

And yes, the cost of paper is probably partly why people prefer to color on the computer now. There's a program called Corel Painter that can replicate the process of painting better than Photoshop, but that's an additional expense. IIRC Corel Painter is used mostly by digital illustrators. People doing concept art and fine art on the computer, etc. I still know of digital painters who work solely in Photoshop, and have gotten used to the "can't rotate the canvas" thing.

But yes, you NEED a tablet for that stuff.

What sort of graphic novel/comic are you planning on working on? I suggest deciding on a style and brainstorming what the panels are going to look like overall, before you start painting or getting into it in any sort of "finalized" manner. I'm lazy and I never want to redo something because I thought it looked bad after it was finished.

 

[Dark Raven]

I did use regular watercolor paper for the background (buildings and such), and rice paper for the characters because I wanted the style to be different. The texture was part of the look I was going for. If your gouache isn't too light you could easily take that out with Photoshop by changing the curves.

But yes, watercolor paper is expensive. I'm taking an illustration class right now and our teacher (a professional illustrator) does most of his gouache work on vellum-textured bristol paper. It's still pricey, but not nearly as bad as watercolor paper.

And yes, the cost of paper is probably partly why people prefer to color on the computer now. There's a program called Corel Painter that can replicate the process of painting better than Photoshop, but that's an additional expense. IIRC Corel Painter is used mostly by digital illustrators. People doing concept art and fine art on the computer, etc. I still know of digital painters who work solely in Photoshop, and have gotten used to the "can't rotate the canvas" thing.

But yes, you NEED a tablet for that stuff.

What sort of graphic novel/comic are you planning on working on? I suggest deciding on a style and brainstorming what the panels are going to look like overall, before you start painting or getting into it in any sort of "finalized" manner. I'm lazy and I never want to redo something because I thought it looked bad after it was finished.

Thanks for the ideas. I'm *considering* whether to work on the art for a graphic novel idea a friend has written but probably can't reveal the concept, although I could say it's not set in modern times and isn't a superhero thing. I have pretty much a free reign as far as the illustration style, although it will have to look as good as anything out there at the moment.

I don't think I would have the budget to do it on special art paper though as that would definitely be too pricey. It probably would have to be done digitally just for cost and convenience's sake, although I would still hand draw the sketches.

I wonder though what readers generally prefer? The painted, photorealistic style of someone like Alex Ross, or the more hand drawn style which is just coloured in photoshop, which you would find in most comics? I'm guessing the photorealistic style takes longer and is more effort but is also more impressive? However, as a traditional painter I'm probably more used to that method than trying to colour a line drawing in photoshop. I suppose it could be a halfway style between the two though.

EDIT: I just looked on my computer and I already seem to have Corel Painter on there!

 

[Anita18]

Look at the story and see what it needs. That should be your answer. Forget about what other people like to see. Then you'll just end up with stuff that looks like everyone else's. The only way you'll differentiate yourself that way is by being THE BEST, and let's be honest, Alex Ross and Lee Bermejo have got that covered and nobody is taking them down. So you might as well be different.

To be honest, nobody really expects a comic to look like a Chinese painting, but ours caught people's attention since it was different.

I'll say, many superhero comic readers don't give indie comics a second look, but many of them are very famous in the literary world and are taken much more seriously than superhero comics, even if their art can be very childlike and simple. Maus and Persepolis come to mind first. My sister went to Stanford (a very renowned university in the US, on par with Harvard) and they read Maus in their Holocaust class. It is taken VERY seriously, and the style is so simple that almost anyone can do it. Not everyone could have come up with the way it was written/drawn the way Art Spiegelman did (which makes it so special), but nearly anyone would have been able to draw Maus.

In fact, the comics that have bowled me over the most are Chris Ware's. He basically only uses geometric shapes that he painstakingly hand-draws, and liberally uses hand-drawn typography, but it is GORGEOUS on the page. It's even more astounding to me since I've been studying graphic design more. Chris Ware's work is like typography in comic form. His graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth is absolutely devastating. I've known people who literally cannot get through it since it is too painful to read, even with the very stylized art.

But when it comes to a more painterly style, have you seen the work in the Flight series? It was the first comic that I saw where I thought comics could really and truly be art. Many of the artists are originally illustrators, so they have a very beautiful illustrative quality that stands out from the typical inked superhero look, and yet isn't photorealistic. You should really check it out.

 

[Dark Raven]

What is the typical font that is used in comics and graphic novels for dialogue?

Also, although Photoshop comes with some standard speech balloon custom shapes they aren't very flexible because their tails can't be moved around. Is there a more flexible version which has this, so that you can move it around wherever you like, and also has more balloon shapes?

 

[Nevaratoiel]

I think 'comic sans ms' would be a good font for comics. But if you look at sites where you can download fonts you'll probably find more suitable fonts.

 

[Spider-Who?]

As for font, anything sans serif will work. If you want it to have a hand written feel, go to 1001fonts.com. They have a massive collection of fonts for free.

As for your other questions, I don't have time to offer any insight right now, but will later in the day.

 

[Anita18]

What is the typical font that is used in comics and graphic novels for dialogue?

Also, although Photoshop comes with some standard speech balloon custom shapes they aren't very flexible because their tails can't be moved around. Is there a more flexible version which has this, so that you can move it around wherever you like, and also has more balloon shapes?

You can find shape packages for Photoshop quite easily. I'm signed up for various design newsletters, and they often have free shapes or actions or Photoshop brush packages available. You just add them to the Plugins folder and voila, they show up on your Photoshop palettes.

I Googled "Photoshop speech bubbles" and found this in literally three seconds: http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/photoshopdownloads/ss/shapes1_9.htm I bet you could find better ones if you searched a little more.

I'm not aware of any programs (besides programs built ONLY to lay out rudimentary comic strips, possibly) that would give you one-touch flexibility when it comes to changing the tail directions of speech bubbles. What I would do is rasterize the shape (once you fit the text inside), separate the tail from the bubble using the Marquee tool, and move it around yourself. Would take me 2 seconds, and is much easier than futzing with a 100% flexible tail.

Photoshop >>>> everything else when it comes to general design/art/photo work. The only thing that would surpass it is Corel Painter, and ONLY if you're doing digital painting.

I think 'comic sans ms' would be a good font for comics. But if you look at sites where you can download fonts you'll probably find more suitable fonts.

As a graphic designer...for the love of God...PLEASE NO COMIC SANS!!!! It's VERY common and thoughtlessly used when people want a comic-like look, but it's recognizable on sight and people know immediately that it's not hand-drawn.

Anything sans serif will work, yeah. Dafont.com is also a good resource. I'm a stickler for IP laws though, so you want something that at least doesn't say "For personal/non-commercial use only."

 

[Spider-Who?]

I FULLY agree with Anita. NO COMIC SANS. You'll be laughed at by any designer, publisher, fellow artist, etc. If there is one font that the design community wishes was never created, Comic Sans is it, so just delete that font from your computer.

What kinds of computer programs are out there where you can create advanced comic layouts and panels? Can anyone recommend anything?

Photoshop is the most widely used program. Very flexible and easy to use. I've seen a lot of digital comics using Flash as well.

If so, did you manually draw everything out on hard copy storyboards or did you do it online?

Whatever works best for you personally. Many people draw everything on paper, then scan in their work to ink/color in Photoshop. Others, like myself, do everything in Photoshop, even the sketches and thumbnails.

Or did you draw individual pictures and then later assemble it using some kind of program where you could place each picture in a panel?

I would highly advise against "drawing each picture, then putting it into whatever frame". You're going to severely limit the potential of the page, but also the drawings themselves. Invariably, you're going to find that the pictures you drew won't fit properly in the frames you came up with, and you're gonna be forced to either re-draw the picture, or rework the entire page layout. The layout/frames and the pictures themselves should be organic, and serve each other; therefore they need to be designed together. That's why doing thumbnails of the page are so important.

You need to look at your script and see what is needed. Figure out what each page can hold (typically, two script pages will fit into one comic book page, but there is no real rule here, it's all in how meaty the script is and how you chose to draw it). Then do some thumbnails of each page. You can do this for the entire book, or before you start each page individually. Doing different layouts as thumbnails will help you brainstorm, help you find the best possible layout, and ultimately save you time when you start to do the actual drawing.

As for publication, there's so much one can do with their comics these days. There are countless websites dedicated to amateur and independent comics - free and easy ways to get your work out there, without even having to worry about the cost of printing. And with the advent of the internet (digital distribution) and art programs, you can step away from the confines of your standard comic book format - I've seen comics done in flash where only one panel was shown at a time, but each "page/screen" built up on the previous panel, so it almost felt like a motion comic, even though there was no animation. It was really cool.

All this being said, there are thousands of tutorials both online and in book form that'll help you understand comic book art and layout better. Good luck!

 

[Anita18]

I FULLY agree with Anita. NO COMIC SANS. You'll be laughed at by any designer, publisher, fellow artist, etc. If there is one font that the design community wishes was never created, Comic Sans is it, so just delete that font from your computer.

Thank God someone else agrees with me. Nobody will take you seriously if you use Comic Sans.

I would highly advise against "drawing each picture, then putting it into whatever frame". You're going to severely limit the potential of the page, but also the drawings themselves. Invariably, you're going to find that the pictures you drew won't fit properly in the frames you came up with, and you're gonna be forced to either re-draw the picture, or rework the entire page layout. The layout/frames and the pictures themselves should be organic, and serve each other; therefore they need to be designed together. That's why doing thumbnails of the page are so important.

You need to look at your script and see what is needed. Figure out what each page can hold (typically, two script pages will fit into one comic book page, but there is no real rule here, it's all in how meaty the script is and how you chose to draw it). Then do some thumbnails of each page. You can do this for the entire book, or before you start each page individually. Doing different layouts as thumbnails will help you brainstorm, help you find the best possible layout, and ultimately save you time when you start to do the actual drawing.

Oh, absolutely. I forgot to emphasize the importance of thumbnails and laying out each page exactly as you want it BEFORE drawing each final. You don't want to laying out stuff using your final. Sometimes it won't look good the way you envision it and then you're going to have to redo everything. Biggest mistake by people who aren't familiar with art. They can spend days working on little details on a final version and THEN figure out they don't like the general direction of where it's going and scrap everything. Days of work undone. That's why pencil and paper were invented - get all the rough ideas sorted out first, know exactly what you want, and then work on the final.

I drew my comic one panel at a time after I figured out exactly what it was going to look like. I only did that because Chinese painting is fairly precarious and I didn't want to be redoing entire pages if I messed up on one panel. But I knew exactly what each panel was going to look like before I started.

 

[DV8]

If you do a graphic novel, I would not do so expecting an instant, or ANY return on the work you've put in (unless you're producing it for an established company or somebody that's paying you to do it); expect to put in a LOT of work, but definitely make sure you have FUN doing it, and make it a learning experience . . . good luck