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Create Your Own Webcomic |
by:
Daniel Punch |
Syndicated comic authors have been complaining about newspaper size restrictions, content censoring and similar issues forlong time. Comic enthusiasts have been increasingly irritated bytreatment their entertainment medium receives as well. Then along cameInternet, providing unlimited and unrestricted distribution possibilities. Thuswebcomic was born.
There are millions of webcomics out there, dealing with such vast topics as video games, college life, samurai, Lego men, identity and self esteem, depression, suicide, children and joy. People write them either forliving, for fun, as stress relief, for artistic expression, or often just forhell of it. Then they stick their creations onweb and hope that just one more person will find and enjoyfruits of their labour.
There seem to be several hundred new comics created each and every day. These often dwindle and fade after onlyfew months. Occasionally, however,comic rises aboverest and gains such popularity thatcreator is able to forgo all other work and scrapeliving solely offproceeds generated by their websites. Some examples of such are Penny-Arcade, PvP, CtrlAltDel and Squidi.net.
Many people, when introduced toworld of webcomics, think to themselves "Wouldn't it be cool to have my own comic?" andfew go beyond this and create their own. So how cannewcomer ensure that their comic continues beyondfirst few weeks of enthusiasm?
Now before I go into some useful tips it is probably worth noting that I amproud owner offailed webcomic. It went forfew months before hittingfew snags and then grinding intoground. I have plans to return to creatingcomics, but as of yet have not. So I am not really drawing fromfoundation of success, more of failure andunderstanding of some ofmain factors contributing to my failure.
For starters, you're going to need to planlittle. It's unfortunate, unfair and certainly not fun, but it is necessary. Sit down and think about your comic. Come up withlocation setting, some characters and maybe evenfew plots to test them in. Runcharacters through some adventures and see how they react and how you react to them. Your characters will grow and change throughout this process, and continue to do so throughoutlife of your comic but you need to gethandle on their basic character traits.
For some reasonmajority of comics revolve aroundgroup of people (usually guys) that are somewhat geeky and live together. Usually inuniversity dorm. I would imagine that this is because that'sgeneral life ofmajority of webcomic authors. The premise itself also makesawful lot of sense forbasis ofcomic. When designing my own webcomicprocess wentlittle something like this: I designedmain characters, most of which were drawings that I had been playing with since high school. Then I neededreason for them to constantly see each other and interact, so I got them living together. They needed character traits that I could relate to, so they become university-aged students that had at leastpassing interest ingeeky side of life.
I drew my first few strips and showed them to some friends, who liked them, so started looking into putting them online. The initial line up included two guys who lived together,female love interest for one ofcharacters andtalking animal (in my casefrog, because I had this frog that I'd been drawing for years and had become quite attached to him).
At this point I was not very experienced with webcomics, having only really readsyndicated newspaper comics thatsyndicated press companies post online. So I started looking through some ofmajor comics, only to find that Sluggy Freelance hadtalking animals, geeky guys that lived together and female love interest already covered. A bit more research revealed that"university students living together" was covered inlarge majority of comics. Furthermore, havingkind of wacky (and justlittle stupid) character, andmore sensible and reserved one was practicallygiven. Then, to rub salt inwound, I found that another comic had its main character design very similar to my own. So I got rid offrog, removedfocus on gaming and university and otherwise leftcomic as it was. Not entirely original.
Anyway,point is that you should probably try to be more original. Check through your concept and removewhole university students living together with wacky talking inappropriately anthropomorphic sidekicks. You'll be better off inlong run and havemore original creation.
Before you jump headfirst into publishing your comics online, you should build upbit ofbacklog of comics. Try to draw at least ten or so quality comics that you would be proud to have on your site. If you're going to havestory-based comic then it would begood idea to plan your first story arc. It is really useful to maintain this backlog of comics whenever possible, so that you can fall behind increation ofcomics but still have content to post online. Nothing turns away readers faster than failing to provide them with content when you say you will. If you eat intobacklog, try to drawfew extra strips so that it doesn't get diminished.
Ashelpful guide for your comics, decide roughly what format they will take (e.g. three or four panel gag strips etc.) and draw uppanels on your computer. You can then print these and drawstrips withinpanels, ensuring that they stay neat and consistent. Whencomics have been drawn, scan them into your computer and touch them up any way you like. It's generallybest practice to remove speech balloons and text and add these on computer, because it will usually be neater and easier to read. Remember to fit balloons aroundspeech, notspeech intoballoons. It's amazing how often this is forgotten. Some good fonts, free for non-commercial use, can be found at http://blambot.com. Don't get too stressed about your artwork, I found that most people do not mind slightly inconsistent and not overly fantastic artwork provided they enjoycontent ofcomic.
So now you're ready to get going withonline side of things. Start writing your web page so that you can just upload it when you're ready. Webcomic PHP management systems are relatively easy to find. I personally really like ComicPro that, unfortunately, seems to have vanished fromweb. If you can hunt it down it's worthlook. Web hosting is quite easy to find as well, you will not need much space to begin with so you can use one ofmany free providers out there (including http://keenspace.com that provides free hosting specifically for webcomics), useweb space provided bymajority of ISPs or purchase your own web hosting plan (you can getquite cheap one because you will not be needing many features to begin with). When signing up for any hosting package, make sure you have permission to changeread/write attributes of your files becausePHP comic managers will need this (this is done on Linux servers using CHMOD from your FTP program; In Windows you can Right-Clickfile, select Properties and change security permissions there; or you may need to useproprietary control panel provided byhost).
You are going to need to decide onupdate schedule for your comic. It's probably best to start small and build up; maybe two or three updatesweek. This way you have three to five weeks of comics in your backlog, which allows you to fall behind substantially before anyone notices.
While we're ontopic of deciding schedules, it will help you if you actually try and schedulehour or so into your day to write comics. If you just try to fit them intofree time that you're "bound to have just after you finish just this one last thing" then you'll often find yourself failing to getstrip drawn on time.
Now that you have your comic online you can start promoting it. There arehuge number of comic directories out there that will help get you exposure. Get your friends excited about your comic and they in turn will get their friends excited. Read other people's comics and get involved in their forums. Find sites that accept guest artwork or comics and send some to them. The best promotion comes from getting people to read your comic and firelink across their instant messenger program to another friend. My current list of "must read every day" comics came entirely from various people sending links to me. Don't expect instant success, look to sharing your vision with even just one new person every day.
Well, I hope that helps to give youfew ideas about how to make your comic and keep it running. When your characters start to grow they'll almost createstories and jokes themselves andstrip will not be anywhere near as hard to write as it was when you first started out. Just keep drawingcomics onfrequent basis so that you do not fall out ofrhythm of your created world and above all else have fun.
Aboutauthor:
Daniel Punch
Msix.Net
http://www.msix.net
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