Comic Making 101: Tips
 

Hey. If a lot of you are like me, then you either are planning to make your own little webcomic, or already have one. Anyway, I think it would be helpful to us all if we should share some things we learned either from personal experience, other people, or simple observations.

Major Tip #1: Have a set updating schedual, and stick to it religiously. THis is key in maintaining readers. People don't want to have to keep checking back just to see if you've updated. It's good to have a set schedual, such as weekdays, Mondays-Wednesdays-Fridays, or maybe even sparse ones, like every other Monday. Having this set schedual will give people a reliable timeframe for when they can see a new comic, and thuis they don't have to guess at when you'll update. Also, you don't want to miss any of these updates, because if you miss even a few updates, you may loose readers. Even if you have to put up a quickie filler, guest strip, or a Dead-Artist day thing, it'll give the readers something to show that you've not forgotten. There are, of course, some things that you can't plan in advance for, such as your webspace suddenly dying, computer exploding, death in the family, etc., but try to update at all the ones that you are able to.

Major Starting Tip #1: Don't strive to be the next [insert name here]. That's a bad way to motivate yourself. If you strive to be, say, the next Mega-Tokyo, you may imitate what you aspire to and never achieve anything you want to. Instead, aspire to be the next big thing. To establish yourself, aspire to greatness, and not the greatness of those who've already established themselves.

That's all my advice at this time. Please, class, feel free to share any of your insights. And please, let's not let this degrade into a debate over the media one should use to make a comic (Like Sprites, or hand-drawn). We've had that conversation many a time, we don't need it again.

Plot Tip #1 Following just your main charactor is a lost cause. Having more then 10 main charactors is a lost cause. Giving more then 4 plots to diffrent charactors is okay as long as it doesn't last too long. Sienfield (yes I know it's not a comic) is a great example of this. Plots were diffrent but hillarious and not stretched to many many episodes like other comidies or dramas. For comics it's the same. Give a bunch to diffrent people, but make them end. Only your main charactor and/or secondary main charactor should get those long drawn out ones.

Anyone dissagree? I think I phrased that right.

[B]prite Comic Tip #1[b]: Be original. Or at least as original as possible, since lots of comics use sprites from the same games. 8-Bit Theater and Bob and George are the granddaddies of sprite comics, so in a way, every other sprite comic out there is based on the inspiration of those two. Unfortunately, most of them are blatant, no talent rip-offs. My morning bowel movements have more plot and originality.

If you're going to do a sprite comic, do something different and original. The Mega Man, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Final Fantasy series have been beaten to death when it comes to sprite comics. I'm currently beating the Metal Gear series into bruised, bloody submission. The best sprite comics are the ones that are fresh and original... and updated on a regular basis. I'm very bad in this way. I need to read the first post in this thread a few more times :D

A mighty fine rule of thumb:
Good comic art is drawn as such that if an illiterate person were to read it, they’d not only be able to enjoy it just because of the artwork, but should have a vague if not decent understanding of what’s happening.
Good comic writing is as such that if someone were to pick up the script and read it, they’d be able to appreciate the story, characters, situations, and jokes on their own right.

How do you do good art?
You practice for years until you figure it out for yourself because no one can sit you down and tell you or show you how to do it. You ever have those times where someone’s pointed to something really hard to see and they’re going, “Ya see that! Ya see that!” and you think you see it but you’re really just seeing something else or you just have no clue what the hell they’re talking about? That’s what all art instruction is like, because to be able to draw well you have to be able to innately handle visual information in your head and convert into a medium, and that’s the working of inner states far too complex for language to ever describe. So get cracking.

How do does writing work?
You make interesting stories, characters, situations, and jokes. This is also something incredibly hard to teach because it requires being able to know exactly what makes these things good and reproduce those qualities yourself. A good story works exactly like sex; they just change the word “orgasm” to “climax” when they describe it.

First you have the foreplay, where the characters and scene is established; good characterization comes from investing the character with enough personality so that if your friend were possessed by the spirit of your character, you’d know; they’d have unique diction, body language, thoughts, goals, inner struggles and urges, interests, vocabulary, emotions, feelings, morals, and norms. They’d have all the things real people have; only they’d be interesting.

Then you have penetration, where a conflict arises. Try not to make it as simple and cliché as “A jerk shows up”. If you think that “everything good has already been done”, then that’s just a matter of the poverty of your information. We have a good couple million words in the English language and an infinite number of coherent concepts that can be created with them. If you honestly can’t imagine something bad happening that hasn’t happened yet, you’ve either a champion pessimist, or a blind fool idealist. Generally what you want to do is make things get more and more intense by making the conflict worse of more urgent.

Then you have the turning point, where the conflict is heightened to such a degree that the characters are forced into a string of actions that will ultimately decide their fate once and for all in relation to the conflict. It’s the big ass “now its personal” scene.

Then you have the orgasm, where the conflict is ended; everything blows up, T1000 falls in the molten metal, the plane finally starts and escapes the clutches of the T-Rex and monster island forever.

Then you have the everyone smoking a cigarette. The main characters have pick up the pieces, go “that was fucking crazy” and some happy things happen to them; all the loose ends not resolved and little sub plots are usually wrapped up nicely, unless you want to carry them into another story.

Patricoo, I have to disagree with you there. Some comics may very well work with only one strong plotline throughout thier entirety, and following a single character. It all depends on the strength of the writing skill you have. For some people it may be better to be episodic, but for others it may be best to go for the continuing epic. But, the point on having too many main characters is valid. Then it will become confusing, and take too long to get the story to move even through one of the episodic bursts. Take a look at the Wheel of Time series for a good example of this. Hell, the latest book didn't have any plot movement at all, because it focused and reminding people where everyone was and what they were doing at that time in the story.

NeedleTip #1: BE FUNNY. No, REALLY FUNNY. It's unfortunate, but even the best art can't save an unfunny comic that's trying to be funny. Sprite comics are twice as vulnerable here, since often art is an afterthought. You're riding only on the tails of your humor. If you're not funny, the audience will pick up on it - fast.

If you're using jokes that you've heard before, then you're not funny. Sorry. Anyone can tell a joke, but it's how you use it that matters! (wow, the second sexual metaphor of the thread)

NeedleTip #2: LEARN TO SPELL. Sorry, after seeing the ridiculous amount of spelling mistakes in this thread alone, someone had to say it. :) Improper spelling can immediately destroy your credibility as a witty individual. Without your wit, you don't have much left!

NeedleTip #3: PREPARE FOR A LONG RIDE. Do you see yourself doing this same comic in a year? 6 Months? 6 Weeks? If you answered NO to any of those, then you shouldn't bother starting a webcomic. Fans will expect you to continue. If you don't, then there will be trouble. Which leads to my final tip:

NeedleTip #4: DEVELOP A TRUSTFUL RELATIONSHIP WITH YOUR VIEWERS. Are you releasing comics on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays? Then you better do it, or your fanbase will scatter like ants in a flood. Your viewers need to trust you. You can do this by being on time, and keeping your promises. Take Brian, for example: he hadn't missed a comic in a very very long time, so when it came time that he actually had to miss one, the viewers let it slide. Why? Because they know he's good for it. They know he'll be back.

And that is all I have to say on that.

Well that only matters when your doing something really deep. Most if your just doing something serious. A long time ago I used to make comic that was 98 episodes long. I won comic of the week on site that hosted it, and now I stopped ending at that only because my Paint Shop Pro found out it was fake.

One example of good use with diffrent plot lines and massive amount of charactors, would be (you guessed it) Nuklear Power iself. The charactors come in at a slow rate and it's a bunch of them involved in a plot line, not each of them. (corse most of the plot done already for him, but still.) Development may move slow, but he crammes so many great jokes in that you never get bored.

I still laugh at Doin' fine and SURPRISE ATTACK!

Has anyone read Crashman's 10 comandments of comic making? Not only does it have picture examples, it's kinda funny. Read it at:


http://www.fragile-minds.com/donts.html

Hehe, a VERY useful thread indeed! Though I'd like to throw in something. I'm sorry if this has been said somewhere else, but as you can probably tell, I'm fairly new and unaware of most of what's been said on the subject. I'm still trying to make my way through the whole forum...

I don't understand what's so hard about finding a sprite and modifying it to fit your needs. I've seen all those threads that ask about where to find them... and before actually looking myself, admittedly, I asked for them too. But I spent maybe half an hour at most with google looking for sprite sheets for the basic sprites, and once I found the basics, I just played around a little to get the poses I want. Then I realized just how easy it was to just modify them. I'm using a simple program, (Paint that comes with EVERY computer you buy from Microsoft), and I've been able to come up with a lot of really good sprites just by playing around. So I honestly don't understand why people need help finding or making sprites. Just play around with them until you get what you want.

Again, I'm sorry if I'm just repeating something that someone said before, but I didn't know better. Thanks for your patience with me.

~~Kat

Me, I have my own comic however mine is only limited to a certain website I go to with its own inside jokes that only members of this particular website would understand. Yet, I try to make the humor broad enough for most people to enjoy. Humor, to me, is often the hardest part of making and maintaining a comic. Whether it's witty one-liners or slap-stick, humor is appreciated but it has to work.

I believe that practice makes perfect. Instead of ripping everything off of a game, why not try making your own sprites or your own backgrounds? My first attempts at this were sorta bad however I quickly improved on it. I recently developed a sprite sheet of Gollum. Not perfect, I can assure you, but it certainly looks better than trying to pop out a sprite re-color.