#comics tutorials

[schweizercomics]

Hello, friends!

I reworked the ol' "Schweizer Guide to Spotting Tangents" lecture from my comics-teaching days, figured I'd share it here. If you want a free, printable PDF for yourself or to share (especially if you're an educator), you can find it at the bottom of this same lesson on my website.

-Chris

[petricorah]

i wanna start making comics but like. i dont really know how??? are there any tips that you could give me perhaps?

hi!

i've been working on trying to compile a list of resources for people (@aangsfrogs--i didn't forget!) who want to make comics for a long time. It would consist of some of my personal tips and a lot of links to other people's PDFs and youtubes. But that's...a hefty project, so if you had any specific questions for the meantime, my askbox is open!

But, for just beginning, here would be my tips:

Read comics. Read manga and webcomics and cartoons and medical comics. There is so much out there, and reading is such a big way to learn. If you see something you like, take a moment to think about why you like it. Are the expressions or colors appealing? Did it make you feel a certain emotion? Analyze what the artist may have done to get across what they did. (Is it the camera angle? the style they chose to draw in? the paneling? the pacing? the color? etc.) Doing this over time will help you recognize the tools available for telling stories through this medium, and you'll be able to put them in your own work.

Try to think about what you want to make comics about. What moves you? What topics interest you? What ideas or tropes do you love in media or think about often? What do you hate and wish was done better? What characters are you drawn to, or what characters do you want to create? (What about them compels you?) I find it's hard to create an idea out of thin air, but if you start writing down random ideas you have, you'll start thinking about them, and over time, you'll have a bank of things to pull from when you want to create.

Lastly, anatomical skill or knowledge of color does not a comic make! You don't have to know much to begin, and there aren't rules. Just start drawing what is meaningful to you!

This is just cursory and doesn't get into super specifics like paneling or scripts or plotting or colors or thumbnailing or....etc, but I'll try to expand my list of resources and get that out! And, hmu if you have any specific questions on topics!

happy drawing~

Book list under readmore:

Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics and his Making Comics. These books are taught in like, every comic class ever. While not my complete favorite, they do a good job of showing some history and fundamentals, and how easy it is to make comics even if you don't have a lot of drawing experience.

99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style by Matt Madden: Really good if you don't know how to start analyzing comics. (Also it's just a fun visual exercise.) It shows the same short story done in 99 different styles with different emphasis on different moods and points of view.

The PreHistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit by Gary Larson and The Calvin and Hobbes: Tenth Anniversary Book by Bill Watterson: Two great books with work from my two favorite cartoonists. They both have writings from the author about getting ideas, developing stories, and being a comic artist.

Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability, edited by Scott T. Smith and José Alaniz and Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation, edited by Sheena C. Howard and Ronald L. Jackson II: These two aren't really about making comics, but they are great collections of analysis about old and new comics alike.

By no means a complete list, but some good ones that I can think of off the top of my head.

There's also the book Webtoon School: Everything you need to know about webtoon creation and story writing. To be honest, I didn't read this completely through because it was a bit more fundamental than I was expecting, but it gives a good cursory look of how to write comics if you're just starting out! It covers some history, how to write stories and arcs, etc.

Also, look to your favorite writers! A lot of webtoon/webcomic artists do tutorials or youtube videos. for instance, velnxi has this great tutorial up I really suggest looking at here.

[theds106shrink]

This week I joined in with #gridsgestures  (worth clicking on link to see all contributions) on Twitter. It was a comic making activity without drawing led by @Nsousanis who teaches comics as a way of thinking and uses this activity in his courses as a starting point to learn about time and space on the page. 

This was timely for me as I am teaching myself to make comics following Comics: Art in relationship and Drawing Words, Writing Pictures. I have been struck by the idea the ‘time happens in the gutter’ in comics and also by the idea of challenging my imagination to ‘make the panels speak’. The task was to make a grid with marks on the paper that told of our day through the week. The photos above are my attempts, I tried different media to experiment with what might be my preference going forward. 

My favourite and the one I got the best feedback was a simple pencil sketch. I think I have learnt how to start ‘to think comics’. Working with panels, text and words means great flexibility. One can let one’s mind create an idea, thumbnail this idea a few times as a kind of script, then production can be a quick sketch, digital, pastels or anything else one chooses. What is interesting to me is that the ‘work’ (for me at least) was in the thinking about the interplay of all elements in comics and how to express an idea on paper. 

I think I now get abstract comics as a genre more. I also see what makes minimalist comics work. Look at the work of Shane Simmons, you do not need to learn to draw to produce them, but you do need scripting and an understanding of time in the gutter and how humans seek closure and make meaning, even out of dots! (click on his name to get more readable samples)

I am also starting to get the idea that what makes a comic funny is what is absent but implied as it makes the reader’s mind work to make sense. I have Matt Madden and Jessica Abel to thank for this as I practiced captioning a simple drawing that was not designed to be funny. 

Also this week has shown me the importance of a title or some kind of context setting. I did this on the tweet for each day, but what was said mattered to make sense of the grid (look at the captions in each photograph and the last day has its title embedded - click on any image for gallery). Title or context is another element in relationship in a given comic. What Matt Silady suggests is the we avoid the kind of relationship between the elements where each element says the same thing. Redundancy in comics seems something less than desired. I guess it is because the reader has to do no work. It is all obvious and hence not funny. I see how some of my early digital attempts are just obvious and not funny.

This week was a great week to put together many ideas I have been learning on my courses. Thanks, Nick.