Start Your Own Comic Strip
By Debbie Ridpath Ohi, N2Arts Correspondent
Tips for creating your own personal comic strip
 

reating your own comic strip can be a tremendously satisfying experience.  Here are some tips on how to get started.

Decide what kind of comic strip you want to have

• What kind of format do you plan to use?

  A single panel per strip? Multi-panel? One of the advantages of a single panel strip is that it takes less drawing, but it means that each strip must be able to stand on its own. An advantage of using multi-panel strips is that you can have more of a storyline.

• What is the tone of your comic strip going to be?

  Will your comic be funny? Serious? Perhaps a mixture of both?

Decide on your main characters

It’s important to spend some time thinking about your main character or characters before you start your strip.  What are they like? What are their motivations? Make sketches of each character in different poses and with different expressions.  Make sure you like these characters, because you’ll be drawing them over and over again.

Another important part of the creation of a comic strip is figuring out how all the characters will interact, and what the character conflicts will be.  You need to have some conflicts; without them, your comic strip will be incredibly dull, no matter how impressive the artwork.

Come up with a story line

Next, you have to decide what is going to happen to your characters. Some comic strips have a continuing story line throughout several strips, while others have each “story” start and end in each strip. It can be a challenge to fit your story into a certain number of panels.

Whatever you do, think of a good story. Having some really cool or funny characters is great, but that alone won’t be enough to keep your audience reading.

Plan the layout

Once you have your characters and story line, you can start working on the layout, deciding what happens in each panel. On a separate sheet of paper, write out all the dialogue between characters.  Then decide what dialogue goes into each panel, and what actions.  Your comic script may look something like this:

PANEL 1
Igor stands in the living room with arms crossed, looking angry. IGOR THINKS:  I can’t believe what a terrible day this has been so far…

PANEL 2
Igor still looks angry, but the corners of his mouth are curling up a bit in an evil grin.
VOICE OFF CAMERA YELLS:  Hey, who’s been playing with my Collector’s Special Edition Star Wars action figures?

and so on…

Draw your strip

And finally, you get to draw your strip!  Sounds like obvious advice, but I’m going to say it anyway: if you’re working on paper (as opposed to a computer screen), use pencil first.

I create my comic strips on the computer using Painter and a Wacom Artpad.  Instead of hand-lettering the text, I type it into my comic using a keyboard.  For those wishing to opt for this route, there are many free comic book fonts available online; see the list of resources at the end of this article.

Good luck, and have fun!

Debbie Ridpath Ohi is a Toronto-based freelance writer and photographer who has several online comic strips and performs with the music group Urban Tapestry. Her Web site can be found at http://www.inkygirl.com.