Comics for Beginners - How to Write and Draw Comics

1. Story First: Hi, Welcome to this web-based learning program about how to make comics. You probably already know a bit about it since you found this page. You may even know more than me, but I hope this little video series, we'll give you some inspiration and maybe help you look at some new perspective on things. My first 48 page comic was published in Denmark in 1999. Since then I've been working full-time as a freelance writer, Illustrator and comic book artists. And last year my graphic novel, The Devil's Concubine, was released in the US from my DW, published. In my 13 years or so of experience, I've read tons of books on writing and drawing. But this video format is a really cool way for me to share some of my experiences with you. A sort of easily accessible way. Now, while there are plenty of tutorials out there for artists and writers, I have yet to see something that covers all the bases in making comics. What's so great about making comics is that you can tell any story without spending a dime. You can have three-headed monsters, exploding spaceships or hordes of gun-toting elephants, anything you want, as long as you can draw it. And if you can't draw it right now, well, I have a few tips for you. I'll also be going over how to write and plan your story so you don't end up in the ditch like so many other aspiring comic book artists. I'm constantly learning new things myself and I tried to share what I learned as much as possible, both here and on my personal web page. I'll also be available for questions or comments to these videos. So to be sure to check the comments below for more. In this first episode, we're going to be talking about getting started on your story. And other episodes. We'll be going over script formats, planning your story, sketching, inking, layouts, texting, coloring, anything you want to know. I'll try to be as practical as possible. I'm not here to tell you how you should make comics. I'll just tell you how I go about it and see if you can't pick up a trigger to, okay, so let's get started. A lot of cartoonists start with a blank page and a vague idea of what they want to do. I don't recommend doing that. Well, usually happens is you're all fired up when you draw the first page or two, then the story gets stuck or your interests dwindles. Usually when you get to something that's hard to draw. While there are creators out there who do great work without so much as a written outline. I will always, always work out a script before I start with the drawing. This doesn't have to be a full script with each picture described, especially if you're going to be drawing it yourself. There are no rules to how your script should look, but looking at movie scripts can be an inspiration. When you open up a new document on your computer or in your notebook, you sort of have the same problem as I talked about earlier. That blank page, a blank page is never a good place to start. When I start a new story, I usually have a bunch of ideas, characters, or scenes in my head. It can be a location, it could be a piece of dialogue. So what I do is I try to get some of that down on paper, get a notebook for the project and keep it with you at all times. Write down ideas, do little sketches, maybe put in a clipping or an image that inspires you. This is one of my favorite parts of cooking up a story. Everything is possible. Nothing is set in stone. After awhile, you need to take a look at your list of ingredients, see what kind of dish you're making. You'll find that not all of it belongs in the pot. You can make a little mind map with notes and see if you can't make some more sense of it. All. The great thing about comics is you can do basically whatever you want. It doesn't cost a thing, just hard work. But you have to limit yourself in a way or your story probably won't make any sense. One of the first things to decide the genre is it a romance, a space opera, a detective story? Maybe there's a particular film or book you can use as inspiration to sort of set you off. Perhaps there's a style, a tone, or a plot structure that you can borrow. Don't worry about stealing. Your story will be your story. More about stealing in less than five. Okay, so now you know what kind of story you want to make. The next thing to decide is, who is it about? Every story has a main character. Now, we go over character design and less than four, but that's more about the visuals right now, let's focus on the story. A story. Any story is about somebody who wants something and is having trouble getting it. Stuff happens, things get in the way. So he has to work even harder to achieve his goal. Maybe he gets what he wants. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it gets what he wants, but finds out it wasn't what he wanted. After all. Here's a little checklist of what you need before you start working on your script. One, genre to a main character. Three, a setting. For a beginning, a middle, and end. You don't need to be absolutely sure about everything on this list. You can still change things around later. But having an idea about this helps tremendously. The great thing about working on the computers, you can undo everything and move everything around and your document. That's a lot harder to do once you start drawing. So make sure you get the structure of your story right before you start drawing page one. Sometimes you need to get to know your characters a little bit better before you start writing. We'll go over character design in lesson 4. But right now, if you're not turned off completely by the amount of work, it's time to start writing your script. So on to lesson two. 2. Writing Your Script: Welcome back to episode 2 of this video series about how to make comics, about writing your script. This episode is probably the one that most people are going to skip because they want to get right on withdrawing. But you made it. So I tip my hat to you. A good comic or graphic novel is just like a movie. Without a good story, the heart of it, it doesn't matter how many explosions or babies or cool CGI monsters you have in it. You need characters, you can relate to problems that seem important. Now, let's go over the list from the last episode about what you need before you start working on your script. One, genre to a main character. Three, a setting. For a beginning, five, a middle, six, and end. If you don't have a clue how to fill this out. Well, maybe now's a good time to pause this video and get it done. It will save you a lot of grief down the line, believe me. So let's assume you have a loose idea of your story and your main character. What does he want? You need to figure out what's at stake for him or her. What will happen if he fails? Let's say he's applying for a job. What happens if he doesn't get it? He gets another job. Okay, pretty boring story. But what if he's about to lose his house and his son and his mom needs an operation and if he doesn't get a job so we can pay for it, she dies. Little bit more interesting, right? This is what most screenwriters referred to as upping the stakes. Making it important for your main characters who succeed. If it's not important for him or her, why should we care about it? Sometimes going at your story from a different angle can be necessary. I sometimes do a test page just to get the idea of what the final book will look like. I also skip around quite a bit when I write the script. I might get an idea for a scene near the end while I'm working on the opening scene, I let myself jump out of it, knowing I can always jump back in. As long as you finish the script at some point you have my permission to skip around, but don't start drawing actual pages with actual dialogue in before your story is done. Drawing comics is hard work. You don't want to have to draw the same thing twice. And that will happen if your story is not all laid out beforehand. You don't want to have to go back and redraw things and do a lot of corrections. When you do that, nine times out of 10, that makes you dump the project altogether. So before you enter the glorious realm of drawing pages, take a good look at the entry sign here. Is your story done yet? If not, well, now's as good a time as any. If this is your first attempt at making comics, I would recommend keeping it short and simple. The stories about somebody who wants something and is having trouble getting it. That's the story. You can do all sorts of fancy storytelling devices around it. But basically, every story is about just that. Even if you have multiple characters, for each character, the setup is the same. They have to have something they want. Most actual scripts contain these basic elements. Scene description. Where are we, what time of day is it? What's in the scene? In comic scripts, this is often broken down into panel descriptions. Action, what takes place in the scene or the panel. Remember that a character and usually only do one thing within a panel. So no catching a ball and looking out the window and sweeping the floor at the same time. Dialogue, the name of the character, followed by a colon. And what he says. Usually dialogue is centered to make it stand out. In a comic. That dialogue is the only text of your script that ends up on the actual page inside the word balloons. Now let's take a moment to look at story structure. You may have heard of something called the three-act structure, which is used in movies. But Hollywood has become such a huge influence on all of us that you find this structure almost anywhere these days. Dividing your story into manageable chunks. Chapters, sequences will help you as a writer, but also help the reader understand where they are in the story. The first sequence of a story is usually setting up the main character, the world he lives in, and a hint of the problems to come. Be careful not to let this sequence play for too long. We don't have to know everything right off the bat. Your readers just enough information so that they can follow the story and relate to your characters. Within the first 10 minutes of the film, in the first few pages of a comic, something out of the ordinary needs to happen. Something to which our hero needs to react. Once our hero realizes that he has to solve this problem himself, he often has to go out of his comfort zone, go on a journey when he goes from his ordinary world to a new special world, he enters the second act of the story. Things get continually more difficult for him as his opponents strike back. When we reach the middle of the story and event occurs that commits the hero fully took his quest. This is often referred to as the point of no return, where he can no longer just give up and go home. In a love story. This could be the first kiss in a thriller. The first kill. After the midpoint, we need a little time to breed, but we soon find our hero racing towards the final act. Now remember that a story is like a piece of music. If all of it is a crescendo, it will just sound like deafening noise. Pacing is important. Let your hero succeed for a bit before things get even more difficult. This is what is called turning points. Basically it means things don't go as planned or as we expect. By the end of the second act, we find our hero at his lowest, the place where all seems lost. But in this moment of despair is also hidden. The key to success, our hero needs to use what is learned in this process in order to succeed. Now you've probably noticed that not all stories have a happy ending though. An unhappy ending can be just as satisfying if we understand the reason the hero fails. Most of the time, it's because of a fatal flaw on his part. Just because a piano falls on his head. And what should a script look like? Well, some artists write the script as scribbles, some have dialogue, some are just impossible for others to understand. While this may work for you, it has its advantages to write an actual script. The main advantage is that you can have others read it. The point, of course, is to not get everybody's random opinion. You'll get lousy feedback. If you ask your mom or your best friend, they'll tell you it's great when it isn't, or they'll pick it apart, tell you a bunch of things that are wrong with it. And they might be right. But I would recommend asking someone a little more removed from your daily social circles. Someone who you can trust to give their honest opinion. And if they hate it, at least you won't take it so personal. Like if it was your girlfriend or a close friend who just hammered away on your story. When you let somebody else read your script, make sure they understand the ground rules. If it's drama, they shouldn't criticize it for not being funny enough. And if it's a comedy, their main concern should be, how can we make this even funnier? This Is Your Story, not their story. They shouldn't go in thinking they should change everything around. You're the boss here. But having a couple of readers is a great way of making sure everything works to your advantage. Get someone who's used to reading stories. It should be someone who sort of shares your taste in stories and someone's smart enough to not only tell you if something doesn't work, but also why it doesn't work. You can set up some ground rules first, like what parts of the story you want them to look at is that the plot, character motivations, dialogue, or even grammar. Make sure to tell your readers what to look for. Let the mass questions, rather than just telling you it's sucks. I'm not sure why your hero reacts like this on page five. You probably already know the answer. It might not be clear in the script, or maybe this person just doesn't get it. But if you get the same kind of feedback or criticism from several readers, That's when you have to think maybe there is a problem here. But as with everything else in this world, you really have to rely on your own judgment. If you don't have any moons opinion that you can trust, ask yourself, is this funny enough, exciting enough? Well, how can you be objective about it when you just wrote it? Well, you can't. That's why the best thing you can do after you write a script is put it in a draw and forget about it. Your brain is really good at forgetting things, you know, put the script away for at least a couple of weeks. Try not to think about it. If you can start working on another story that's great, keep yourself busy. Then after some time, open up that drawer and you will look at your script with fresh eyes and you will be able to tell what's good and what's not. Believe me. Now, I know this might seem like a lot of work, especially if you're just making a three-page comic for your school paper, my stories are usually longer. That's why the whole script writing thing is really important to me. But I also just enjoy getting it right and not have to go back and redraw entire pages. Writing is a lot faster to do the actual drawing. So do the work now, and it will save you time later. Smart Hub. 3. Layouts and Sketching: Welcome back. You made it. You wrote a script? No. All right. You're out. It's all right. You can watch this episode. We're going to be talking about how to break your script into pages. Breaking your pages into panels. Like I told you in episode 2, I always write a script for my comics. I don't describe every panel just what happens in the story. So when I get to the actual drawing, I print out my script and read through it, marking it wherever I think it might be a good idea to cut to a new page. There are techniques for this, like the cliffhanger ending where something exciting is just about to happen. That's a great way to keep your readers interests in the story and the page. Just were they open up the Salvador or just want a hand grenade go through the window. All right, maybe not on every page, but you get the idea. Mark your script way, you think it might be a good idea to cut it. And then when you're done, count the pages you broke it down to, Is it too long or too short? Only you know that it's your story. But try to have at least something vaguely interesting happen on every page. Not only does that make for a better read, it's also a lot more interesting for you to draw. A great location or a great line of dialogue should do it. You don't need hand grenades. Be careful how much information you cram into every page. Remember you have to break it down into panels. More than six or nine panels per page is usually very hard on the eyes. And more than three speech balloons in one frame makes the story kind of hard to follow. Also, think about what kind of pacing you want. Some scenes, you might want to be calm and quiet. That's usually done with the use of big pictures with not a lot of dialogue. You might already have some, some key images in your head already sketched out. Make sure you leave room for those images. They're probably one of the main reasons you're even making this story. When I break down my pages into panels, I usually do small sketches that some call thumbnails. The reason for that is they're faster to draw and you can get a feel for the layout a lot easier than with a big, expensive piece of oversized drawing board. Again, this preparation will save you time and grief. You don't want to be halfway done with the page only to find out it needs two more panels to work. Do the thumbnails and get a feel for the pace, then start doing the sketches for the actual pages. I know we're three episodes in and now he starts talking about drawing. Well, not just yet, exactly. What I do is I usually text my pages before I start drawing on them. There are two reasons for that. One, it's boring, so I want to get it done, get it over with. And two, it's a lot easier to fit my dialogue into the balloons. Afterwards, I'll go into details about texting in episode five. But right now before you start laying out your pages, here are a few guidelines. Make sure you have an establishing shot. You know that technique from the movies or even better television. You start out with a new York skyline. You then you see a house and zoom in on a window. The next image is probably two people sitting in a kitchen talking. That scene is shot in a studio somewhere. Most certainly not in the city of New York. But because we had the establishing shot, we all know and believe there inside a building in New York City on TV. They do this to save money. In comics, we do this to save time. We don't want to have to show the whole city of New York in every panel. And we also want to give the reader an idea of where we are, which helps them follow the story. If you do your establishing shot right, you can get away with drawing very little background on the rest of your page. We go over backgrounds and perspective drawing in less than six, so don't worry about that. Now, the next guideline I wanna give you is variation. Makes sure every panel is not the same. Variation in size is good. When I started out making comics, I actually copied a bunch of page layout just like this, just to get an idea of what to do. But variation within the frames is even more important. And that also saves you some time. If you already had to close ups of your characters talking. Let's shake things up a bit and show them in full figures, silhouettes for frame 3, because we know what they look like now, no need to show every detail. When you have a specific reaction panel and emotional outburst or something like that, it might not be the best time for a silhouette. But then again, that might be exactly right. Only you will know it's your story. Before we go on to lesson 3 about character design, I want to give you a few ideas for page layouts. Now, you can't really go wrong with the nine panel grid. If you want to shake things up a bit, make some variations in size and numbers of panels, but more than nine panels on a page tends to give a very hectic feel. The bigger and more detailed your panels are, the more attempts to slow down the reading of it. An open panel here and there is great for variation, but works best with a single character, object, a car, or a building in full view. You can also skew your grid and make irregular panels giving off the idea of a world gone out of whack. If you've read American superhero comics, you'll know the splash page, a panel that stretches across a two-page spread. You'll also have noticed that a lot of us comics tend to lead, meaning the art goes all the way to the end of the page. If you're using this method for print, be sure to have your art extend over the edge of the page. Another interesting idea for a layout is the split panel where something that really one image is split into several panels, giving off the illusion of time passing. When you're experimenting with your grid, proceed with caution. Always be aware of your reading order. Your view of the page should flow naturally. If you have to stop and think about what panel or speech balloon to read next, that hurts the storytelling. It's time to wrap it up for Episode 3. So what have we learned? Thumbnails, variation, reading order, those are very important things. Now, let's put some people in your comic onto episode for character design. 4. Character Design: Hi, welcome to comics for beginners, episode for about character design and a little bit about props and locations. And in case you're wondering this location we're in right now is my home studio. So let's begin. As an any story. The main character in a comic is the single most important thing. Before you start drawing. It's a good idea to design your character so you know how to draw them from all angles. It's also a great way to get to know your characters, what kind of expressions they use, their style and clothing, stuff like that. A lot of artists do character design sheets or style guides, often to present to the writer or the editor for approval. But even if you're doing everything yourself, it's a good method. Here's a little pop quiz. A great comic book character needs to be cool, memorable, funny, or recognizable? Well, the answer is, of course, DES, to be recognizable, you need your readers to be able to tell the characters apart. Specific posture, a choice of clothes, or a specific hairstyle. Anything that can help your readers navigate the story. Character archetypes can be a good starting point, especially if you twist the cliches little bit. The lesser of the character, the clearer their function should be, and the less you have to develop their personal look. The major characters should be distinctive enough that the reader can tell them apart. You need to know what their role in the story is, their personality, and perhaps some backstory. And of course, the visual design for the character identification is important. So try to think of what makes us care for this specific person. Often it's because they remind us of something within ourselves. I suggest you make a style guide for each of your major characters or put your thoughts in a sketchbook next to the character and makes sure every character is different and recognizable. If you have a large cast, tried putting them next to each other and compare heights, et cetera. Style guides are also great for locations, cars, or props that appear often in your comic. I'm sure there are style guides for the bat Mobius, tin, tins apartment, and Thor hammer for instance. Like I talked about earlier, doing these style guides can be a great way of getting to know your characters. And it's also a great warm-up exercise before you actually start working on your comic. But be careful not to spend hours designing something that's hardly in the comic. Try to think of how many pages this particular prompt appears on. And is it really important to know what it looks like from all angles? When designing a cast of characters, try the silhouette. Approach. Lining up your ensemble cast and blocking them out as silhouettes. Can you tell who's who just from their outline form. If not, maybe you can change a posture or hairstyle, maybe come up with a completely new design. Now that you have a great cast, it's time to have them do something and start interacting with each other. Now, a lot of that is in the script, the writing of the story obviously, but when designing the character is not only looks are important, but also outlooks. How does that character see the world? How do they see themselves? What's their value system? What's important to them? And most importantly, what do they want? This is equally important for supporting characters. If your characters don't have their own lives, their own agenda, they become cardboard figures, a story devices only there to provide information or resistance to your hero. Now, a word or two on dialogue, assigning each major character with a voice of their own really adds an extra layer to the storytelling. If every character of sounds like you, then maybe you should try changing things up a little bit. If you can tell who is speaking, even when they're off screen, then you're onto something. Sometimes going against type can be interesting. Think of some of the archetypes like the gentle giant or the sad clown. You can also try basing your characters on people you know, use their personality or the looks. But make sure your characters are not a gross parody of your friends or you'll end up with not very many friends left. Making your characters different from each other in as many ways as possible is a great way of adding conflict to the story. And conflict is story. Now let's go on to something really interesting. In episode five, we are going to be talking about texting and borders. 5. Balloons and Borders: Hi and welcome to Episode 5 of comics for beginners. Today we're talking about words. While it's perfectly possible to make comics with no words in them, a speech balloon is what most people think of when they hear the word comics. A speech balloon can be shaped in many ways. It can give off emotions like anger, frustration, or even lobe. You can hear people thoughts with a thought balloon or even a caption, much like the voice over in a movie. Or you can have your characters whisper or shout. And a number of ways. You can also put sound effects in your comic to help us understand what's going on. A few words about speech balloons, they should always be placed in the least intrusive areas of the panel. That's usually in the top. And the tails of the balloons should point towards whoever is speaking, if possible, towards their mouth, as that's where the sound is coming from. Beware of the reading order and be careful where you place your speaking characters so you don't have tails crisscrossing and confusing your readers. If you draw your speech balloons first and then put the text then afterwards, you might end up with balloons that are either too small or too large. That's exactly why I always text my comics before I start sketching. In the old days before computers, us cartoonists had a much rougher time than now. Making layouts and texting has never been easier before computers. Measuring out the borders for gutters between the panels was done with a ruler and texting is usually done by hand. Today we can rely on computer programs and fonts for that. Later you can print out your entire comic and trace the boxes and balloons on a light box. That's what I do anyway, I like the hand-drawn look of it. Some artists make their own font so they're texting, looks like their own handwriting. However cool That sounds, and it does sound cool. I would advise against it unless you have a lot of time on your hands and the skills needed to follow through. Go online and look for Free Fonts, see what you can find that fits your story. I often use a place called the font.com. But there are lots of places online where you can find free fonts. Just make sure you're not spending Bayes looking and wind up with a trial version of something that you can't really use. A lot of sites advertise free fonts. And then when you click through, they still want your money. When deciding on what font to use, you need to think of the tone or voice of your story. Is it a wacky cartoon or a horror story? The font is part of that. You might also need some special characters for your language. So make sure the font has those before downloading. In the last episode, we talked about layouts and thumbnails. What I do is I use my thumbnails as a guideline. I do rough sketches of my entire story. I do that in print size or even smaller. This is still the planning phase. I don't want to be worrying about the details or what paper to use for the final comic. What I then do is I scan my rough sketches and paste them in an InDesign document. Some use Photoshop or Illustrator, I'd say use whatever program you're most comfortable. First, make a standard page that fits the format you want to use. Us comics, for example, are taller and narrower than European comics. Find the comic on your shelf that fits what you want and measure it. Use that as your standard. While you're at it. Measured the space between the panels, often referred to as the gutters. Use that as well. You will notice that there is no industry standards to how wide the gutters should be or how thick the frames are. Pick a standard you like and stick with it. Experiment, but be consistent within the story. In your layout program of choice, set a standard bleed for the entire page and make a standard border. If you don't plan on letting your art go all the way to the edge of the page. You don't need to worry about bleed. But if you're doing a cover, you will need it for the print shop anyway, so it's a good idea to think it in. I always draw the finished panels by hand. So in my layout document, I just make a box to represent the gutter, copy that, and paste it wherever I needed. The text is a little trickier. If you did what I recommended in lesson 1 and 2 and wrote an actual script for your comic. You'll have your dialogue in a Word document or something like that. So you can easily just pasted in your text boxes, in your layout document. Begin with pasting it all in one box and cut the dialogue as you go along. Don't worry about placing it to begin with, just do the boring work of getting the dialogue on the right pages. Use the same standard box for all texts. One with no frame. Make sure your dialogue is centered and your captions on left aligned. When you've finished pasting in your dialogue, adjust your boxes and maybe edit down some lines or divided in two separate balloons. If your dialogue is too long, then you place it on the page where it fits. As a rule, two or three sentences per balloon is quite enough. You don't want the reader to lose their place or their interests. When I've done the tedious work of lay outing and texting my entire story this way, I feel like I need a reward. And that reward is printing it all out and actually start drawing. So let's go on to lesson 6, perspective drawing and backgrounds. Hi. 6. Perspective Drawing and Backgrounds: Hi, welcome to episode six of comics for beginners. Today we'll be going over designing your backgrounds and perspective drawing. I'll be honest with you, I don't particularly like drawing backgrounds. And perspective drawing has a lot to do with that. It's two logical for me. Too many rules, It's like math. But backgrounds are a necessary evil when he wants to tell the story in comic book form. So let's get to it. One of the basic elements of perspective drawing is the horizon line. You need to figure out where the horizon line is because that's where your perspective lines are all going. Here's a classic example of the road in the middle of nowhere. Notice how all the lines are going to the same point on the horizon. That's what we call the vanishing point. The same goes for city, forest or a room, lots of people in it. The problem is you can get lost in all those lines trying to figure out where and how to place your objects. Or more importantly, your characters. As in any story, your colleague is about people or dogs or aliens or whatever. But you have some main characters and they should be the focus of most of your panels. So instead of drawing the surroundings and getting every line right from the beginning, I tend to put my characters in the shot first and then figure out where the horizon is. Let's say I'm doing a shot of these two characters are walking down a street. I want the man to be walking a little bit behind the woman and the woman to seem bigger and more determined. I draw my two characters largely on instinct. Now, I want them to be walking down a street. So how do I do that? Like I said, we need to find out where the horizon line is. To figure that out. I need to see my characters in full and then pretend they're standing on an invisible line. I traced the top of their heads and the bottom of their feet. And those two lines go back towards yep. You guessed it the horizon line. As you may notice, I've set the angle a little low. The reason for that is just what I said. I wanted the woman to appear bigger in front of the man. I tend to think of my drawings as if I was seeing it through a camera lens. Where would that camera be? Up high? In iron level download. Had I set the camera and I level, my drawing would look something like this. Notice that the horizon line is always where the camera is. I put my characters in the shot first because they are who the story is about. If I start thinking in lines and boxes, it just takes the fun out of drawing for me right from the beginning. So I start with a foreground and kind of work my way around that way. The trick is never to draw more than two characters before figuring out where the horizon is. Or you could end up placing everything wrong. If we want to understand how perspective works, let's look at a real picture instead of a blank piece of paper that tends to work better for me. You can take any picture really and just trace the lines, see where they're going. That point is called the vanishing point and it's on the horizon line. As you can see, it's quite possible to have more than one vanishing point. It all depends on how the objects, cars, houses, milk cartons, whatever placed. So what if you want to draw a room from above like this or you can't see the horizon line in the picture. Well, you can add more papers or your drawing and have a vanishing point placed three feet out of the frame. Or you can cheat in a way same as before we need something. We can take the vanishing point from take the two characters, for example. But instead of tracing them all the way to the vanishing point, we find somewhere along the way and end with a parallel line to line in top here. We now have a nice square in perspective. See, by the way, I recommend doing perspective lines or help lines like these in a different color pencil or maybe on the back of your board. So you'll lose your way in all these lines crisscrossing across your drawing. The square is going to be our guide in constructing the entire room around these characters. You start out by finding the middle of the square, by doing an X between all four corners. When you found the middle of that square root, you can find all of the other perspective lines you need by continually dividing your squares in half. You can also add more squares and perspective by dragging a diagonal line through a quarter of your first square. So where it meets the parallel line. I know this is kind of hard to understand and it's also very hard to explain. But after you do it yourself a few times, or rather a few, 100 times, it will make perfect sense, I promise. Here's another classic example of a perspective drawing. As you can see, the trees by the side of the road appears smaller as they approach the horizon line. And they also appear to be closer to each other. Find out where to place those trees. Again, we need a square that we can divide into. By finding the middle of that square. We now have a midway between these two trees where we can put a third tree. You want to put in a fourth, fifth grade, you find the midway between DES and so on. Here's the same exercise done with the street. Instead of constantly dividing my squares in half, I now divide my height into six because that gives me some more help lines right away. Notice that even though the vanishing point is way off camera, I can still get the right perspective. If you really want to learn the art of perspective drawing, I suggest you spend hours, days, or even months doing the tedious work of drawing boxes, dividing them, and tracing the lines to the vanishing point. I promise you, it will pay off. Unfortunately, there's no quick fix in this, unless of course you just trace a picture. But even in this case, you need to know where the camera is and you can wind up placing your characters four feet in the air. Or even worse, one of your characters four feet near and the other two feet in the ground. I won't go into 2 or even three-point perspective in this series. But trust me, it's really not as complicated as it sounds, as long as you understand the ground rules. And the only way to really do that is through practice. If I could leave you with just one final trick about drawing backgrounds. Before we go on to lesson 7 about sketching and inking, it would be to put something in the foreground of your picture. For example, if you drew this nice picture of a park in your first panel as an establishing shot. Make sure you put a tree or a bench in the foreground. Objects in the foreground help cover up your background so there's less to draw. And it also gives us the illusion that it's all part of the bigger picture or real-world that expands beyond the panels. If we stay in the park for a minute, a branch extruding from the side of the panel gives us the illusion of an entire tree just outside the frame. Even just shadows from leaves above can give the same effect. We need to know where we are. We don't need to see every detail in every panel. In fact, that can take our attention off the story. You get the little details right? Like a few vertical lines in the grass, a tree line in the background. You don't have to draw the entire picture. Less is more. Okay, so no more backgrounds for now. Hope this was helpful to you. See you back here for Episode 7 about sketching and inking. 7. Sketching and Inking Comics for Beginners episode 7: Okay, hi and welcome to Episode 7 of comics for beginners today with tips on sketching and inking. The inking process is where everything comes together. Some artists do very thorough sketches, so they're, inks are basically just tracing. Others tend to do most of the actual drawing in the inks. Some artists do stick figures that they then flesh out. Others make use of help lines to make sure everything is in the right place. Now I don't really cover anatomy and basic drawing, this program. You'll have to pick that up elsewhere through practice. That's how I did it. Like I've showed you an episode 5. I print out my layouts and use those prints as my sketch pages. Now that I already have the frames and the dialogue to fit in the balloons, it's much easier to dig in then if I just had a bunch of blank pages, I sometimes print my layout out in a light-blue and ink directly onto my printed pages. But usually I just sketch on it and then ink using a separate piece of paper and a lightbox. A lot of artists use blue pencil for their rough sketches. In olden days, we did that because the photocopy machines couldn't pick up the blue lines that went for most scanners to, and then you don't need to erase the pencil afterwards. Nowadays, a lot of scanners are much more sensitive, so you have to remove the blue in Photoshop after your scanned it in. But that's easily done by adjusting the levels. The other advantage of using blue pencil is that you align art is clearly visible on top of it. With a regular pencil. You can sometimes find it hard to tell the lines apart and you need to erase your pencils with the risk of the ink going pale. The blue pencil is not a magic tool. It's just a basic pencil in a light shade of blue. You can get those anywhere. When it comes to inking, there's no one right way of doing it. People need to be able to follow the story rather than be impressed with the line-up. That's the important thing. I would recommend trying out different tools like the famous Quill, different kinds of brushes and markers. You need to find what works for you. It's not just a question of what you'd like to see in other comics. It's also a question of what your hands want to do. And that's not always the same thing. Now, while I love really tight inks done in Quill, I find my particular drawing method doesn't work very well with that instrument. Nowadays, I use different kinds of markers, but also even just pencil sometimes, and then adjust the contrast in Photoshop afterwards. When inking tried to think of your drawings in terms of light and dark. Decide where the light is coming from and what you want to be in focus. You can take a photocopy of your sketched page and experiment with markers on that to get the composition right. Oftentimes when people start out drawing, they're afraid to screw up. So they go at it really careful with the pencil, slowly rendering every image to perfection. And that's cool. That's the learning process. But you also learn a lot from doing the same drawing again, with a big black marker. Use a light box or even a window. Put a new piece of paper over your sketch and trace the image. If you botch the job completely, you still have the original sketch and you can just redraw the whole thing. If you're using a marker that leads, get some stock paper with a little weight to it so it doesn't bleed through. You need to experiment with different kinds of paper and different kinds of markers to find out what works for you. If you're really good or just in a hurry, you can also do your sketches in blue and ink directly on your sketch page. But you run the risk of ruining your original. For beginners and people who want to play it safe, I would always recommend the lightbox. Also because you can adjust your drawings before inking. You can also use photo references for tracing. More about the art of stealing. In Episode 9, when inking on a light box, you also had the opportunity to flip the board over and sketch on the back. Sometimes flipping the board will also reveal mistakes you hadn't noticed before and give you a chance of a different perspective. Always be aware of what's most important within the panel. You can use thinner lines for backgrounds, but your main characters need to stand out. If you're coloring your comic. You can help the storytelling that way. But if it's a black and white story, you need clear inks so people can understand what's going on. We talk about this in episode three, but the layout of the page is equally important in the inking face. Thumbnails are half size photocopies of your sketched pages can be really helpful when deciding what parts of the images to be rendered black. Do a test run with a marker and see what it does to your overall page. Another tip for inking is to be aware of structure. Now there's a huge difference between an object made of stone and one made of steel, wood, or even for adding tiny flecks of ink can really make all the difference. How to convey various materials and structures is different for every artist. You have to find your own riffs. But remember, less is more. Don't worry too much about making mistakes when you're inking, you can easily correct your mistakes with white out or by pasting a white piece of paper over your art and just go over it again. I use acrylic markers because they're easy to apply and the paint dries really quick. Sometimes I just leave mistakes on the board and do my corrections in Photoshop, but I tend to make my original line art as finished as possible. So to sum it up, use the tools that work for you. Use a light box to try out different techniques without ruining your original sketch. Try out the distribution of blacks on a photocopy. Use thinner lines for background and thicker lines for foreground. And finally, less is more. All right, that's it for now. Hope you're all fired up to get some inking done. Join me back here for Lesson 8 about coloring in Photoshop. 8. Coloring In Photoshop: Okay, welcome back to episode 8 of comics for beginners today about coloring in Photoshop. Now of course, you can call your comics in any way you want with crayons or watercolors or whatever. Just be sure to take a photocopy of your original art so you don't ruin your original, at least until you have a couple of years experience. What's great about coloring in Photoshop is that you can always undo. The trick is to keep your line art clear and use your colors to help tell the story. I like to keep it simple and I send to mute my colors quite a bit and using splash of color here and there for effect. Now of course, this is all a matter. Personal taste. You might like other kinds of colors and that's great. But I can't really tell you how to call every character in a gazillion different tones except to tell you that it probably takes a long time. So how do you get started? First off, you have your line art. I'm old-fashioned so I still draw on paper and then scan it in. Sometimes I'll have some blue lines underneath my inks that can easily be removed in Photoshop like we talked about in Episode 7, by adjusting the levels. Or you can scan in bitmap if your scanner will allow you in the blue will usually disappear. Make sure you scan your line art in high resolution. If your page is done in oversize, 300 DPI should be enough, but less than 300 dpi is never enough. Especially line art has a tendency to get pixelated if it's scanned into low resolution. So if it's in the same size as the print size, I would always go with at least 600 DPI. Once you have your scanned pages, open them up in Photoshop, you might need to do a little clean up. I find there's always little dots or grabbed from the scan. I tend to never zoom in more than 50 percent when I'm doing the cleanup to avoid needless work. If it's not visible at 50 percent on your screen, it won't be visible in print. So there's a place to save some time. When you've got your clean line art, you need to make a separate layer for the colors. There are several ways to go about this. My method is to convert my bitmap image to grayscale, then to RGB. I duplicate my background layer and set that layer mode to multiply. Then I click off the original background layer. I don't deleted. Trust me, you will accidentally paint in the wrong layer once in a while. So keep the original sort of a backup. Now you need to put in a new layer in normal mode for your colors. You put that under your background copy. This is a quick, basic way of getting ready to color. You can of course, make as many new layers as you want. I sometimes make a new layer on top of my background layer or line art where I put in special effects like bright lights and stuff like that. You'll have to experiment yourself. Just remember always to make a new layer for those experiments and don't forget to save your Photoshop file along the way. My approach for coloring comics pages is this. I tried to set a certain tone for every new setting to help the reader understand what's going on. Oh, this is inside the nightclub 0 now we're outside early morning, stuff like that. I usually do just a flat color or a gradient on every picture or even the whole page. Then in a separate layer, I put in the colors on characters and objects. I often set the opacity of that layer to 50 to 60 percent. That way everything sort of takes on the color tone of the background, Just as the background color is often visible in a painting. Now here's a little tip that will save you a lot of time and frustration. Instead of painting every object or character as you come upon them, try flattening out all the major elements. First, trace the outer borders of a character. Use the select tool and fill out the form. Now you have a nice figure to work within. Again, use the select tool and go to work. And now you won't have to worry about painting outside the lines. Always remember that an image consists of foreground, middle ground, and background. Some artists tone down the line art and the background to make the main character stand out. But that's probably something for a more advanced lesson. Let's just say you had to have your primary character stand out against the background. And there are many ways to do that. One way is to call them in a warmer tone than the background. That will make them appear closer as long as they're not painted in the same tone as your background, you'll probably be fine. And the stronger the line art, the easier it is to call her. Like I said, I tend to drag my color palette over in the more gray areas and stay clear of primary colors. But that's a matter of personal taste, of course, and it all depends on the type of story you're making. When you're finished with a page, flattened all the layers and save it as an image file. Format is the best. Jpegs are fine for web and lower resolution copies, but for print, always go the tiff format. Also, you need to convert your colors to CMYK if it's for print. Rgb is great for web, and it also gives you some more room for effects when you're coloring. But if it's supposed to be printed, CMYK is the way to go. Okay. I hope you picked up a trigger to here. Now it's time for a little lesson in stealing. Onto Episode 9. 9. How to draw everything Comics for Beginners episode 9: Hi, welcome to Episode 9 of colleagues for beginners, how to draw everything. Now, this is actually a lesson in stealing. If you've downloaded the free ebook we offer at comics for beginners.com. You'll know what I'm talking about, but let me go into some more detail here. Is it ever okay to steal? I would say yes. Well, there are degrees of stealing anyway. There's inspiration and then there's blatant copying, but there's no way to get good at something unless you practice. And what better way to practice than to copy something that already exists? You can't be expected to be able to draw everything just off the top of your head. That comes with practice, lots of, lots of practice. I would recommend you draw the stuff you're not very good at drawing over and over and over again. Let's say you have trouble drawing hands. Hands are very difficult to draw. But luckily, you have two of those right in front of you. If you don't have hands, I don't know what you're drawing with your feet maybe, I don't know. But anyway, watching how hands are constructed, copying pictures and drawings of hands will vastly improve your ability to draw hands, make a journal, and keep adding to it. Whenever you see an interesting pair of hands in a magazine or a photo book, try to draw what you see and put the sketch in your journal. The first many pages will look like crap. But you need to keep those first sketches to track your improvement and see that you're actually getting better. You will often find yourself thinking, man, I'm a lousy artist. I'm never going to be any good at this. But keep your failed attempts on file so you can take them out and look at them and see that it actually have improved, that you are getting better. I bet you think US pro artist can just draw anything right or wrong. We still, just as much as anyone. We're just better at hiding it. Let's say you have to draw a dog. Or you just going to try to think of what a dog looks like and then draw it? Or are you going to look at some pictures of dogs? Technically, that's called reference. We all do that. Now what we don't do is take a well-known dog picture and just trace it. Now, I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's illegal and the results will often look weird. So don't go there. Use several references, flip the image, or use just parts of it and do the rest yourself. Don't waste hours looking at Google images for something you already know how to draw. But if you need a picture as a reference or for inspiration, Go right ahead. I often start up finding photo references as a sort of warm-up or inspirational source. When I'm starting a new project, I use references to jumpstart my creativity and get some details in there that makes it all look more real. You need to find a balance that fits your style and that saves you time instead of adding to it. That's how I feel anyway, I wanted to get some work done not to get lost in the details that nobody will probably notice anyway. I used to think tracing was the same as cheating. It was all right to use a photograph, but tracing was just wrong. I'm not so adamant about that distinction today I'll trace a photo with no shame, especially for backgrounds since I find it saves me an awful lot of time. The trick here is to have it not stand out from the rest of the comic. Get the same level of detail and style. So it blends in seamlessly. If it looks like it's Trieste, don't do it. Comics is all about storytelling. The story has to flow. If the, I get stuck on something that looks much more detailed than the rest of the page, then that hurts the storytelling. So here's my list of tips for stealing efficiently. Number one, use different references for one image. It's a lot less obvious if you combine different pictures instead of copying directly number to make it your own, do it all in the same style and level of detail, whether you're drawing cars, houses or people. Number 3, disguise you're theft. Flip the image on a light box or only take parts of a picture and make up other elements yourself. Number 4, use another media than the one you're working in. If you're painting, use a photo reference, not another painting. If you're making comics, don't copy from another comic. Number 5, never, ever trace another artist's work. Learn from the best. Sure. Yeah. But directly copying a character pose or a frame is a no-no. Now, did you know all about when and how to steal? Go do it. I'll see you back here for Episode 10. Thanks for watching. 10. Becoming a REAL Artist: Welcome back. You made it all the way to the end of this program. So now you know almost everything there is to know about making comics. But I do want to leave you with a few more parting words of wisdom. Some good advice for you hopefully about developing your own personal style and where to go from here. So you might have ambitions to become working professionals in the comics industry. I'm not sure I would be the right person to give advice in this area, the industry where I am is virtually non-existent. There's certainly no money going around. I make my money doing illustrations and storyboards mostly. But here's what I do know. Only a few years ago, putting your comic on your own webpage could hurt your chances of getting published. Why would a publish it? Think they could sell something you already gave away for free, right? Well, these days it was seen putting your work in front of the readers first and gaining a following of loyal fans is probably the best way to get published. If you can show numbers proving that you already have an audience for your story, that can help convince a publisher your work is bankable. And as it turns out, people are actually more than willing to pay for something they already got for free. As long as you ask them nicely. Look at Kickstarter and other crowdfunding resources. It is possible to get people to pull out their wallets. But there are no get rich quick schemes in comics. If you find one that works, let me know. Okay. Publishing is undergoing huge change these days. Whether it's a benefit or a hindrance to new talent is up for debate. What isn't debatable is that it is happening and it's happening fast. The best thing we can do is try to navigate this new world. You probably know the phrase, It's all who you know. And that's not entirely true, but it's not entirely untrue either. If your work is not quality work, it doesn't matter if you're best friends with a major publisher or play tennis with a famous writer. They won't help you put out bad work, but they might be able to help you get better at what it is. You do. You see knowing the right people gives you an opportunity to present the work you've done. And it also gives you a chance to get feedback on your work from people who know what they're talking about. The web has made it easier for everyone to get feedback on their stuff. The challenge is to get the right feedback. Like we talked about in Lesson 2, getting everybody's random opinion is not necessarily a good idea. Finding your peers has never been easier. Ten years ago you would have to go to a convention to meet people in your field, which is still probably the best approach by the way. But nowadays you can find peers online forums through their blog or even Twitter and Facebook. When approaching someone whose work or opinion you admire, be sure to respect their time and respect whatever answer they have to your request. Even if the answer is no. And no answer is also a note. By the way, if you've tried reaching out to someone two or three times with no reply, leave them alone. It's probably not personal. They're busy people following someone on Twitter, commenting on their blog or friending them on Facebook is a great way of getting to know people. Tell them what it is you like about their work and provide value to them by sharing their posts, leaving insightful comments, or try to help in any small way you can. Chances are when you have a small favor to ask, like a portfolio review, piece of advice or a referral. They'll be glad to help out. Do not start out with asking them for a favor, build the trust first, and respect that they are busy people. And here's another very important tip. Always say thank you. Even if you get feedback, you disagree with, just thank them and go about your business. Who knows? Maybe some part of it will resonate or make sense later. Maybe not. But don't go into an argument with them. They have a right to their opinion and you ask them for it. Now what you should be aware of when you stick your neck out, put a story or a piece of art out for everyone. Not everyone's going to like it. And some might not be so polite in telling you. But don't get discouraged. Make comics for your own sake because you love doing it. Team up with others who are into the same kind of comics you are. Connect to others online or at your local comic store. Get a writing partner or a drawing buddy joined a studio. You need encouragement and inspiration if you want to keep at it. Making comics is hard and lonely work. And if you want to be good at it, it takes an enormous amount of time. We already talked about stealing in less than nine. But I feel a few more words on developing your own personal style as relevant. Some of us are lucky or talented enough to have several styles depending on the project. I tend to tone down my level of caricature and go towards the more realistic look for certain projects. It's something I can adjust hopefully without losing my unique expression. I can't tell you what style is right for you. Hopefully you'll develop your own. You need to find a style that fits the kind of stories you want to tell or tell stories that fit your way of drawing. Developing your style is not really something that can be taught, only done through practice and through copying from other artists. Not by copying everything they do, but by observing the riffs, techniques, and graphic shortcuts they use to develop your own unique expression. So stop looking at me and go make some comics. But remember, start with a story and build from there. I hope these videos were helpful and inspiring to you and I wish you all the best with your comics making progress. Thanks for watching and take care.