THE WHY AND HOW
NOT TO
CREATE A WEBCOMIC


 
 

Maby we shuld start with 'WHY?' Cos' Its a good question and I thought about it often, (specially when my eyes burn of tierdness at 4 o clock in the morning and I've been orderd to gett at least one page done untill sunrise...)
Buuuuut the thing we will consentrate on today is 'WHY NOT'.

Don't be rude to the few pitiful readers you gott, they may have taken pity on your pathetic comic for one reason ore another - or they just don't have anything better to do all day...
But they'r still readers. Umm, unless they just look at the pictures, then they'r not really readers, but u know, anyway... They are sensitive, frail, human beings that just can't take it without getting all pissy or suisidal or some other crapp. They feel all offended and those readers only take a sertain amount of crapp before they;

A) Give up and never return like the quitters they are, leaving you alone in your misery... <(T_T,)>
B) Give you really crappy ratings cos' they suck and don't have any imagination... <(~_~');>
C) Use they'r superior nerd powers to hack in to your computer, and do all sorts of nasty stuff... <@_@)!>

...Uuuh, I don't have to explain why we need readers do I?






Okay, getting to the 'HOW?' part now - these are the steps i usually follow for every page;




Step. 0 - The wining - witch isn't really a stepp at all cos' your not getting anywere... (This would be me whining about others to leave me alone, and others nagging me about getting back to work.)

Step. 1 - Doodling - the base for the comic, (with more or less nonexistent help from the so called script wrighter may I add).

Step. 2 - The clean up - I open a new page in photoshop with the desired sise. (I go with 975x650 pixels) I paste the scanned comicpage here and start separating and spreading out the wery messy pictures i've gott cramped on it. I newer ink anything so its all fuzzy and grey. These are all fast sketches doodled just to gett a hang on whats happening in the script. They newer ment to be the real pictures but i never gott to try out different angles or even fix up the old ones, 'cos i gott lazy and when these were already scanned in i desided to just ude them to gett ridd of the project as fast as possible. (Trust me, i culd have made it a lott better if i'd really wanted to, but i can't make any money on this project so why bother, Its to time consuming and i got other things to do...)

Step. 3 - lines & text - If your lucky enugh you gett your siblings to leave the room(or preferably the house), so you can consentrate on your work, othervise... well, POOP - you have to work anyway. New layer and then its time to try to figure out WTF iwe tried to draw and then start figuring out witsh lines to follow and at the same time try to fix most of the errors and overall crappyness.

Step. 4 - color - Wheee, finally somehing i don't totaly hate! To bad i've spent most of my life drawing only in gray and therefore lack in coloring skills... I use a different layer for this stepp, and don't do backgrunds yett, only the characters and stuff.

Step. 5 - highligts & shadows - Depending on my energy or mood or whatever i usually do 2 - 4 different shades of color on all parts, clothes, skinn... u know - all that. The more shades i put in, the less the picture ends up looking flatt.

Step. 6 - Dun! Dun! Duuun! ...Backgrounds - that must be the most horrible word ever created, i absolutly hate doing backgrunds! Specially if its supose to be city backgrounds! (shudder)

Step. 7 - Bubbles - Another thing im wery crappy at. U'd think a simple speach bubble would be one of the easyest thing in the world to do, but nooooo, theyr horrible! So i don't even try to waste energy on them, they end up looking sucky anyway. I just cirkle the damn text with a crappy line and fill it with white. Done.

 Last step. - Screw it all - You just don't give a crapp if its good or not. You just flatten the damn thing and hand it over to your sis' who takes care of the uploading and shit. TADAAA! Work compleated.

...and then the damn thing start all over again!!!
 
 
 

Short repeated list of  'Actions that will doom you'r WebComic for sure':
  1. Always think/say I can fix it in the next step... It will never be fixed that way.
  2. Store a bunch of crappy scanns/skisses for months before you deside to fix them... You'll never figure out where the actual lines suposed to be.
  3. Try looking at TV and working on the comic at the same time ... You KNOW how it will end...
  4. Promise that you'll be doing 3 full colored pages a week... COME OOON?!! Thats Madness I tell you!!!
 
If you'r still gona give it a try,
don't tell me I didn't warn you...

- Pepsiholico