How I'm learning to make comics: part 1

How I'm learning to make comics: part 1
As some of you might have already read, the reason I am learning to create comics is to share the stories that I occasionally conceive in my head. Of course the stories that are made into comics are only the ones that I feel are entertaining and worth the readers time. I’m sure you wouldn’t want to read about my personal ramblings about the need to maintain personal hygiene. Trust me, you don’t.

So what I am aiming to achieve is to learn the best processes for me to convey my stories effectively by improving my storytelling and art and completing pages at a consistent level and within a reasonable timeframe. If all that sounds technically geeky, it’s due to remnants from my programming days. That’s another story not worth your time to know. Now on to the nitty gritty details.

Story
The story is the essence of a comic, without one it’ll be better to just draw a picture of a pretty girl than a whole bunch of meaningless pictures (unless it’s a whole bunch of pictures of pretty girls). To me, a good story is one that is strong enough to reach its readers emotionally. If it has a high chance of making a majority of them laugh, sad, angry, excited or ponder about the issues that it touches on, then it’s worth the effort to realize it.

Origins of a story
My inspiration for a story usually originates from many sources. Here’s a list of some of them.

• Media I’ve come across, such as news, movies, music, comics and magazines.
  
• Personal experiences
  
• Reflections of issues I’m interested in or concerned about.
  
• A random thought that appears out of the blue.
  

Story conceptualization
From the inspiration I’ll have a central subject matter which I then proceed to build a scenario around it. Once I have a skeletal structure of the story; a beginning, main plot and characters, and an ending, I go through it again and see what else I can add or change to make it more interesting. I do all this mentally in my head and most people who see me in this state think I’m spaced-out. No I don’t do drugs, it’s very bad for you, but most of the time I do just stare into space.

Read the next parts:
How I'm learning to make comics: part 2
How I'm learning to make comics: part 3
How I'm learning to make comics: part 4