strangelykatie:

Oh man there’s a lot, most of which you’ll be able to learn from any good scriptwriting workshop or book, but personally I would say the most important thing to remember is that (unless you’re hiring an artist), YOU will be the one drawing it all out eventually, so you really, really have to make something that excites you in some way.

Comics take a long time to make. Something that takes a paragraph to convey in prose can take an entire page. A background detail that could be said with one written sentence and then carried in the reader’s visual memory actually has to be drawn out, repeatedly, from multiple different angles. You’ll most likely draw the same faces, over and over, potentially for many years depending on the length of your project.

This isn’t to put you off! I believe the payoff is absolutely worth it – visual storytelling brings another entire level and even though it can be a tough road, having the ability to speak with more than words is extremely beautiful and cool imo.

I guess it’s kind of a waffly way to say: make sure whatever you’re making excites you in some way!! That doesn’t mean it needs to be super thrilling page-turning adventure or a murder mystery. There are many ways you could make a comic project exciting for yourself:

• Research scenery that you love and use it for settings
• Use an experimental art style
• Challenge and push yourself with framing, layout, visual storytelling
• Spend a lot of time with your characters outside the story, learn about them
• Figure out what’s important to you, and how you could convey that to readers
• Figure out what the POINT of your comic is. It doesn’t have to be a huge moral thesis, but for example if the point is just to show a peaceful slice of life, remember that
• Think about why you were excited about the story in the first place

Because they are SUCH long term projects, a lot of comic writers/makers will have some times where they aren’t excited by their creation as much and that’s pretty natural. But you can try to keep it as fresh and exciting as possible, and while writing think about what you’re going to enjoy drawing later.