How to Be a Comic Book Artist

Consider Self-Publishing

• If you can't secure a job at a comic book publishing house or have been turned away by several editors, consider self-publishing. Self-publishing involves many non-creative aspects of comic book production, and it also requires a decent amount of start-up capital. Opting to create your own book means shifting many of the responsibilities of production (typically associated with the business side of the industry) onto the creative team. In other words, if you're planning on self-publishing, you'll have to do a lot of legwork.

  Before you can even think about drawing your own book, you have to come up with a feasible concept. If you've been bouncing a cool character or story around in your head for a while, start fleshing it out. If you don't have an idea handy, think back to all those wild superhero designs and make-believe situations that you concocted as a kid. The key is finding a concept that's unique, interesting and never been done before.

  Consider getting help from others. As diligent and hardworking as you may be, nobody can go it completely alone in this industry. Here are possible helper roles: A writer (if you're not much of a scribe yourself), an inker (if you don't ink your own stuff), a colorist, a letterer (if your budget permits you that luxury), an accountant to handle the financial matters and a lawyer to tackle legal issues like copyrights and contracts. All of this is contingent on the size of your budget.

  Once your support personnel are in place, you can go about creating your book. From a purely artistic point of view, this means you'll have to translate your writer's script into 32 pages of fluid, coherent artwork. Plot out each page and work your penciling magic. Then, send them to your letterer, who will fill the captions and word balloons with dialogue. The letterer will then pass the pages on to the inker, who solidifies your pencil lines and prepares the pages for color. The colorist then applies the final treatment. Put all the completed pages together, and you've got yourself a comic book.

  Finding printers and distributors falls on the more technical side of things--you'll have to make many important decisions, including how big a print run you want to have (10,000 copies is a standard size for a small, black-and-white book), what kind of distribution option you want (direct market vs. newsstand distribution) and how much you're willing to pay for everything.