How to Start Tracing for a Comic Strip

Tracing over older comic strip drawings to make new strips is practiced more often by cartoonists than you might think. In the long run, it's probably better to sacrifice "original art" to make sure your characters appear the same all the time.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Have completed drawings of your main comic strip characters to use as stencils. These drawings should be in normal positions with regular facial expressions. They should also be completely drawn in full dark ink.

2. Place the paper used for your next strip over the stencil so the stencil is directly under the space the character will be drawn on. Make sure the paper isn't thick or opaque enough to completely block the stencil.

3. Trace over the stencil on the second sheet of paper using a light colored pencil. You should always be able to adjust the traced drawing for different character actions or expressions in the new strip.

4. Draw out the remainder of the strip in the pencil, then draw over everything again in ink. It may help to also have drawn stencils of objects that are commonplace in the strips.

Tips & Warnings

• It will definitely help to have stencils of your characters from different angles (for example, right side, left side, in front).
• Blue pencil may be best for the original drawing and tracing because it is the least likely to show in reprints in case you don't cover the entire pencil line.