How to Make a Comic Series

Developing comic artwork.

Developing a comic series can include everything from creating the basic story outline to sketching characters that will bring your comic book to life. Comic stories today range from traditional superhero stories to horror and science fiction. Whether you want to script and illustrate your own comic or work with another writer or artist, you can create a comic series of your own, for fun or publication.

Things You'll Need

• Notebook
• Pen
• Pencils
• Sketch pad

Instructions

1. Develop a concept. Write down some concepts in a notebook. The concept should be short and to the point. A concept for Superman could have been, "A baby from another planet comes to Earth and discovers the Earth's sun has given him extraordinary powers." The concept will be the basis for the entire series.

2. Develop character biographies. Do this in a notebook. Character bios should include character names, where characters are from, any super powers they may have, any weaknesses they may have and other information you may need to know as you work them into your story. You may or may not use every bit of information you include in your character bios, but the more you know about each character, the better you will be able to work them into your series. Include a rough pencil sketch of each character with the bio.

3. Outline your story using a notebook or your word processor. Since you are creating a comic book series, the story will be ongoing, and you won't develop the entire story in one sitting. Consider outlining enough of the story to cover the first few issues. The opening story of a comic series typically covers the origin of the main characters. Write the outline in third person present tense.

4. Draw detailed sketches of your main characters. You will add more characters as the series progresses, but full-color illustrations of your starting characters will help bring them to life for you as you write.

5. Create storyboards to develop your comic book. You can create panels in a word processor and insert scanned artwork or draw panels by hand. Do a rough sketch of what the finished comic panels might look like, including illustrations and text. Each panel should contain an illustration. Some panels will include speech bubbles to indicate dialogue. Some panels may contain text headings that give information not evident by the illustration or dialogue.

References

• Creating Comics: 5 Must-Do Steps