How to Draw Comic Strips

Video Transcript

"Alright folks in this clip I'm going to teach you how to draw your own comic strip, and the first thing you're going to want to do is get out a ruler and create a certain amount of panels for the comic strip to play out in. Now of course you're going to want to decide exactly what you want to fill those panels with first, before you go and create them. So do that first, plan out exactly which frame is going to contain what, and then lay out as many as you need. We're going to start with the first one here, and essentially the entire point of a comic strip is to tell a story. So, we're what going to do is use this concept and basically figure out a way to tell our own little mini story and using this sequential method you're supposed to use when you draw your comic strip.So, first you establish your character in the opening panel, I guess you should say, just kind of minding his business in the case, walking along his merry way, and at this point we have absolutely no idea what's going on. We will give the audience a clue going to give him a golf club. So we got a guy walking through the first frame holding a golf club. Now, as we move over, you notice that this particular frame has no square, now the reason why I'm doing this is I want to call particular attention to this frame, because this frame is where the, I guess you could say, the, the thing that sets the chain of events in motion, the catalyst for this particular comic strip happens. This is where the, I guess you could say, the, everything kind of like starts to unfold. It's the pivotal frame. So to call attention to the pivotal frame, I am not drawing a box around it, so people like consciously or subconsciously notice that this is different than all the other frames, and they'll come to find out why once they get to the very end. Now the way to do that, I mean, essentially is, that's a subtle one of those subconscious sort of things, you're not supposed to draw a lot of attention to it. Now what is it that causes this guy to kind of look and stop for a second. We've already established he's on a golf course, so from off frame somewhere we hear someone shout. He has no idea what's coming, no idea what's going on. Move on to the next panel, as we continue on our story. All of a sudden out of nowhere, we going to draw a golf ball striking our poor, poor, golfer in the head, and there are ways we, a myriad of ways we can show that he just got hit in the head. One thing, his arm was down, and I'm going to put it up now, put his legs kind of in a wobbly position, show little shakes around his body, show that he just got knocked by something in the head, and it doesn't hurt to add a little verbal interpretation or verbal sign of what just happened. Ball comes out of nowhere, smacks him in the head. Which brings us to our fourth and final frame, where our disgruntled golfer angrily, now feels the back of his head, and again, this is amateur stuff obviously right now I'm just, I'm just literally making this up as I go, but, you see that I'm, the whole point here right? You could even hold, have him holding the golf ball in his hand if we wanted to. But the point is we used each and every panel to tell a sequence of events that adds up to a full and complete story. Golf club will be on the ground now, and he is not happy, maybe the person from off screen says he's sorry. That essentially is how you tell a sequential story and this is how you create your own comic strip by coming up with a sequence of events and putting them down one by one in each individual box."