Things I've learned about creating a comic book recently.

1)  Character design is hard.  Particularly if you're not doing a super hero.  I made a list of things to consider when designing a character and his/her outfit.

Sex
Physical Size  (Height/weight/musculature)
Skin Tone
Hair color.  Hair Style.  Facial Hair.
Make up
Face.  What shape of eyes?  What color?  What shape of nose?  What shape of lips?  How is the jaw shaped?
Head shape
Corset/Vest
Shirt
Jacket
Pants/Skirt
Stockings
Accessories/Weapons
Shoes/Boots
Gloves
Belt
Jewelry
Cloak/Cape

We make assumptions about people based on how they look.  In a way my entire comic is about the assumptions and roles we put people into because of they're physical appearance, so it's really important that I'm making conscious design decisions about my characters.  The very first question I have to ask myself is: "Do I want this person's appearance to support or contradict his or her role or personality."  Generally, if it's a character that's just making a short appearance (say, the bartender in a saloon) then I probably want to give you a lot of information in his design, because there's not going to be time to round him out.  So a bartender may look bored or friendly (depending on what kind of bartender I'm going for) and be in what we'd consider a normal bartender outfit.  I want the reader to see him and think, "Ah, there's the local friendly bartender" without having to puzzle it out.

Characters that will appear more often though, they're trickier.  The problem with tropes is that they're useful, AND that there's almost always an anti-trope.  So for every story where a woman loves shoes, there's a story where a woman is expected to love shoes, but doesn't.  So how do I make my characters interesting and un-tropy... or should I even try?  After all, there's not necessarily anything wrong with tropes!

(If you're not familiar with tropes, then check out this website.  Warning:  You may not be able to leave.)

2)  Non-human Character design is harder.  Not surprisingly, if you're not making a human, there are a LOT of options for body size, type, color, etc... at least I know most of my creatures are bipedal.  Two arms and two legs does narrow things down a little.

3)  I can't script without dialogue.  I thought I'd be able to draw out the action with just a very general idea of what the characters were saying, but it turns out I was wrong.  For one, dialogue is way too useful as a transition mechanic.

4)  I script better as actual script than by doing roughs.  This surprises me.  I was one of those kids in high school that refused to outline my papers, or my stories... I've always considered myself a natural writer that just whips things out which are naturally awesome.  Like this blog, it's awesome right?  Right?!!?!  But it turns out, at least when it comes to comic books, I'm frighteningly structured.

I started out with a summary of the story.  Less than half a page long.  A little synopsis of all the major points I wanted to hit, along with some notes about some notes I may or may not want to include.  I tried, I really really tried, to go straight to page layouts from there, but it just wasn't working.

So now I'm scripting out each page.  Here's a sample of a short, but action filled page (that I also hope will be artistically interesting):

Page 8:  
Panel 1:  Long panel going down length of page and across the top and along the bottom.  Shows the saloon at the top, a narrow spiral staircase, and the caves down below.  CASSANDRA, ZOT, and the three CARDSHARKS are on the stairs.
Panel 2:  Inset in Panel 1.  One of the CARDSHARKS has gotten too close to Cassandra, she’s spinning around, grabbing his gun hand and twisting.
Panel 3:  Also inset.  CARDSHARK 2 and 3 shooting at CASSANDRA, but she’s using CARDSHARK’s body as a shield, bullets ripping into him.  ZOT is making himself small behind CASSANDRA.

No where near as complex as some comic scripts I've seen, but since I'm the artist and the writer I don't need as many details (I think). Hopefully at least some of it is in my head.

Bonus sketch of one of my protagonists!

I'm working on creating my protagonists, which is both tougher and more fun than I expected.  I'm discovering that creating how a new race looks is a lot more complicated than I expected.  I'll get a post on that posted in the next couple of days.

Until then, I've been practicing, here's a bunch of guys with beards!

Inspired by pictures from this awesome Blog.

Trying to write, draw and publish your own comic book turns out to be a rather complicated little project (Who would'a thought?!)... so each time I try to take a step, I discover that there were 3 steps before it that I didn't know I needed to take... 

And I'm learning to draw, which isn't easy either.

Anyway, I do have some stuff to document my process that I think is kind of interesting, so here goes:

Here's my first attempt at drawing my protagonist.  

My comic is set in a very-alternate universe America, and for the first story arc the main character is wandering around the Old West, so she's kind of in cowboy mode.

There are some thing I like about it... the basic costuming is coming along, and I like the overall build, but I'm not nearly satisfied with my drawing skills.  I'm sure I'll look back at this soon and laugh at it.

And here's a second picture of the protagonist... I like this one a little better, but I still hate it. 

And here's the first page of the comic... that I decide that I hate and have completely thrown out and rewritten.. there's no real spoilers here, and again I hate the art.

I actually like this, well, at least it highly amuses me, and I'm not completely offended by the art... My little comic is set in the 1850s and I plan on it rolling into the American Civil War (Cassandra up there is supposed to be wearing a civil war admiral's jacket), so I wanted to study up on the uniforms and styles of the period... so courtesy of google images and my pencil, here's a random assortment of civil war generals. 

Some things I've learned about writing and drawing a comic book.

1)  It takes about 10,000 times more research than I expected.  Everything from "What did civil war generals wear?" to "Er, what the hell does a 9 year old girl look like anyway?"

2)  Photo references are your friend, and enemy.  I have about a zillion of these too, now.  They're super handy in figuring out what things look like from different perspectives, but the danger is that it can become reproduction rather than a fresh creation.  Also, comic book art needs to be a little exaggerated to look and feel alive, so if you draw strictly from reference things look stiff and boring.

 

I've always wanted to write and draw a comic book.

It's the one thing that's remained consistent as long as I can remember. I went through the astronaut, policeman, fireman, and even the preacher stages, and passed through them... and in "real life" I've bounced around through a number of different "real jobs," but all through it I've been doodling away, dipping occasionally into the comic book world, but always walking away, because drawing comic books for Marvel or DC isn't realistic...

But now it's 2011, we have the interwebs, self-publishing is all the rage, and thanks to our wonderful economy, I've got some free time, so what better to do between frustrating job searches than pursue a life long dream?

And to keep myself moving, and to amuse myself along the way, I'm going to blog about the process... because, hey, who isn't blogging about everything these days?  And who knows, some one out there may find it amusing... and if nothing else, when I'm old and grey, I'll be to read this and amuse myself.

Oh, and by the way, I can barely draw or write, so this should be entertaining.