Create Your Own Webcomic

Unions comic authors have complained about newspaper size restrictions, content censoring and similar issues for a long time. The comic book fans have been increasingly irritated by the treatment their entertainment medium receives as well. Then came the Internet, giving the possibility of unlimited and unrestricted distribution. Thus the webcomic was born.

There are millions of webcomics out there, dealing with topics as vast as video games, college life, samurai, Lego men, identity and self-esteem, depression, suicide, children and joy. People will write for a living, for fun, how to relieve stress, to artistic expression, or often just for the heck of it. Then they stick their creations on the web and hope that only one more person will find and enjoy the fruits of their labor.

It seems there are several hundred new comics created each day. These often diminish and disappear after a few months. Occasionally, however, a balloon rises above the rest and gains such popularity that the creator is able to dispense with all other work and make ends meet just outside the income generated by their Web sites. Some examples of such are Penny-Arcade, PVP, and CtrlAltDel Squidi.net.

Many people, when it introduced the world of webcomics, think to yourself, "Would not it be nice to have my own comic strip?" and a few go further and create their own. So, how can a newcomer ensure that their comic continues beyond the first few weeks of enthusiasm?

Now before you go into some useful advice is probably worth noting that I am the proud owner of a failed webcomic. He 's gone for a few months before hitting some few tears and then grinding into the ground. I plan to come back to creating comics, but until now they have. So I'm not really drawing on a foundation of success, failure and more understanding of some of the main factors contributing to my failure.

For starters, you're going to need to plan a bit '. It 'a shame, unfair and not fun, but necessary. Sit down and think about your comic. Come with a location, characters and plots, perhaps even a bit to test them in. Run the characters through some adventures and see how they react and how to react to them. Your characters grow and change throughout the process, and will continue to do so for the duration of your comic, but you need to get a handle on their basic character traits.

For some reason the majority of comics revolve around a group of people (usually men) who are a little 'gifted and living together. Usually in a college dorm. I suppose this is because that is life in general than most webcomic authors. The same premise also makes a lot of sense for the base of a comic book. When designing my own webcomic the process went a little 'of something like this: I designed the main characters, most of which were drawings that I had played with in high school. Then I need a reason for them to see and interact with each other constantly, so I had them live together. They needed character traits that may relate to, so that they become older students who have at least a passing interest in the geek side of life.

I drew my first few strips and showed them to some friends who liked them, so started looking into putting them online. The initial line consisted of two guys living together, a female love interest for one of the characters and talking animals (a frog in my case, because I had this frog that I had been drawing for years and had become quite attached to him) .

At this point I was not very experienced with webcomics, having only really read the comics newspaper unions syndicated press companies post online. So I started looking through some of the greatest comic book, only to find that Sluggy Freelance had the talking animals, geeky guys who have lived together and female love interest already covered. A little 'more research revealed that "students who live together" has been covered in most comics. Furthermore, having a kind of quirky (and only a little 'stupid) character, and a more sensitive and reserved, was virtually a fact. Then to rub salt into the wound, I found that another comic had its main character design is very similar to mine. So I got rid of the frog, removed the game and focus on universities and otherwise left the comic as it was. Not entirely original.

Anyway, the point is that you should probably try to be more original. Check through the concept and remove the whole university students living together with wacky talking inappropriately anthropomorphic sidekicks. You will be better in the long run and have a most original creation.

Before you go headlong into publishing comics online, you should build a little 'arrears of comics. Try to take at least a dozen cartoons of quality they would be proud to have on your site. If you are going to have a story-based comic then it would be a good idea to arrange your first story arc. It 's very useful to keep the backlog of comics, when possible, so you can fall behind in the creation of comics, but still content to be published online. Nothing turns away readers faster than failing to deliver their content when you say you will. If you eat in your wallet, try to draw some additional strips not being diminished.

As a helpful guide for your comics, decide on the format you have (for example three or four-panel gag strips, etc.) and draw the panels on your computer. You can then print these and draw the strips inside the panels, ensuring that they remain orderly and coherent. When the comics were drawn, in their scan your computer and touch up any way you like. It is usually best practice to remove comics and text and add these computers, because usually it is neater and easier to read. Remember to put balloons around the speech, not in the speech balloons. It 'amazing how often this is forgotten. Some good characters, free for noncommercial use, can be found at http://blambot.com. Not too stressed about your artwork, I found that most people do not care a bit 'loose and not too fantastic works that have provided the contents of the comic.

So now you're ready to go ahead with the online side of things. Start writing a web page so that you can simply upload when you're ready. Webcomic PHP management systems are relatively easy to find. I personally really like ComicPro that, unfortunately, seems to have disappeared from the web. If you can hunt worth a look. Web hosting is pretty easy to find as well, you will not need much space to begin with so you can use one of the many free providers out there (including http://keenspace.com that provides free hosting specifically for webcomics), use the space Web provided by most ISPs, or buy your own web hosting plan (you can get a fairly cheap because you will not need many features to begin with). At the time of signature for each hosting package, make sure you have permission to change the read / write attributes of all files to the managers of PHP will need this comic (this is done on Linux servers using CHMOD from your FTP program; In Windows you can right-click a file, select Properties and change the security permissions there, or it may be necessary to use a proprietary control panel provided by the host).

You're going to need to decide on an upgrade program for your comic. It's probably best to start small and build, maybe two or three updates. This will have three to five weeks of comics in your wallet, allowing you to fall behind substantially before anyone notices.

While we are in terms of time to decide who will help if you actually try to plan an hour or so in your day to write comics. If you try to fit them in your spare time that is "intended to have only after completing just this last thing," then you'll often find yourself unable to get a strip drawn in time.

Now that you have your comic online you can start promoting it. There are a huge number of comic directories out there that will help you to better understand exposure. Do your friends excited about your comic, which in turn will have their friends excited. Read other people's comics and get involved in their forums. Find sites that accept guest artwork or comics and send some of them. The best promotion is to get people to read the comic and shoot them a link through instant messaging program to another friend. My current list of "must read every day" comics came entirely from various people sending links to me. Do not expect an immediate success, try to share your vision with even just one new person every day.

Well, I hope that helps give you some ideas on how to make your comic and keep it running. When your characters start to grow they will almost create the stories and jokes themselves and the strip will not be anywhere near as hard to write as it was when you started out. Just keep drawing the comic strip with a certain frequency so as not to fall off the pace of your created world and have fun .......