How to Create an Excellent Comic Strip
People all over the world love comic books and comic strips. After all, who doesn’t want to have a good laugh? Comic strips usually take a minute or two to read, depending upon their length. They’re a sequence of images that have captions and balloons with text in them. Comic strips and comic books are used to tell a story. They make use of drawings and cartoon characters for storytelling.
Some of them are serious while many are humorous. Comic strips are often used in newspapers and magazines. Today, they’re also widely used in different forms of advertising and online promotions. They’re made by professional graphic artists or cartoonists. Here, we’ve tried to explain the process:
1. Finding ideas
A comic strip must be treated like a short story. It needs to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. So, it would be a good idea to break down a comic strip into 3 parts. Every story of the comic strip is based on a good idea. It is, therefore, necessary to find some good ideas.
Writing down everything that comes to mind helps in formulating a good story. Next would be finding ideas for characters, expression, speech, and settings. It is also necessary that every part has some action and the comic strip has a powerful ending.
2. Create the frames
When the ideas are formed, the next step would be to create the frames. The frame size would depend on the available space and the number of characters and objects to be included. The appropriate place for speech bubbles must be clearly marked. Utmost care should be taken that the frames are not too big or too small. What’s truly important is that they must utilize the available space in the best way.
3. Draw the characters
The drawing of characters would depend entirely on the skill of the cartoonist or graphic artist. For the ones who are not skilled graphic artists, using basic shapes to draw characters is recommended. Stick figures are relatively easier to create and won’t take much time.
To create sound effects, starbursts and speech bubbles must be created in an appropriate manner. In the absence of some excellent digital gadgets to create the characters, a pen and pencil can be used. This would make it easier to erase the mistakes.
4. Add text in the speech bubbles
Now, it’s time to put in some matter in the speech bubbles. It would be a good practice to double-check the spellings while adding text into the speech bubbles. For creating maximum impact, the size of the letter must be increased when a character is shouting. Showing the speech in bold would also be effective. Bold capital letters would help anyone understand that the character is shouting.
5. Add the remaining details
After the text has been added in the speech bubbles, the remaining parts can be drawn. These parts include facial expressions of the characters, movement lines, background items, and shadows on the floor.
6. Review the entire comic strip
Once the comic strip has been created as planned, it would be a good idea to review it. If any changes are required, they must be done immediately. Everything must be perfect before publishing the comic strip. Even a small mistake can ruin its appeal and even make it look like a big failure.
