How to Create A Web Comic
By Jennifer Scafide
Note: A web comic is a comic that is posted online.
01. Come up with and idea. You can have as many ideas and you can think of. Just pick the one you
like the most and that you think you can work with.
02. Develop your idea. Work on your idea to a point where you can start to write out a story and or
plot for you're comic.
03. Create your characters. Think up as much details about them as you can. You know you really messed
up when your readers know your characters better than you. You can tweak your characters while you write your script.
04. Start writing a script and get as much done as you can. The script you have done the better. Before
you start drawing reread what you have done and fix spelling errors and redo what you think needs to be redone.
05. Decide your comic format and your art style. You can use newspaper comic strip format or comic
book multi panel format. The probabilities are endless.
06. Start to draw and get as many pages done as you can. You will understand why shortly. Don't worry
about if you can draw or not. Use stick people if you like. When your done scan them and save the pages as a png. Use jpeg.
only if you have to because it will pixilated the image and make it look not as nice.
07. Pick when your going to update. You might want start off updating once a week at first and see
from there.
08. Choose a web server like http://www.comicgenesis.com/. You can use any server really. Pick one that you can work with and you feel comfortable with.
09. Work on your site until your happy with it.
10. Upload a page or two on to your site. This way new readers wont have only on page to look ay until next
update.
11. Now it’s time to promote your site. First email a link of you site to all your friends and tell
them to email it to all of theirs. Now that you have that covered, if you read any web comic you can email the creator and
see if he or she will do a link trade. A link trade is when they link you and you link them. If you don't read any just pick
a few comics at random. You can also ask non web comic sites if they will link you. The more sites that link you the better.
11. Once you have you site all promoted, all you need to worry about is remembering to update. This is where
having pre done comics come in handy. Say you get sick or for some reason your unable to draw for a while. If you have pre
made comics you wont miss and update. I you your unable to update your self, ask a trusted friend to do it for you. Also don't
get cocky and not draw any comics for a while. Try to get one comic done pre week so you will have plenty of back up pages.
12. You might want to create an email address for the site so that fans can write to you. Try to check it
often. You don't want it to over flow. I'm warning you, you might get as much hate mail as fan, so don't get to mad if someone
complains to you about a missed an update.
Written on Wednesday, May 10, 2006.
