Daily Comics Digression #26:Making Comics is Hard

Daily Comics Digression #26: Making Comics is Hard

I think many take comics for granted, so it bears mentioning that writing and creating comics books is no easy task. It's a kind of twisted irony, but making funny books that people used to throw away after fifteen minutes takes a great deal of talent. Properly pairing writing and drawings together is quite time consuming, even for professionals who have been at it for years. Sometimes, the better the artist is, the longer it takes to finish creating the work. The artwork and the writing can include multiple people to make it look as good as it can be.

Here's a couple of things you may or may not have known about comic book creation. Scripting a comic is often like creating a mini-screenplay. Not only do you have to write the dialogue between characters, but you need to draft the scene so that the artist can create it. There's two typical ways of doing this. You can do a summary of the action, hitting the basic notes and letting the artist do the lion's share of the creation, or you can do full-script and describe every panel  like individual frames of a film. Either way, there's going to be a good deal of work in just planning the story that unfolds in front of you. 

Artists will often do roughs of a page, outlining what's going to happen. Then, they commit and pencil it out. Afterwards, they or someone else will ink over the linework to add depth. Another individual entirely may do the coloring. Finally, yet another person may do the lettering, creating each speech balloon and special effects. All of this work may be overseen by one or more editors. Although many creators make comics with far fewer people, sometimes with as little as 1-2 individuals involved, the amount of labor involved shouldn't be underestimated.

I like to think that the work of making comics is like being an independent filmmaker. Regardless of the budget you have to work with, you're still attempting a creative art project that has many interlocking, moving pieces.