Thinking About Starting a Webcomic

ZombieG

So, the way it works is that I'm a music web-critic for a few sites here and there, nothing too big. However, nothing kills a boner for what you love like having to write about it up to thirty times a month. Now that I'm suffering from extreme boredom, I've been starting to draw again, and as I've been reading Penny Arcade for a few years now, I've been tossing around the idea of opening up a web-comic. It'll mainly be about general geek-dom, but I want to plan on adding some surrealistic drama to it, just for kicks. I got the idea whenever a friend and I were at Waffle House around 4 AM doing our regular social geek-dom commentaries.

I have a few questions, though. The first being, how do most people go about animating things like Penny-Arcade or fanboys-online? Is there a program, or do people scan, or even use a tablet?

Secondly, is having drama at all any sort of downside? What I mean is, does drama ever really get in the way of enjoying a web-comic for you?

Feedback would be mucho appreciated.

tybeet

As far as I know, the best way to do the art for a web comic is to pen&ink it, scan it, photoshop it. Or if you've got the cash, to buy one of those fancy schmancy Apple tablets when they come out. Wacom tablets work, too, I guess.

NightDragon

Whatever you do, do not try to copy somebody else's style...and draw a LOT. Draw like hell. Get all the critiques you can, and take them to heart. Draw your face off.

Drama can be played off well in some cases, it's all how you do it...if I'm understanding you correctly, drama means more "serious" situtations in a comic, where stuff isn't humorous? From what I've seen, most comics tend to do that a little later on...but I'm sure there are examples out there where it happens earlier.

One of the most common ways of creating a strip are to sketch it out by hand, ink it by hand or scan it and ink it...and then color it on the computer. There are lots of ways to do it, though...you could do it all traditional, or all digital. For digital coloring, Photoshop seems to be the standard...a tablet helps things immensely, especially when inking, too...it's not necessary, though - there's a program called Gimp that a lot of people use.

I don't think you actually meant animating, but if you're actually considering that route, I'd suggest Flash. Again, it's kind of a standard...although you can really use whatever the hell you want. You could even take the route of MS Paint, if you did something cool enough.

ZombieG

I'd like to keep from using flash if all possible. It's too hard to achieve a look that isn't... y'know. Flash.

And my idea of drama is, when I mean surreal, it's like a situation that's totally removed from any conventional means of drama(None of that "I'm in the same room with your mom's son." "Why, that'd be me dear." "I know."). One of the situations I have penned out is that it's a guy who rooms across from two girls, one of them is a lesbian and the other isn't. He, being a porn web critic(amongst other things), makes a night out of watching lesbian porn with her.

I'm not considering animation, either. I want standard, web-comic-y squared goodness. Animation would take way too long, and I'd lose interest in my idea before I even got it out.

I already draw by standard when I'm nowhere near a computer, just going to be hard getting into the habit of actually using a pen.

I have some sample stuff on my photobucket thinger. And here it is: http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w169/Zombie_G/img002.jpg
http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w169/Zombie_G/img003.jpg

It's Jessica Rabbit. I'm totally in nerd-love with her.

EggyToast

Yeah, you should decide how much continuity you're going to have. Some? None? All? What's your update schedule going to be? Can you draw and write that much in the timeframe you have?

People like webcomics that update. People will tolerate a mediocre webcomic if a) there's potential and b) it actually updates. Don't be like the VGCats guy where you say you update on Mondays and then disappear for 2 months. Penny Arcade got to where it is by having a good idea, 2 skilled people doing the work, and never missing an update. Megatokyo has gotten a larger audience in the last year or so because it updates much more regularly, and Achewood updates almost every day.

Heck, even people who don't like PVP read it occasionally because the guy updates on time.

Realize that being able to draw well based on other characters, while nice, doesn't lend itself towards a good comic. Comics have their own characters and you need to be able to draw them quickly.

Finally, while there's a lot of entertaining things about geeks and so on, you should try to have a focus, rather than simply "read it on digg" or "hey this meme is hot." The only webcomic I regularly read that tends to discuss random stuff is Cat & Girl, but that's because most of the comic is meta (in which case being meta about most anything is actually perfectly normal for the comic).