Ready to start making your comic? Here are the basic steps many comic creators use:

Develop your cast of characters
Who are the stars of your comic? You? Your friends? Zoggo the Alien Space Unicorn? It's up to you...and your drawing skills. For example, space unicorns might be a little hard to draw.

Write your script
So, what's the plot of your comic? Now's the time to figure that out. Some comic artists prefer to write the script first and then do the artwork, while others prefer the reverse. There is no correct order. In fact, you may even skip the script writing stage all together and dive right into storyboarding and sketching. We won't tell.

Storyboarding
(You can skip this step if you are doing a one-panel comic.)

Storyboards are sketched layouts of the pages of your comic. Planning a comic is a lot like planning a movie. Filmmakers use storyboards to plot out the action of their films. Each panel (or frame) of the storyboard represents a snapshot of the action. It is a visual outline of your story. For more about storyboarding, go to the format page.

For a multi-panel comic, the storyboarding stage will help you work out your story's timing or pacing (see glossary). For example, if you want to express that your character is really bored in class, you could depict her sitting in her chair staring out a window for three panels in a row. Other tricks to pacing include varying close-up views with long-distance views, text heavy panels with sparse panels, and high action panels with static panels.

Once you've figured out how many panels your story needs and how to pace them, then you can focus on composing the individual panels. Each panel should have a focal point--something you want the reader to focus on. For example, if the most important element in the first panel is establishing who the main character is, you will probably want to emphasize him or her using size, color or positioning.

Sketch out your comic
In the sketching stage, you may make one or many drafts before you are satisfied. Whether you are doing a single panel comic or a graphic novel, sketching is crucial for developing and finessing your visual style and story. Remember to keep in mind that this is one work, so try to maintain a consistent style in both the artwork and the writing throughout each panel.

You can use a pencil or blue pencil (see glossary) for your sketches. Check out the Tools page for recommendations.

Determine your final output
Are you planning to publish this as a web comic or do you want to print a really really big comic book? You'll need to figure this out before you decide how to finish up.

Think about color
If you're thinking about reducing costs, you should limit the colors you use. It's cheaper to print a 2-color comic than a 22-color one, and it's even cheaper to print in black and white. Also, if you plan to publish your comic online, remember that subtle colors and lines probably won't show up well on a computer screen. Besides cost, limiting your color palette can make your comic look more consistent and give it a certain "feel."

You can add color to your comic by hand or digitally. By hand, you could use almost anything: watercolor, colored pencils, inks, paint, markers, crayons, etc. Coloring digitally is more common these days because it's easy to fix mistakes and make changes. You can use a digitally inked drawing, or scan your hand-inked drawing into a graphics program and color right on top of it. Check out the Tools page for product suggestions.

Resolution
If you plan to print your comic for publication, be sure to digitally draw or scan your hand-drawn images at a high resolution (like 300 dpi) to get the best quality. To prepare your comic for online publication, use a program such as ImageReady or Photoshop to reduce the resolution or dots per inch (dpi) to computer screen resolution, which is 72 dpi. Be sure to save your high-resolution (300 dpi) comic in case you decide to print it later.

Inking
Inking is done so that it is easy to print, photocopy or otherwise publish the comic without losing any of the drawing because it is too light. This can be done by hand or digitally. By hand, you can use pens, brushes, inks, markers or anything that will make a line that is easy to reproduce depending on your chosen method of publication. Digitally, you can scan your pencil drawings into a graphics program and trace the lines on the computer.

If you chose to hand-ink your comic, you can trace directly over your original pencil drawing with pen or brush. If you want to preserve your original or you are afraid you might accidentally ruin it, place another piece of paper (such as translucent vellum or archival paper) on top of your original and ink it with the help of a lightbox.

Lettering (which is adding in the words) is an art form in itself! The type of letters you choose to use can directly affect the feel of the dialogue. Small faint letters make it feel like a character is whispering, while bold big letters can seem like a yell. Also, a computer font can feel very different from a hand written word. You can letter the comic by hand using inks and pens, or on the computer with a graphics program.