Koala's Blog

Do you have any tips on how to start doing comics?

I hate to be a normie here but both Scott McCloud’s Making Comics and Understanding Comics are great resources to help to give you some basic foundational knowledge.

Another overstated but nevertheless real and honest piece of advice is just to draw some comics and never stop. I struggle with this a lot and it’s even worse when you finally sit down and all you can produce is garbage. But you just have to keep going and keep sifting and stomping through the trenches until you find something you’re proud of and then years later you’ll look back on it and see everything you did wrong BUT that just means you’ve gotten better than you were.

Invest in a ruler and lettering guide, get some 11x17 Bristol board, make 1 inch margins top and bottom, half inch margins on the left and right, and 1/4 inch gutters between panels. Read any manga by Naomi Urasawa. Read Cross Game. Read Slam Dunk. Or just read your favorite authors and pick out everything you like about what they do and try to emulate it. Doesn’t even have to be comics. Listen to music and try to translate what you like about it into comics. Hang out with other artists and draw. It’s important to see how other people do things. Draw from reference, don’t just draw cartoons. I ignored everyone who told me to practice drawing from reference bc I thought it was cheating/boring and I kick myself every day for it! It’s a real eat your vegetables kind of thing. Like still draw as many cartoons as you want but also draw your hands every now and again. A tree or a bench, maybe.

Anyway, hope this helps and good luck with making comics. I need to go make some more as well.