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The other day I was reading an online comic and I clicked through to the creator’s site. There he had a really nice tutorial on how he makes his comics.

Basically, he does it all by hand and scans it into his computer.

Now, if you have ever tried to draw on your computer with a mouse, you know it can be a bit of a challenge– Even if you can draw well. Getting straight lines that aren’t squiggly can be tough.

I’m privileged enough to have several really nice graphic programs and a Wacom™ drawing pad. It makes it a great deal easier, but jagged lines are still a problem. You end up with as much cleaning to do as you do drawing.

After reading the comic drawing tutorial, I tried several different graphics programs without the kind of easy solution I was hoping to find.

I’ve had an older version of flash on my computer for several years, and never really used it. I just never had the time or inclination to learn it. But I knew it was based on vector drawing.

After playing around with the pressure settings in Photoshop™ for a while, I opened Flash™ and drew a few scribbles. Voilà! It automatically smoothed the jagged lines I was drawing, and created the kind of lines we are used to seeing in comic strips.

I can draw a little, but I’m no artist. Flash™ made everything I was drawing look better.

So, I scribbled down a little character. He just kind of evolved as I was drawing him. I drew him 3 or 4 times, as I was getting used to how drawing works in Flash™.

Here’s the result of just a couple of hours from scratch with no preexisting character, per se:

So, here is the first comic I have ever made:

Here’s how it’s done:

When you select the paint brush–remember everything is vectored–go to the bottom and select the round brush shape. Then, just above that, select the second or third size. You can play with the size you want. Then, the magic for creating a comic happens by selecting the pressure setting icon at the very bottom.

For this to work, you need a drawing tablet. I am using one of the $100.00 cheap Wacom™ tablets. So it’s nothing special. But it is pressure sensitive.

Now, everything you draw has the “serifed” look that we are used to seeing in comics.

Also, it worked wonderfully with the slanted brush for calligraphy.

Anyway, I just drew my character rather loosely. I didn’t really try to connect every line with precision–but the closer they are to closed, the better when you color the image.

Then, to color it, select the fill icon and select the color you want.

Now, to magically fill all the loosely drawn shapes and keep the color where you want it, at the bottom select the icon to ‘close wide gaps’. That keeps the color in the place you want it, even if the shape isn’t quite closed.

There you have it. It is that simple.

Have fun.

Oh, by the way, I’m thinking of starting a comic site now. It isn’t up as of this writing, but it will be called comic.currenttoday.com

Bluehost.com let’s me have 20 subdomains for the same $6.95. If you’re interested in the best host I’ve ever used click one of my Bluehost.com links on the side of the page or above this article.

Regards.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 13th, 2006 at 5:09 am and is filed under comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.