Blog
Articles on finishing self-generated work and building expertise-based creative businesses, with the Creative Engine, Ground Truth, and Capacity frameworks.
dwwp-mastering comics
Making better comics: 12 years and 12 hard-won lessons learned
The point of being human is to try things that are incredibly difficult, to reach for heaven, even if it exceeds your grasp. That’s who we are. That’s what makes it all worth it.
diy: making minicomics
Get In Touch Hey cartoonist! So glad you’ve found this resource to get you started with DIY publishing! Making comics is really challenging, so if you’re ready to publish, that deserves major congratulations. But if you’re finding yourself stuck in the process, that’s totally normal, too. And maybe I can help. I help creative people to take control and implement giant, overwhelming projects (like graphic novels!). If that sounds like something you could use, check out my FREE Creative Engine Masterclass to figure out where you’re getting blocked, and start finishing your awesome book! This is a guide on how to put together a minicomic that I last updated in about 2004 (and it shows: a lot of the photocopying,…
DIY: Tracing
This tutorial dates from 1998. A more complete, current tracing demo can be found in chapter 8 of Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. OK, this may sound totally idiotic; i.e., why should I teach you how to trace? So you can copy other people more easily? No, it’s so you can trace yourself more easily. Sometimes this is an incredibly useful, necessary thing to do. Mostly, it serves to create cinematic, (in McCloudian terms) “moment-to-moment” transitions. This sort of transition can be really useful to portray a set amount of time passing, or to set a mood. Some so-called cartoonists will try to create this sense of time by xeroxing or cutting-and-pasting images from one panel to another. But you…
DIY: Materials
This tutorial dates from 1998. There’s more up-to-date and clear information on materials throughout Drawing Words & Writing Pictures. There’s also a more current Supplies List at DW-WP.com with buying links. Paper:Page size:Whenever we talk about page size, we’re actually talking about “image area”, which means the part of the page on which you are actually drawing. It doesn’t matter if your paper is the size of a football field, the image area, the rectangle you’re actually drawing on, is all that matters. Most American comics are drawn at approximately 10 inches by 15 inches. This is in the ratio of 2×3. Other 2×3 ratio pages could be 8” x 12” or 18” x 24” for example. Since art is almost always…
Using Scrivener to Script Comics
A huge portion of my writing process doesn’t happen on the comics page, and all that stuff I do in Scrivener.
Visual Scripting: using InDesign to write scripts native to comics
Learn to write comics directly in page layouts without (necessarily) drawing. Stay attuned to the visual: draft comics in words and design simultaneously.