I want to write, pencil, ink, color and publish my own comic - need some help

[jens25e]

I want to do that not to make any money with it, just for personal satisfaction. I want to hold a comicbook in my own hands that wears my name.

 

It is going to be a longer posting, would be cool if I got some support anyways.

 

First of all: I dont want to produce an endless series rather a mini series of 4 or 6 sequentiell issues.

I want to invest way more time into it than the average marvel, DC, topcow, darkhorse, whatever team. Maybe 2-3 years.

My strengths will probably be in the writing, the coloring (with Photoshop, which I am very good in) and the basic layouting while my weaker parts will be the pencilling and eventually also the inking.

 

I have a few questions regarding this:

 

1. After the pencilling, will the original pencil board be inked or will a copy of that be inked and the original pencil board be kept if the inking gets messed up?

 

2. Do you have any personal favorite style of cover? I like more abstract, artistic covers better than the "realistic" ones, while I prefer the content pages to be more realistic than abstract. Art that I especially favor is Chris Bachalos "Death" (Time of your Life, High Cost of Living), that has nice dirty collage styled covers and clean "realistic" interior art. I like the Sandman covers too, while I do not like the interior so much.

Maleevs Daredevil is phenomenal both in CoverArt and ContentArt (I dont know if he is the Cover Artist).

Wolverine Origin covers are also awesome and so are the Automatic Kafka´s covers.

Can one of you provide me with links to other Covers that had a deep impact on you?

 

3. The Story

 

While I think I can pull of a good story if I really try hard, I am very unsure of what readers would like, since my personal taste seems to be a bit different than the taste of others.

I was no real Superhero Fan until now and I am thinking of writing a story that plays in the present time, has no superheroes, no mysticism and no mythology. Do you think there is a market for it? Although money is not my motivation I would want my comicbook to be liked by others.

 

I have some basic sketches of 3 stories which I am not very happy with so far:

 

The 1st concept would be about a retired Manager of a global company who is idealistic and hires people to assassinate the employees of a TV channel (or something similar) who he believes to devaluate human society.

The killers would probably be international children (chinese farmers girl, german street kid etc.) who would be bought or kidnapped from their families and trained in a 10 year program to be sent unto that planned out crusade.

 

Another story would be about a private Seal Team that is sent out into combat against terroristic clans and drug tycoons.

 

A third possible idea that involves some mysticism is about a global network that consists of children that are several hundred years old and do not age. They have the looks, voice and in a way even the childish behaviour of real children but the wisdom of several hundred years.

 

I am not happy with either of these 3 vague ideas.

It would be awesome if one of you guys could give me some ideas that I can work with and/or also answer my otherr questions (what between pencilling and inking, which cover style?)

 

Thanks a lot,

 

Jens

 

[jens25e]

Looks like my posts are not even read.

[fantastic_four]

Not likely to be many artists here. If we could draw them, we probably wouldn't be collecting high-grade copies encapsulated in little pieces of plastic.

[Darthdiesel]

... about a private Seal Team...

 

 

Our local aquarium has these seals trained to bounce and balance balls on thier noses and eat fish thrown in the air. They do pretty neat tricks in the water...is this going to be a children's comic?

 

What's with the underlying murderous children theme in your books? You must not like kids much...

 

I like to read comics and sell them. As for writing them and creating them, I'm not very knowledgeable, but there are some on this board that are more into it than I. I like the simple Modern T& A comics and current writing styles and the Bronze stuff gets me interested as well. Silver Age art and writing is, IMO, too campy, goofy, PSA influenced, and the art is bad, bad bad...Golden Age - I just started checking out (Atlas Battle comics, Dell movie comics- western round ups...)and I can't relate to it at all..sorry

 

[jens25e]

Ok, thanks for the replies, you two. I appreciate it.

 

Since I am german I might get into some understanding troubles, does "Seal Team" have to do anything with aquariums and children books, I thought more of a special police/military squad...

[Darthdiesel]

This reminds me of that German beer commercial (Becks or Heineken?) about German comedy...

 

I understood what you meant about the Sea Air and Land military specialists...

 

I was pointing out how it can be misunderstood as the blubbery cute circus/aquarium animals that do tricks for fish...

 

Now picture these flippered mammals infiltrating world wide drug cartels, toting weaponry ....

 

 

 

 

[comicinvestor-migration]

None of those are really "story concepts" in the true sense, and are more story ideas or plotlines. The concept is a very concise framework, from which all other ideas flow.

 

Here's an exercise. Take you favorite comic, movie or TV show and try and break down the comcept to a one-sentence description.

 

Take The Hulk for example: Instead of looking at all the extraneous , it's really "A scientist stumbles into an Atomic explosion and transforms into a monster of immense strength".

 

That's it. The rest of the stories, characters, and conflicts flow from that one sentence, and until you have that one-sentence hook, you shouldn't even think about anything else.

 

The most important part of the "concept" is to have it be a natural jumping-off point for further ideas and gets your mind racing with possibilities. If I were to read the concept for Speed (A bomb is wired to a city bus, and will explode if it goes below 50 mph) I'd be thinking of what would happen in gridlock, if you get it behind some "sunday drivers, how the people on the bus would react, run out of gas, etc. and all those are naturally in the movie (to spectacular effect).

 

Find that concept and your battle is half over.

 

Now let's look at your three stories and see if any can be distilled or adapted:

 

1) A retired CEO formulates a task force to clean up the smut on American TV, by whatever means necessary.

 

2) A disgraced Army Seal turns into a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the drug cartels to fund his mercenary operation.

 

The third one is tough, since no one would care about these Methuselah-like midgets running around. Do they have powers, abilities, etc.. or are we supposed to be impressed by a 500-year old toddler?

 

Maybe a comedy would work, where a couple escape from government lock-up and hijinks ensue.

[jens25e]

Yes, that would be funny indeed.

 

Heineken is actually a dutch beer and not a german beer.

 

Good german beers would be:

 

Warsteiner (doesnt have anything to do with War)

Becks

Veltins

Krombacher

Erdinger (wheat beer

Paulaner (wheat beer)

 

and 2381 others

 

I dont drink that much beer anymore so I am having hard times listing all german beer brands.

 

 

[aardvark88]

Plz do a search for Udoprinting thread fr 02Sep15. Talks about self-publishing your own COLOR comic in ltd quantities. For more, info visit their web site in Canada,

www.udoprinting.com

 

[jens25e]

Comicinvestor,

 

thank you very much that you took the time to look into my writings.

 

I agree with you mostly, although I think the network of the "methuselah toddlers" could be intersting too. I imagine them to be the grey eminencies that control politics, media (and religion) without anybody noticing.

 

I have not thought about a real storyline as far, but it could involve a journalist trying to unveil that unnoticed reign of the "methuselah toddlers".

[jens25e]

Yes odin, thank you. I have seen udoprinting.com and I will eventually use them to publish or print my comic books. There are also many copyshops around, so I can also ask them to "bind" my comicbook printouts, but only when they can guarantee that the outcome will be same as the original Marvel comics.

 

I am thinking about sending my own comic in to get it slabbed.

 

How funny.

[Guest]

1. After the pencilling, will the original pencil board be inked or will a copy of that be inked and the original pencil board be kept if the inking gets messed up?

 

Traditionally inks are applied to the original penciled board. Usually inkers just keep a photocopy handy if they need to rebuild or fix a section. Alternatively (And some companies do this now- dreamwave is one) you can ink on a lightbox using a photocopy or printout (that's what dreamwave does, they email pencils to the inker, the inker blows them up and inks on a lightbox.) Working over a light box is sometimes very annoying. Or you can print bluelines of the pencils and ink over those.

 

 

[jens25e]

Well, the thing with the inking over a print of the pencils will be that you maybe see the pencil prints in the finished product, since pencilling also includes construction and perspective lines.

 

Eventually I can color over them, I guess.

[Guest]

i misunderstood. You wouldn't ink on top of the printout. You would ink on a blank sheet of bristol vellum with the printout taped to the bottom on top of a light box. Unless you inked over a blueline printout of the pencils. in that case the camera wouldn't pick up the pencils lines anyway (it's called "non-photo blue" or "non- repro blue" for that reason.)

[Guest]

also, in the modern computer-based production scheme- one of the colorist's jobs (hopefully done by an assistant) is to clean up the black and white line art. It's a perfect assistant's job since they're already producing the "lineart" and "flats" channels, so cleaning up the lineart is a natural addition.

[delekkerste]

This reminds me of that German beer commercial (Becks or Heineken?) about

German comedy...

 

"I just flew in from Berlin and boy, are my arms tired."

 

"Germans don't do comedy. They do beer. BECK'S."

 

By the way, Jens, there is a book on Amazon.com you may want to check out -

"How to Self-Publish Your Own Comic Book" by Tony C. Caputo. I read it

recently, as I, too, was interested in publishing my own comic. However, after

reading the book (which details both the creative process and the financial side)

and seeing all the starving indie comic creators at this year's San Diego Comic

Con, I decided there were probably more enjoyable ways to lose my money!

 

Gene

 

 

 

[jens25e]

Thank you for your clarification and insights, mudbuddha.

 

Since all the other jobs will be in my hand, I will also take the assistants job of cleaning the lineart before coloring. While actually it is pretty easy to clean the scanned lineart. Photoshop is a powerful tool and can do a lot.

 

I actually do not even have one of those boards so I would color/shade/highlight it using my mouse, which actually reminds me back of my semiprofessional gaming career, having absolutely ridiculous hardware but still being top notch filled me with pride (actually we germans are proud about anything, it doesnt take much).

 

Delekkerste (dutch for "the tastiest" or "best looking", right?), I do not want to make a living of producing comics, I just want to publish a 4 to 6 issue mini series and still work as a media-designer regularly. Also I would not go into the indie direction but align myself to the mainstream taste, at least as far as I can bear it.

 

Thank you for your ideas though. Maybe I will look into that book, although I think I know pretty much all I need to get started. So my biggest concern is finding or forming a good story now...

 

 

 

 

[comicinvestor-migration]

I agree with you mostly, although I think the network of the "methuselah toddlers" could be intersting too. I imagine them to be the grey eminencies that control politics, media (and religion) without anybody noticing.

 

I didn't mean that a story like that couldn't work, only that you don't have a concept that would sell or that anyone would care about.

 

How could a 500 year-old toddler take control of the world's governments? How could they remain unknown for so long? What's their angle? Who do they answer to? Why do they live so long, yet are stunted at early childhood?

 

Answer those questions (the most important of which is how a toddler, no matter his/her longevity, could gain world control) and you're got something.

[jens25e]

I think it is not too hard to make it sound reasonable. The toddlers might have some mortal friends, for instance the members of a family that by some ancient contract is bound to serve those methuselah toddlers.

 

I cannot tell you yet why the children became this old or I would spoil all the excitement (and also because I don´t know by now).

Anyways, just an idea...I dont think I will pick this up in the final -script.

 

[comicinvestor-migration]

I think it is not too hard to make it sound reasonable.

 

Exactly my point, but look at it from our POV. We aren't inside your head and only have the written text to gain some sort of idea surrounding the concept:

 

300 year-old Toddlers Rule World.

 

See what I mean?

 

Now if these Immortal Toddlers have immense strength, powers of coercion, or are extremely wealthy/persuasive, then it's a different story, and we may want to know more.

 

It's Highlander meets Blade with a dash of Spy Kids!!!