Create Your Own Webcomic
By Daniel Punch, Fri Dec 9th

Syndicated comic authors have been complaining about newspapersize restrictions, content censoring and similar issues for along time. Comic enthusiasts have been increasingly irritated bythe treatment their entertainment medium receives as well. Thenalong came the Internet, providing unlimited and unrestricteddistribution possibilities. Thus the webcomic was born.

There are millions of webcomics out there, dealing with suchvast topics as video games, college life, samurai, Lego men,identity and self esteem, depression, suicide, children and joy.People write them either for a living, for fun, as stressrelief, for artistic expression, or often just for the hell ofit. Then they stick their creations on the web and hope thatjust one more person will find and enjoy the fruits of theirlabour.

There seem to be several hundred new comics created each andevery day. These often dwindle and fade after only a few months.Occasionally, however, a comic rises above the rest and gainssuch popularity that the creator is able to forgo all other workand scrape a living solely off the proceeds generated by theirwebsites. Some examples of such are Penny-Arcade, PvP,CtrlAltDel and Squidi.net.

Many people, when introduced to the world of webcomics, think tothemselves "Wouldn't it be cool to have my own comic?" and a fewgo beyond this and create their own. So how can a newcomerensure that their comic continues beyond the first few weeks ofenthusiasm?

Now before I go into some useful tips it is probably worthnoting that I am the proud owner of a failed webcomic. It wentfor a few months before hitting a few snags and then grindinginto the ground. I have plans to return to creating the comics,but as of yet have not. So I'm not really drawing from afoundation of success, more of failure and an understanding ofsome of the main factors contributing to my failure.

For starters, you're going to need to plan a little. It'sunfortunate, unfair and certainly not fun, but it is necessary.Sit down and think about your comic. Come up with a locationsetting, some characters and maybe even a few plots to test themin. Run the characters through some adventures and see how theyreact and how you react to them. Your characters will grow andchange throughout this process, and continue to do so throughoutthe life of your comic but you need to get a handle on theirbasic character traits.

For some reason the majority of comics revolve around a group ofpeople (usually guys) that are somewhat geeky and live together.Usually in a university dorm. I would imagine that this isbecause that's the general life of the majority of webcomicauthors. The premise itself also makes an awful lot of sense forthe basis of a comic. When designing my own webcomic the processwent a little something like this: I designed the maincharacters, most of which were drawings that I had been playingwith since high school. Then I needed a reason for them toconstantly see each other and interact, so I got them livingtogether. They needed character traits that I could relate to,so they become university-aged students that had at least apassing interest in the geeky side of life.

I drew my first few strips and showed them to some friends, wholiked them, so started looking into putting them online. Theinitial line up included two guys who lived together, a femalelove interest for one of the characters and a talking animal (inmy case a frog, because I had this frog that I'd been drawingfor years and had become quite attached to him).

At this point I wasn't very experienced with webcomics, havingonly really read the syndicated newspaper comics that thesyndicated press companies post online. So I started lookingthrough some of the major comics, only to find that SluggyFreelance had the talking animals, geeky guys that livedtogether and female love interest already covered. A bit moreresearch revealed that the "university students living together"was covered in the large majority of comics. Furthermore, havinga kind of wacky (and just a little stupid) character, and a moresensible and reserved one was practically a given. Then, to rubsalt in the wound, I found that another comic had its maincharacter design very similar to my own. So I got rid of thefrog, removed the focus on gaming and university and otherwiseleft the comic as it was. Not entirely original.

Anyway, the point is that you should probably try to be moreoriginal. Check through your concept and remove the wholeuniversity students living together with wacky talkinginappropriately

anthropomorphic sidekicks. You'll be better offin the long run and have a more original creation.

Before you jump headfirst into publishing your comics online,you should build up a bit of a backlog of comics. Try to draw atleast ten or so quality comics that you would be proud to haveon your site. If you're going to have a story-based comic thenit would be a good idea to plan your first story arc. It isreally useful to maintain this backlog of comics wheneverpossible, so that you can fall behind in the creation of thecomics but still have content to post online. Nothing turns awayreaders faster than failing to provide them with content whenyou say you will. If you eat into the backlog, try to draw a fewextra strips so that it doesn't get diminished.

As a helpful guide for your comics, decide roughly what formatthey will take (e.g. three or four panel gag strips etc.) anddraw up the panels on your computer. You can then print theseand draw the strips within the panels, ensuring that they stayneat and consistent. When the comics have been drawn, scan theminto your computer and touch them up any way you like. It'sgenerally the best practice to remove speech balloons and textand add these on computer, because it will usually be neater andeasier to read. Remember to fit balloons around the speech, notthe speech into the balloons. It's amazing how often this isforgotten. Some good fonts, free for non-commercial use, can befound at http://blambot.com. Don't get too stressed about yourartwork, I found that most people don't mind slightlyinconsistent and not overly fantastic artwork provided theyenjoy the content of the comic.

So now you're ready to get going with the online side of things.Start writing your web page so that you can just upload it whenyou're ready. Webcomic PHP management systems are relativelyeasy to find. I personally really like ComicPro that,unfortunately, seems to have vanished from the web. If you canhunt it down it's worth a look. Web hosting is quite easy tofind as well, you won't need much space to begin with so you canuse one of the many free providers out there (includinghttp://keenspace.com that provides free hosting specifically forwebcomics), use the web space provided by the majority of ISPsor purchase your own web hosting plan (you can get a quite cheapone because you won't be needing many features to begin with).When signing up for any hosting package, make sure you havepermission to change the read/write attributes of your filesbecause the PHP comic managers will need this (this is done onLinux servers using CHMOD from your FTP program; In Windows youcan Right-Click a file, select Properties and change securitypermissions there; or you may need to use a proprietary controlpanel provided by the host).

You're going to need to decide on an update schedule for yourcomic. It's probably best to start small and build up; maybe twoor three updates a week. This way you have three to five weeksof comics in your backlog, which allows you to fall behindsubstantially before anyone notices.

While we're on the topic of deciding schedules, it will help youif you actually try and schedule an hour or so into your day towrite comics. If you just try to fit them into the free timethat you're "bound to have just after you finish just this onelast thing" then you'll often find yourself failing to get astrip drawn on time.

Now that you have your comic online you can start promoting it.There are a huge number of comic directories out there that willhelp get you exposure. Get your friends excited about your comicand they in turn will get their friends excited. Read otherpeople's comics and get involved in their forums. Find sitesthat accept guest artwork or comics and send some to them. Thebest promotion comes from getting people to read your comic andfire a link across their instant messenger program to anotherfriend. My current list of "must read every day" comics cameentirely from various people sending links to me. Don't expectinstant success, look to sharing your vision with even just onenew person every day.

Well, I hope that helps to give you a few ideas about how tomake your comic and keep it running. When your characters startto grow they'll almost create the stories and jokes themselvesand the strip won't be anywhere near as hard to write as it waswhen you first started out. Just keep drawing the comics on afrequent basis so that you don't fall out of the rhythm of yourcreated world and above all else have fun.

About the author:Daniel Punch M6.Net http://www.m6.net Daniel Punch is aUniversity student doodling his way through many a boringlecture.