I’m going to take you through the process of a graphic novel in a series of posts. This is from my perspective, as a writer and artist who makes fantasy books for middle grade and young adult readers - but hopefully it will be helpful even if you’re interested in making a different kind of book!
Wonderful! Congrats on such an excellent explanation and such good work! I'm a comic artist, too, and now also on Substack, but on an -entry-level- :) ...
So nice to come across all this. I'm just getting back into writing and illustrating after a really long gap ( animation career ). This page and Victoria Ying's blog on process are fantastic . Thank you !!
First, this is all extremely helpful, so thank you for sharing your knowledge with the community! I know you mentioned that exact page sizes and dimensions can vary depending on the publisher, but do you have a default size that you start with for comics if you don't yet know the publisher? For example when you started Darkest Night, assuming you didn't already know it would be published, what general file dimensions would you start with so that you don't have to go back and redraw everything? I'm sure keeping the file at 300 DPI is a minimum requirement for printing (I'm guessing) but I wasn't sure if it mattered beyond that. I hope what I'm asking makes sense!
I have the task of writing a graphic novel script for a publisher that is new to me and an artist that I don't know yet. Is there a standard format for submitting a written script without visuals? I have seen many sites suggest screenplay format, but I don't know. What would you suggest?
Hey Miss Ostertag, I know this is going to sound a bit random, but I recently got into college and, even though I'm not an art major, one of my subjects has an evaluation that involves making a comic book explaining microbiology, but for kids. As someone who didn't have any idea about how comics are made, your advices here have been really helpful, so...I just wanted to say thanks for all those tips, for real
If it wasn't for them, I would be totally lost in this project
Wonderful! Congrats on such an excellent explanation and such good work! I'm a comic artist, too, and now also on Substack, but on an -entry-level- :) ...
Perfect timing as I'm thumbnailing a script! Do you have an example of the lineless panel you mentioned? Or was that referring to the big open panel?
Excellent piece. As a writer if I have an idea for a layout I try to describe it but is it generally okay to let the artist figure this out
So nice to come across all this. I'm just getting back into writing and illustrating after a really long gap ( animation career ). This page and Victoria Ying's blog on process are fantastic . Thank you !!
First, this is all extremely helpful, so thank you for sharing your knowledge with the community! I know you mentioned that exact page sizes and dimensions can vary depending on the publisher, but do you have a default size that you start with for comics if you don't yet know the publisher? For example when you started Darkest Night, assuming you didn't already know it would be published, what general file dimensions would you start with so that you don't have to go back and redraw everything? I'm sure keeping the file at 300 DPI is a minimum requirement for printing (I'm guessing) but I wasn't sure if it mattered beyond that. I hope what I'm asking makes sense!
I have the task of writing a graphic novel script for a publisher that is new to me and an artist that I don't know yet. Is there a standard format for submitting a written script without visuals? I have seen many sites suggest screenplay format, but I don't know. What would you suggest?
Hey Miss Ostertag, I know this is going to sound a bit random, but I recently got into college and, even though I'm not an art major, one of my subjects has an evaluation that involves making a comic book explaining microbiology, but for kids. As someone who didn't have any idea about how comics are made, your advices here have been really helpful, so...I just wanted to say thanks for all those tips, for real
If it wasn't for them, I would be totally lost in this project
This series is SO helpful. Thank you!!