How to start a webcomic: General Steps

October 10, 2009 by r2moo2
Filed under: how to make a manga, how to start a webcomic

Today I will be sharing my own strategy of how I want to become a semi-professional manga artist. I am planning to start my own webcomic.

The ironic thing is, I have not started on my strategy yet; that’s because I am still brushing up in my drawing skills and will not be able to start until I am convinced I am capable of drawing like the drawings of Bleach manga comic, by Kubo Tite.

I will be sharing briefly on this topic, outlining what needs to be done to start a webcomic, as this is actually a very comprehensive subject to discuss about.

Tools needed to start a webcomic

Before I begin talking about how to start a webcomic, there are a few things we need to take note: Hardware tools:

There is no need to learn how to draw in a drawing or graphic tablet before one can start his or her own webcomic.
There is no need for a drawing or graphic tablet in the first place, although it will help tremendously.
However, an image scanner is a must, if one is not using a drawing or graphic tablet at all.
Last but definitely not least, an internet connection with a computer is needed.

My scanner is actually an economical HP All-in-one multipurpose machine, able to image scan, print and photocopy at the same time. I am not too bothered with the quality of the image scanner, as I do not see the need to get a high precision image scanner as of now. HP Photosmart C4680 All-in-one Printer (Q8418A#ABA) Software tools:

A graphic-editing software is a must: Photoshop and Corel Painter may burn a hole in your pocket, but GIMP (open-source graphic editing software) is free. Of course I will always support Corel Painter, as this is the image editing software that my manga teacher asked me to get.

However, because I bought a bundle for Adobe CS4, I have Photoshop instead of Corel Painter. Corel Painter is much cheaper and a more powerful tool for webcomic creation than Photoshop. Webtools:

Free blog hosting sites like Blogger and Wordpress.org can be used to create a blog, so that we can house the webcomic in a site. There are many free hosting sites out there.
Ideally, buy a web hosting domain from web hosting companies such as HostGator, install your own Wordpress blog into your domain and start publishing your webcomic online.

I strongly recommend paying for a web hosting domain for Wordpress than getting a free hosting site or blog. The reasons are simple:

It creates a sense of identity for your webcomic.
Paying for a web hosting domain allows the user to optimize Wordpress features, and many of the features or plugins of Wordpress provides automatic publicity for your blog to search engines and other sites. This is commonly called Search Engine Optimization or SEO for short.

The above point is very important because it doesn’t matter how good your webcomic is, when noone knows about it. It will still be zero readership.

Being able to market your blog or site becomes very crucial as there are hundreds and thousands of webcomics out there for competition; who is going to look at your webcomic if its obscure and unknown?

Many readers online have their choices to read Naruto and Bleach scans or famous webcomics instead of our webcomics, and staying obscure isn’t going to help one bit.

Hence, the primary reason to get a web hosting domain is to be able to effectively reach out to as many as you can. There are other reasons to buy a domain from a web hosting company:

Gradually, we want to be able to contain our readers and allow them to express themselves at will. Building a fan-based forum immediately comes to mind, but it is impossible with free hosting sites, and every bit possible when we buy a domain from a web hosting company.
Eventually, if we want membership subscriptions, purchasing a domain is necessary to be able to build a database within the server.
It allows us to use custom-made design themes for the overall look of our site or blog, and free hosting sites have limitations on that.

And there are many more reasons to purchase a domain from a web hosting company. I shall not go on further on the importance of having a web host.

For a web host, I recommend HostGator as one of the top choices for a web host. The reasons are:

It provides a very easy-to-install interface to install a Wordpress blog from scratch.
It also provides a very easy-to-install interface to install a forum into the domain, such as phpBB or Simple Machine Forum(SMF).
HostGator is relatively cheap for all the services it provides, compared to other webhosting services.
It also provides good support and service. This blog uses HostGator for its web host.
Of every successful blog or site that I have seen, I have always seen HostGator as one of their primary choices for getting a web host.

If anyone is interested to get HostGator, you can click here.

How to start a webcomic: General steps

First, draw your manga comic on paper.
Scan the completed manga comic into a computer.
Add inking and toning to the manga comic with a graphic editing software.
Do some clean up with the manga comic.
Add speech balloons to your comic, according to the script of the story.
Resize your overall manga comic. Save it to a web-compliant image format (like jpg, png or gif).
Upload into the gallery of your domain. And of course, arrange the pages within the gallery.

Therefore, we are able to use an image gallery to resemble a manga comic book, where the forward and back button will just be like flipping the pages of a book.

I am not describing in detail on the above steps; it will be for another day as this is a long post.

Final Words for this post

I wanted to become a webcomic manga artist because of the lack of opportunities in my homeland, and the Internet has considerably less overhead than trying to publish paperbacks and selling them.

It wouldn’t be good to spend S$30,000 on printing manga comics and it is left there in your storeroom. The Internet sure has less overheard costs after buying a good graphic editing software, a drawing tablet, and a webhosting account for my endeavors.

And this blog is my starting steps towards being a webcomic manga artist.

I will reveal about the elements of webcomic in future. For now, just enjoy this post!

ps. Sorry about the 3 ridiculous general ramblings post before this post. I was testing out some SEO technique and I am unable to delete them. Will be more careful in future.

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Tags: comic, comic artist, how to make a manga, how to start a webcomic, make your own comic, make your own comic book, manga, manga artist, manga comic, Manga Journey, webcomic, webcomic artist

Comments

9 Comments on How to start a webcomic: General Steps

Aaron on Fri, 23rd Oct 2009 6:13 am

isn’t it just easier to use a free site that hosts webcomics? Then you don’t have to take care of all that complicated stuff and obviously it’s free. I use one of these type of sites to host my manga webcomic

just google webcomic hosting

Aaron on Fri, 23rd Oct 2009 6:15 am

oh and also I recommend using an ad free site

http://comicfury.com is ad-free but I think http:/smackjeeves.com also has no ads if your a premium member, but then you have to pay

r2moo2 on Sat, 24th Oct 2009 2:18 am

Thanks for commenting! Really appreciate your participation.

I totally agree with you that any aspiring webcomic artists who are low on budget should consider a free site that hosts webcomics. It will save on time and effort, which allows us to be fully focused on our webcomic. Maybe I should put up a list of free webcomic hosts for readers.

However, if we want to plan on making our webcomic well known, upgrading to a private domain is necessary. It creates a sense of identity, that you are not just part of a whole list of webcomics, which separates you from the rest of the competition.

Furthermore, with a private domain, many free broadcasting and marketing tools are available for webcomic artists. There are lots of plugins for Wordpress blogs which allows search engines to pick up your webcomic easily, and allows mass broadcast with all social sites like Facebook, Twitter etc, making it easy for visitors to pick up your webcomic.

It isn’t spam, don’t worry.

Publicity and a presentable image is important for a webcomic.

On the other hand, free sites that host webcomics do not allow such plugins, and there are many webcomics out there that loses out on publicity.

Anyway, for you Aaron, feel free to provide your link here at this comment page, so that others can take a good read at your webcomic, if you feel comfortable.

r2moo2 on Sat, 24th Oct 2009 2:21 am

Great suggestions! Thanks for your input.

James on Fri, 20th Nov 2009 5:41 am

Great post, thanks…always looking for quality host…Jameshttp://www.irockwebhosting.net

A creator’s journey: part 1 « The Aspiring Mangaka & Writers Club on Fri, 27th Nov 2009 8:46 pm

[...] Mangakas who have done so include Anninhell, By moon alone etc.You can also read up on how to go about hosting your own webcomic. [...]

A creator’s journey: part 1 « The Aspiring Mangaka & Writers Club on Fri, 27th Nov 2009 8:53 pm

[...] who have done so include Anninhell, By moon alone etc.You can also read up on how to go about hosting your own webcomic. If you google webcomic hosting, you can easily find hosts such [...]

coffeeby on Thu, 10th Dec 2009 7:08 am