How did I make my First Comic Book?
Hello!
Today, let me tell you a little story of how one self-project shaped my entire creative journey. Let’s head back a bit in time.
Making my First Comic Book
How did the idea spark?
It was 2020 and my Instagram page was just picking up speed. The reason? I was doing the “100daysofsketching” challenge for the 2nd year in a row. The challenge began on March 1st and went on for 100 days with each day making an art to post on Instagram. I was also writing a couple of lines of story along with each artwork.
In this year, the posts that got the most attention were the following four. People found them interesting with the story and it became kind of a sequential art. I was getting asked what would happen next in the story and also that I should do a whole comic book to tell it. It was new to me. I had done comic strips of 4 panels before but never an entire book! After the 100daysofsketching challenge was over in mid-August, I took up a new challenge. Let’s create this book!
What I didn’t realize was that this project would become an exercise in making something impossible. Every single page stretched me—pushing my character drawing, environment design, composition, and storytelling further than they’d ever been pushed before.
I also had to figure out how to turn my silly story into a book. That meant designing a cover, a back cover, and all the additional pieces that make a comic complete. It forced me to stretch my graphic design skills in ways I hadn’t expected.
By the time I finished, I was exhausted but exhilarated.
These four images changed the course of my art journey. From this point on, making comic books was my mountain to head to. The goal of my existence.
Setting the Accountability
I knew making a comic book was a big task. One I had never done before. I didn’t want to leave it halfway. So I did something to hold myself accountable to finish it. I took preorders!
I put up the 4 artworks on Social Media and asked people to fund my project. I put the book up for preorders when I had nothing to show for it just the concept and a dream project. Who would pay for an idea I thought? I set a deadline of 3 months to deliver the book. This was August 2020. To my surprise, I had about 30 preorders! Now all I had to do was create it.
A Huge Undertaking
I had set a goal of 24 pages and a deadline for myself for this project because I didn't want to fall into the world-building trap. That is, I didn't want to keep spending time to make the book perfect and end up not finishing it.
So what happened? I finished layouting and thumbnailing 18 pages of the comic . But that’s when I realized that the rest of the story would be very rushed if I had to fit it into only 24 pages. The plan was always to scribble all the pages and then edit my comic to fit in the decided number of pages.
This got me pondering for a solution. At last, something occurred to me. This is my first book and I wanted to create something meaningful. I'm not creating a short story with 1-2 scenes and I shouldn't be treating this as one. It's supposed to be a complete story with a three-act structure. So I spent a week's time revamping the script of the remaining story and fledged it out more.
On the side, I started sketching. Here's a rough sketch of the first page for you.
The book on the left is ‘Smile’ by Raina Telgemeier which has been a great reference for layouting the pages of my comic. I had to figure out the text size for this scale and also how many panels could fit at this size of the page.
Other than that, I had been working only on the script and some layouting. Once I get the cover and more sample pages ready, we would start seeing more of the book.
The First Mockup
The work on the comic book was going strong and fast. As I had decided to double the pages of the book I was slowly realising how much work was still left. The deadline seemed fairly distant right now but I was powering through to deliver the book.
So the project update here was that the sketches were done for 21 pages. That's halfway through the book. After this comes inking and then finally coloring. At this point I had also realised that the work gone into each page is equivalent to creating a whole comic strip for Instagram. So the whole book was going to be as much work as a whole 42 comic strips! Whoa!!!
It was an amazing experience so far just to think what the final book will look like in the hands of people.
Here’s a sketch of one of the most interesting pages to create. The book was coming to life.
Designing the Book Cover
After a long one-and-a-half month of sketching everyday, I was done with all the pages of the book. That was a huge task! I counted the number of panels I had to draw and it's a total of 175 panels on 42 pages. I also compiled them to form the whole book manuscript of sorts. It finally looks more of a book than individual pages now.
But next big task was the cover design.
I always had the idea of recreating the action-packed chase scene for the cover with the rover and all the monkeys from my preliminary artwork. I started thumbnailing with that in mind but it just wasn't working as my characters were too hidden by the vehicle.
So I scrapped the whole idea and decided to keep the focus on my two main characters and work around that. I used a scene from the story with details that might or might not be a part of that scene to make it more interesting. Symmetry also adds to it don’t you think? Sharing the rough sketch below.
Coming to the composition of the artwork, I wanted to draw the eyes to the center so kept the characters well-lit and added dark off towards the sides. Here’s the inked one.
But then I had to give special attention to the title too, as it had to stand out the most. I wanted it to pop out of the page and also be rooted in the theme of the story.
So here is the final cover design. I could finally attach this to my preorders page. How exciting!
Failing the Deadline
I apologize to my preorder customers for not meeting my November deadline. It was a highly anticipated delay since I increased the number of pages in my book to a whopping 42.
It was a mammoth task to undertake but I did not want to create something that I knew I could make better. It was my first book after all. The danger of perfectionism looms over but I wanted to power through.
I finished inking the book and I got to sample the Artist's Edition of the book with my printer folks. It's the limited edition addon for only those who like to see the raw inking without all the colors getting in the way. It's looking beautiful!
The coloring of the book was also well on the way and I planned to finish it in the next ten days. Fingers crossed!
Finally, the pages looked more alive than ever and it looked like a comic book. Doesn't it look just beautiful?
First Print and Finished Coloring
As I was putting the last touches on the book, all of the 42 pages were colored and ready but I had to add some of the editorial fluff that you see in graphic novels.
The print of the artists edition had come back from the printers and it was looking so good in my hands! Seeing this copy in my hands has made me a bit relieved and eagerly waiting for the printing of the final book. It was gonna look even better in full color.
I was planning to have the final book off to the printer in a week as well to start the proofing process and then get it ready for the print run. If everything went according to plan, people would have their copy before December ends.
I had to also design the extra prints and cards that will be bundled along with the book over the next few days.
The Final Stretch
I was excited to see the completed book! It was in my hands as something physical that I created in a mere 4 months.
Here are a few pics...
The colors were just perfect and the print quality was top-notch. I couldn't be any happier about how this looks in my hand. Kudos to the printer guys!
My wife, Kishori, and I spent the next few days packaging all the preorders. It felt the best to complete this project. It was a whole different story to source the boxes and packing materials but we got through it.
That’s how I finished my first real project. I have learned so much from this as it gave me hands-on experience in creating a book. I used all my learnings in my next comic book “The Call of Kallisto” which definitely turned out even better.
Since then I have created 4 books, one of which is “Essential Handbook for Creating Characters” which is a bestseller.
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Keep Drawing!
- Rahul