To be honest, my drawing skills are definitely not as developed as I’d like them to be. As you can see, my original hand-drawn comic looks pretty terrible. However, my best work usually doesn’t come from sketching things in less than two-minutes. But in the interest of time, it was more of a rough draft/means of getting the idea out on paper.

Drawing by Hand

Drawing by hand has a lot of benefits for the creator. The freedom that comes with picking up a marker, pen, pencil, etc. and freely drawing on a page is something that can be pretty hard to replicate using a digital tool. There are a lot of programs and tools available to artists that combine both the freedom of hand drawing and the benefits and flexibility of creating vector-based graphics. However, without a ruler or a steady hand, drawing can be pretty difficult for those of us that do not practice as often–as with any craft. Personally, drawing/sketching works for me in terms of getting an idea out on the page.

Digital Tools

Using Digital Tools, in this case Adobe Illustrator, was a lot more intuitive for me when creating my comic. This is due to my prior experience with Illustrator and other Adobe software.

Illustrator allows you to edit any portion of the comic at any time and allows you organize your layers and vectors in ways that makes sense to each individual user. Being able to create straight lines, shapes, and colors for every aspect of the comic, including writing text directly onto the comic, makes it very easy to use.

Drawbacks

Reading a comic digitally vs on a page is quite a different experience. Being able to physically hold a comic in your hands and see how an artist designed each page in relation to the next one doesn’t translate as easily on a digital platform.

Understanding Comics

Scott McCloud opened up my mind when it came to creating a comic. He conveyed his lessons and key takeaways in creative ways that traditional textbooks and other forms of media cannot explore. The biggest takeaway for me is understanding that there are no rules to creating comics and what you can do. Outside of his definition of Comics, everything is what you make of it.