When I first became interested in making graphic narratives, the biggest hurdle I had to overcome wasn’t creative, it was technical. I knew how to write and I was confident I could learn to draw well enoughto get my ideas across, but I had no idea how to actually put together a comic that I could submit to literary journals for publication.
I spent a lot of time searching, but I never found a simple and straightforward tutorial that told me what I needed to know to take my graphic stories from idea to final version.
In the course of doing my research, and through some pretty brutal trial and error, I sort of hacked together my own basic system of translating my words and natural medium drawings into a digitized graphic narrative that I could share with the world. And guess what. It’s super super fun.
Since I loved it so much, I eventually invested in a digital drawing tablet, which has made my life a lot easier, but I wanted to share my old system just in case there’s anyone out there who, like me, is interested in making graphic narratives and just doesn’t know where to start!
I put together a 20-minute series of videos and uploaded them to SkillShare. If you don’t have a SkillShare membership, you can use this link to get a 2 month free trial.
Think of this course as a technical walkthrough for beginners. You don’t need to have any previous knowledge and you don’t need any fancy digital art equipment. You’ll learn about scripting, making thumbnails, doing layout in In Design, how to digitize your natural medium art and edit it in Photoshop, how to add images and text in In Design, and how to correctly export your work for sharing.
This is the exact course I would have been dying to take a year ago when I set out to learn everything the hard way. I hope it can serve as a shortcut for someone else. And, if you do take it, I’d love to see what you make!
Aubrey Hirsch 