Making Comics

Paul Wheelahan can't remember a time when he didn't have a pen or pencil in his hand. Born in 1930, Paul grew up in the New South Wales country town of Dalton, where his father was stationed as a mounted policeman. When he wasn't playing with friends in the common behind the police horse yards, he spent the rest of his time "drawing dinosaurs on ...

Motivation to sit down and do a comicbook. I don’t get it. Explain it to me. Everyone who talks about motivation treats it like romance. Like some love-affair they’re waiting for before they engage in anything worthwhile. The topic of ‘motivation’ came up recently on an internet forum. Nothing particularly new I thought – but what surprised me was ...

Search online for artists and depression or writers and depression and you'll come across dozens of articles about the subject. You can find analyses on the high suicide rates among writers, essays on what facing the creative void and interrogating reality can do to an artist, and what benefits this self-endangering activity can provide to society as a whole. There are forum discussions, tips and ...

This is a comprehensive rundown on how I create my strip, Dan and Pete, every week. This is my personal process and other cartoonists work in completely different ways – none of them are right or wrong. Go with whatever works best for you. About Dan and Pete Dan and Pete is a superhero parody comedy about two best friends – Dan, the world’s ...

If I could Impart but one piece of valuable advice to all those comicbook creators out there (whether they be artists, writers, or whatever), it would be to learn the first (and basic) fundamental notion that comics are a sequence of ‘frames’. What does that mean? Put simply: Learn to storyboard. Writers would do well to thumbnail (even in stick figures) ideas ...

The other day I bumped into a friend I hadn’t seen in years, and the first thing he says is, “So you still doing your comics?” – to which I replied, “Yeah, always.” THEN he says, “Cause you never know, one day you could make it when Hollywood comes knocking…. Just take a look at what happened with Spiderman!”. Now, I have nothing ...