Read, Write Jeremy

Concept Phase Now that you have gone through the process of finding and hiring the right artist, you need to start production on your comic. By the way, if you haven't found an artist yet, check out my last blog series. My Experience I did a concept phase with the artist I hired on my first production before we even looked at issue #1. It took a lot of work, but in retrospect, it was one of the best decisions I made. What do I mean by "Concept Phase"? The concept phase should give you a color drawing of each character and main location that both the author and artist agree upon. If you have written a complete set of scripts (several comic issues worth), it just makes good sense to work with your artist to get the characters and main locations finalized before starting work on the first issue. Why? It saves you a ton of time. Instead of going back-and-forth as the artist is drawing panes of your comic, he/she can focus on making the art great because he/she

This is the fourth and final installment in my Finding and Hiring the Right Artist  series where I cover  Hiring the Right Artist . If you missed the introduction (or other posts in the series),  please start here . Assumptions: You  ARE NOT  a well known writer You want to produce a comic book, manga, or graphic novel  (there are different rules for books outside of those types, e.g., children's books, etc.) You want high quality artwork You don't have a high quality artist friend who is rich and will work for free Who do I hire? Now that you have several hundred responses to your   ad (check my post on  finding the right artist  if you don't), you need to figure out who to hire. Checklist I put together some bullets based on my experience and what I learned from  Brandon Easton 's  blog post  ( podcast ) to help: Make sure the artist's style matches the style you want for your comic. (This should be described in your ad along with examples im

This is the third installment in my "Finding and Hiring the Right Artist" series where I cover  Finding the Right Artist . If you missed the introduction (or other posts in the series),  please start here . Assumptions: You  ARE NOT  a well known writer You want to produce a comic book, manga, or graphic novel  (there are different rules for books outside of those types, e.g., children's books, etc.) You want high quality artwork You don't have a high quality artist friend who is rich and will work for free Where do I find the right artist? I spent a lot of time Googling  and digging through other writers' posts before I tried to hire an artist. I found two approaches: Reach out directly to an artist Post a want ad  in one or more online art communities  I tried both, one worked and one did not. :) Contact Artists Directly Jim Zub , author over at  Image , blogged about this in " How Do I Find An Artist? ". He gives some great ad

This is the second installment in my "Finding and Hiring the Right Artist" series where we cover  Artist Pay . If you missed the introduction (or other posts in the series),  please start here . Assumptions: You  ARE NOT  a well known writer You want to produce a comic book, manga, or graphic novel  (there are different rules for books outside of those types, e.g., children's books, etc.) You want high quality artwork You don't have a high quality artist friend who is rich and will work for free Increase your chance of success By hiring a high quality artist, you increase the chance your comic will sell. From my experience (you can verify this too by thinking back through writers/artists you continue to support), here is a ranking of what sells best to what doesn't: Amazing   writing  &  amazing   art Mediocre  writing  &  amazing   art Amazing   writing  & mediocre  art Mediocre  writing  & mediocre  art In other words, if yo