Making comics if your bad at art

Burial

How do you make a decent looking comic if your absolutly awful at art? Is there some program or something that can help you?

ztoical

Computer programs are only tools like just pencils and pens, they can only help so much. The focus of good comics shouldn't be the art or the writing, it should be the storytelling. The type of story your trying to tell will effect greatly the style of writing and art you use. Imagine telling a story like Maus but in a super detailed full colour style? Two of my fav artists are Graham Annable and Jason - both have super simple styles but their storytelling is so strong.

Fysh

This is pretty much a +1 to ztoical's post. From the world of webcomics, both Cyanide & Happiness and XKCD have very simplistic art for the most part and yet both strips have managed to turn it to their advantage, because the style of humour used benefits from the relative crudity of the drawing.

You might also be thinking about sprite comics, but I'd urge you to avoid them as most sprite comics end up being pretty awful. There's also Microsoft Comic Chat, which is apparently used to create JerkCity (although I have no idea how, since it's a chat client rather than an art program).

Spacedog

buy a wii-mote, and a IR light pen off e-bay.

do this on your screen, (no overhead projector necessary)...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5s5EvhHy7eQ

open photoshop and select spraypaint or paintbrush tool and a large page,

hold your fingers over ctrl+z (undo the millions of mistakes you are about to make)

start slashing away at your virtual canvas, stroke, undo, stroke, undo, stroke undo, stroke... hmmm that kinda looks ok... undo, stroke, perfect! stroke, undo... and so on.

it's cheap and the results look great after 2 mins.

livingtargets

Practice!

Looking back at my first comic,it was muck but I learned alot about what my "artistic boundries" were and then I spent some time pushing those boundries.

Also,if you`re stuck,say,on drawing hands then get a piece of scrap paper
and some comics/art books and copy all the pictures of hands.Soon you`ll find your own style developing in these little doodles.

Patrick Brown

You've got two options. You could just give it a go and get better with practice, as those above are recommending - Andy Luke took that approach and ended up doing this 24 Hour Comic - or you could take the more traditional approach and team up with an artist who's good at drawing but doesn't write so well. Alan Moore and Grant Morrison started out drawing their own stories, but ended up writing scripts for other artists. I'm told Panel and Pixel is a good place to contact potential collaborators.

ztoical

Patrick Brown wrote: »

you could take the more traditional approach and team up with an artist who's good at drawing but doesn't write so well.

That is an option but again you need to think about the story first before thinking about the writing or the art. It's not just a case of finding someone who can draw but find someone who draws in a style that suits the story being told.