Making a Graphic Novel

We’ve designed this course to be tailored specifically for aspiring artists and creative people interested in making and publishing their own graphic novel. Self publishing a book of any kind is a complicated process, and a graphic novel is no different. This course will lay out all the different steps from idea to print. You will not find a more in-depth course on creating graphic novels and comic books anywhere else.

What will you learn?

Basics
We’ll start by briefly going over the history of comic books, publishing conventions, and learn the basic terminology we’ll be using throughout the course.

Comic Art Styles
After understanding the basics, we’ll go over approaches of different artists to handling individual elements of comic art, such as character, inking, panel layout, lettering and more.

Sequential Art Theory
Before making our own graphic novels, we’ll familiarize ourselves with with the theory behind the craft. Understanding closure & transitions, pacing, rhythm, pairing words and images, composition, clarity, readability, types of shots, and composing pages/spreads.

Pipeline
We’ll examine different ways a production can work, including planning our book with publishing in mind, how to mix traditional and digital media and how to work in a team vs. Solo.

Story
An overview of writing a story with the graphic novel format in mind. Characters, setting, story structure, script writing, and writing with drawing.
Drawing Traditionally / Digitally
Once we’re ready to get dirty, we’ll learn how to actually draw our pages, setting up a page, penciling, inking and coloring it, in both digital and traditional forms.

Publishing
Before wrapping up we’ll talk about getting a publisher, or how to self publish the book yourself. We’ll cover printing options, book design, distribution options and marketing strategy.