How to Make Webcomics (Paperback)

~ Scott Kurtz (Author), Kris Straub (Author), Dave Kellett (Author), Brad Guigar (Author)
Key Phrases: black copy, lineart layer, table banner, Artist's Alley, Starslip Crisis, Project Wonderful (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

For years young, creative men and women have dreamed about making a living from their comic strips. But until recently their only avenue of success was through a syndicate or publisher. Now more and more cartoonists are doing it on their own and self-publishing their comic strips on the web. With the right amount of work, knowledge, and luck, so, too, can you. Scott Kurtz and Kristopher Straub offer their advice on how to create compelling characters, develop a solid comic strip, build a website, forge a community, and start earning money from your Webcomic without having to sell your soul. Written by the Eisner award winning cartoonist behind PVP, Scott Kurtz! PvP received 1.3 Million unique page views in Q1 2007 and averages 150k-200k per day!

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Image Comics (January 31, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 158240870X
• ISBN-13: 978-1582408705
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 6.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #44,336 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Nuts and Bolts of Promoting your Webcomic, March 31, 2008

By	Patricia Lupien "Graphic Designer" (Framingham, MA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Anyone with a comic and a website to promote it on has a webcomic. But these four artists combine their artistic and marketing strengths (kind of like Captain Planet) to show people how to make a successful webcomic. It's not a how-to-draw book; these guys are assuming you know how to draw already. This is a book talking about font legibility and character design and the difference between web quality and print quality resolution. I think this book should be alongside Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art" on any comic artist's bookshelf.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reading, May 29, 2008

By	Charles J. Whelon (San Francisco, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As someone who's been creating a webcomic for many years (Pewfell), I found this book to be very well put together, helpful and inspirational. I would definitely cite it as being essential reading for anyone hoping to monetize their own webcomic. Though much of it was stuff I already knew, I still found very many useful insights from these four guys who've actually walked the walk. All the information is put together in a fun, lighthearted, easy-to-read and well-thought-out way with lots of practical examples, great illustrations and comic strips. Great work & thanks for sharing, guys!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, though very americanized, May 27, 2008

By	Olaf M. Solstrand (Tromsø, Norway) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Not many books manage to give a decent introduction to combining being an artist and a businessman. Guigar, Kellett, Kurtz and Straub do this excellently. I bought this book because I'm writing a Master's thesis on webcomics -- and "How to make webcomics" will definitely be quoted heavily in it -- but reading this book also gave me a renewed interest in making my *own* webcomic.

The best authors for books on how to make webcomics are definitely webcomics creators who love what they do. Guigar, Kellett, Kurtz and Straub show an enthusiasm in this book that rubs off, and in a wonderful mix of creative chapters (writing, creating your characters), practical chapters (scanning your comic, making a website) and business-related chapters (making an income out of your webcomic), it becomes very clear that the authors love what they do, and that anyone who loves webcomics may one day compete with them on the webcomics arena. You learn that you have to love webcomics to make one, as they won't give you much income the first couple of years, but you also learn to not feel guilty for monetizing on your work. This is the perfect combination of a "how-to-be-creative"-book and "how-to-sell-your-art"-book.

If there is one thing I hope will change in the second edition, I wish for a more global perspective. The book is great, but many of the points stated in it aren't really that useful for non-Americans. For instance, when I make a webcomic in Norwegian, I will probably never get ten thousand readers. I could write it in English, but that would create problems with a store, since I'm still physically based in Norway and won't be able to send books and T-shirts to USA or UK without charging a lot for sending them -- probably more than my readers want to pay. And if I need to use print-on-demand, there aren't really anyone over here that can offer that, ... and so on, and so on. I hope that a future "How to make webcomics" will be able to have a chapter answering some of the additional questions that rise when creating a webcomic outside the US.

But that is nitpicking, really. This is the epitome of a five-star book.