easy to use program for a comic/graphic novella project

barrymanilow

Hi there ,

I have been writing short stories for a few years now and I have decided to give a shot at taking the plot of one of my favourites and turning it into a short graphic novel. This is just a fun project to keep me out of trouble and maybe to print and give to friends as a gift . At the moment I'm storyboarding and drawing by hand and assembling tiles of images on A4 card with dialogue etc pencilled in . I have an artist friend on board will do the better drawings for me once she knows what I'm looking for . What Im asking really is does anybody know of a simple, straight forward ,easy to use program where I could scan and upload hand drawn images and then move them around and assemble them into a comic to add dialogue digitally ?Im willing to buy a program but if there is a good free one that would do also .

Thanks in advance .

Fysh

There are free and paid-for software packages to do what you want to do. The non-free ones tend to be more sophisticated and have additional functions, but if you're mainly making a mockup for someone else to use as a guide I'd say try one of the free ones and see how you get on.

One thing to bear in mind is that conventionally, you'd probably be dealing with different applications for each step - you'd use some software to scan the images (it doesn't matter which one, really - it might be OS-native or provided with your scanner); then you'd use a software package to process the images and do any additional work like inking or contrast adjustments. After that you might use another software package for colouring. Then you might use another package again to do your lettering.

Some software packages (like Manga Studio, for example) are quite well-equipped to handle all those tasks in one tool, but as with any set of tools, each person has their own preferences and work habits.

I'd suggest trying Paint.NET - it has everything you're likely to need in the short term. Another alternative is GIMP. Both support layers, which is the main feature you need.

I'd suggest a workflow along these lines:

• scan each image in grayscale mode at a high resolution (at least 300dpi, preferably 600dpi)
• open each image and adjust the levels/contrast until you're happy with them, then save as a new file
• create a new template document at the page size you want (if you're printing at home, A4 or A5 is best - if you've drawn at A4 printing at A5 may produce better looking results)
• use the template to create each page of the comic you want to have, then open each image you've scanned and copy the contents to a separate layer on the relevant page. Resize each image as required, ensuring to enable the "preserve aspect ratio" option and ideally rescaling by factors of 2 if possible (algorithms used for rescaling images tend to work better with factors of 2 and quite badly with factors of 3, due to how new pixel values are calculated).
• For each page, create a new layer on top of all the images for your panel borders. These can be drawn in either freehand or using the "draw line" tools.
• Optionally, if you want to do lettering as well, create two new layers on top of the panel border layer and do your lettering there. (The topmost layer is for the actual text/dialogue, the second layer is for the speech bubbles)

This page has a few basic tutorials on using Paint.NET, including several which apply to comic-making functions. This page has a few tutorials on how to make comics with GIMP.