You’ve worked out your story and made it into a script, so now you can start pencilling your comics! This can go through two stages:

 

Thumbnails

Thumbnails are small, rough drawings that help you work out how to fit everything from the script onto the pages. They don’t have to make sense to anyone but yourself!

 

Pencils

Pencils are – you guessed it – the pencil drawings of your comic page! Using your thumbnails as a guide, you draw the page larger and with more detail (how much detail you add is up to you!).

 

Comic Example

Remember our script from last week? We’ll be using that comic to show you each of the stages – pencilling, inking, colouring, and lettering – over the next few weeks. Are the pencils below anything like what you imagined when you were reading the script?

As you go through the stages of making your own comics, you’ll find out what you’re most comfortable doing. Also, with any stage of drawing, you can change your mind about how you want it to look! Maybe a panel looked really good as a thumbnail, but now looks strange at full-size? Don’t be afraid to change it.

 

BONUS: Behind the Scenes

Each of our Thursday prompts starts life as a digital pencil sketch! Have a look at how they go from sketch to finished drawings below (and see what changes along the way!).

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The above images (unless otherwise stated) are by Rebecca Horner, who hasn’t touched a real pencil in 200 years and draws all of her pencils digitally!