Making Comics And Making Comics Software

Being a person who enjoys comics when I was a child, I began to dream of making my own comics. But I immediately learned that creating comics illustrations is not easy so I gave it up. When softwares became advanced, I dreamt of a day when comics can be easily done using softwares.

According to the largest comics producers in the America which is Marvel and DC, making money with comics is not that profitable although you can make a living from it. The way these big comics companies really make money is through the other products they sell related to their comics.

For example, we all know that Marvel Studios rakes in a lot of money from their superhero movie franchises. They say that the earnings from one of their movie alone is enough to support their actual comics business.

But this does not mean that besides these two studios no other company is making money. Let us take a look at manga which hails from Japan. Manga comics do not only have a following in Japan but has an entire global market.

Do take into consideration that before these now big comics companies became huge and successful, they were once struggling upstart companies as well. It just so happens that out of the many that tried to create their own comics company they were the successful ones.

As previously stated, the big and well established comic books companies of today started out as small and struggling companies. Comics creation was harder back then, you not only have to create the comics, but you also have print and distribute them physically.

Things are now easier thanks to digitization technology. You can create your comics digitally without having to need physical paper and colored inks. You can also distribute your comics digitally.

When your digital comics become successful, you can also offer them in physical printed paper format. This is how relatively easy is it to produce and sell your own comics these days. You can create and sell your comics with little to no cost at all.

But one thing we can note about comics is that it is time intensive to make your first copy or draft. You can certainly do your comics while working in another job but it would take a lot of time and many long and lonely nights.

There are many people who use crowdfunding sites to fund their passion and business projects. You can do this too with your comics project. You can use such platforms as KickStarter to fund your projects.

Another important if not most important reason why you should use crowdfunding platforms is to gauge if people are willing to buy your comics. This is important. You may want to buy your own comics but actual comics customers may not be willing to.

This enables you to refine if not discard your comics idea altogether instead of spending a lot of time and money in creating your comics of which no one would probably buy. You could of course proceed with creating your comics without the funding from crowdfunding sites.

You however have at least an idea of the probable reception your comics would get with the crowdfunding people. You could also check first which comic crowdfunding campaigns are successful and copy their winning formula.

According to a report by Kickstarter, Kickstarter funded comics were 24% more successful than other forms of comics funding schemes. This should be welcome news to anyone who wishes to use Kickstarter to fund their comics creation project.

Are you good at drawing and illustration? Can you make realistic drawings of people if needed? These drawing and illustration questions and many others are what you should ask yourself even before sitting down to create your comics.

Before we proceed, let me emphasize that the perspective of this article is from the perspective of a one or two man comics team. This means that you would be doing all the work yourself and not paying anyone to do your comics for you.

But assuming that you are rich enough that you can pay professional comics illustrators to do the job for you, there are many professional comics illustrators from freelancing sites who would be willing to do the job for you.

But let’s assume that you cannot afford to hire an illustrator, what happens next? Of course you have to do the illustrations yourself. But be aware that comics illustration quality has become top notch these days that if your illustration skills are a bit normal, it may fail to attract comics buyers.

The sheer numbers of professional comics illustrators in freelancing sites are also a proof that a comics business may not be as profitable as what many articles online like to tell you. If it was easy to make money with a comics business, these freelance illustrators would be doing their own comics full-time instead of freelancing.

There are many graphics software tool in the market, if you Google the search keywords “comics creation software” for example, there would be lists, articles, specific graphics software websites that would give you an idea of how the state of the market is.

I suggest that you give some of the softwares and apps a try to see which one would be best suited for your illustrations purposes and style. Though I have tested quite a few of them, I would not give my own personal recommendation.

Though comics softwares are advancing, they still don’t reach the ideal cut and paste ideal that many aspiring but lazy and talentless (pardon the pun) people want. There are many people who want to create comics just like they were making a collage.

They just want to select from a group of images and then paste these images to make a comics. This would appeal to amateur comics creators who have less patience in creating their own comics.

Two comics software I have seen doing this is MediBang Paint Pro and Pixton. They have some custom made illustrations that could be used by the users to create their own comics.

They and many other comics creation software are trying but are still a long way off from the ideal which is a select and paste an image method for creating comics. And I don’t blame these comics creation companies from not reaching this ideal.

Making illustrations for comics can be so one-off that it would be very hard to create images that could be reused later on to other comics. At best, these comics creation softwares only have the basic outline of an image without its many image variations.

For example, a comics creation software may have the image of a dog but that is it. It does not contain other images of the same dog as it is barking, running, hopping, sleeping and so on. These images are essentially what amateur comics creators need.

If you happen to use online images, you might be familiar with Pixabay or Shutterstock. Both of these sites contain databases of images which could be used for all purposes.

The only difference between the two is that Pixabay images can be downloaded for free while in Shutterstock you need to pay. But this matter is only of little concern to us. The important thing is how successful these online sites are which has a database of images.

Shutterstock makes millions of dollars in profit with only a simple business model. They act as an online retail shop for images. Photographers and other digital content producers upload photographs and whenever one is sold, Shutterstock and the photograph uploader share the profit.

Now imagine this model being used for comics graphics content. I’m not saying that this could become a reality but if it does become a reality, imagine how fast and cheaply comics can be made.

Besides online image database sites, I can think of comics companies being a good candidate to start a comics image database. This is because these comics companies have already a large database of pre-existing comics images.

Imagine if you are a small comics company and you are understaffed but need to churn out regular issues of your comics. A comics image database could be just the solution you need to keep your comics business going.

One of the obvious problems of this business model is the copyright issue. Let us use again Pixabay and Shutterstock as an example. The images in these online image database sites have no copyright restrictions.

This means that you can use the images in these sites in whatever purposes you want to. You can use them for commercial purposes if you want to. But this should not be a problem for some illustrators.

If you would look at Pixabay for example, not only are the images free to be used in whatever purpose you desire, they are also free. Imagine if a comics illustrator uploaded all his sketches to Pixabay or Shutterstock.

This has been happening in fact in Pixabay. There have been illustrators who have been uploading similar images of the same character. While this may not be the norm yet in Pixabay, I can see promise in these images.

These images could add up altogether to form a simple comics. But as I have said, copyright is not a big problem to the uploader of the images if they deem that the images they uploaded can be used by anyone without a copyright restriction.

There are two perspectives that should be considered when answering this question. The first view would be the comics image uploader. The second would be the comics image database website owner.

Comics Image Uploader:

We would use Shutterstock as an example of the possibility of earning money by uploading your comics images to a comics image database site. If you do your search online, there would be many people who would tell you that you can’t make a living wage by merely uploading photographs in Shutterstock.

I have the same idea with uploading to a comics image database site. If the site becomes successful, you would find that due to competition from other people uploading comics image, you might not make a living wage simply uploading comics images.

This could be at most a side income for comics illustrators who have too much comics images than they care to save and keep for themselves. This is a model that is being used by digital illustrators in the gaming industry.

If you are familiar with the game engine Unity, then you would also be familiar with their Asset Store. Many would be game developers have stopped making games when they discovered that they can make more money creating game assets.

This game assets could be game software code or game images. There are in fact entire companies making game assets for Unity. This same model can be copied in the comics creation business in terms of images.

Comics Image Database Website Owner:

Your best example would be Shutterstock which makes millions of profit from their online image database. Of course you need capital to start and maintain such a business. Images take up a lot of digital storage space. This is one cost you should consider.

Given that your probable customer would not be buying a single image but a whole bunch of images just to create their comics, the potential for profit could be great. Comics illustration is not only used for comics but for book covers, presentations, videos and so on.

Imagine if an entire video animation was made using the comics images in your online database. A video animation could use anywhere from a hundred to a few thousand images. Imagine the profit that could be made.

Though I compare a comics image database website to photograph image database website like Shutterstock, setting up one using the model of a photograph image database website has a lot of differences.

To describe the differences of one from another is beyond the scope of this article, but it boils down to one word: Curation. Simply put, the comics images need to be grouped together in a coherent way such that it is ideal for the purchasing of comics images.

Is there money in making comics? Just like any business, if the stars align in your favor, your comics could make you money. The important thing is to assess first whether your comics idea would sell. You could ask your friends or go to crowdfunding sites to get feedback.

Is there money in a comics image database website? If we are using the example of photograph image database websites then there is and it could be highly lucrative. The important thing however is how to attract people who will upload comics image and the image curation.

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