I didn’t know of any other forums to post this in so here it goes…
I’m looking toward making a monthly web comic series but I don’t quite know what software or techniques I should be using. I already have the plots and storyline for the comics.
For the software I was thinking Adobe Photoshop since I know the basics of it and my school provides the entire Adobe suite. Besides Photoshop I was also thinking of Coral Painter 11 but if there is any other software out there let me know.
The one thing I am mainly stumped on is getting my characters to look the same in each strip, I don’t want one to look like the other or vice versa. a little help on this would be appreciated as well.
Photoshop is a good choice. I also find Adobe Illustrator is good for doing lettering. I doubt you’ll need Painter, though, it’s very much a painting program and I’m not aware of any cartoonists who use it. To publish your comic you’ll either want to use a free hosting service like SmackJeeves or your own webspace running ComicPress, which is a nice WordPress plugin for hosting webcomics with.
Do not, I repeat, DO NOT use Comic Sans MS to letter your comic. Ever. Just don’t. Instead choose one of these nice fonts: http://www.blambot.com/
As far as your characters go, the key to drawing them consistently is to practice. It also helps to make character charts, which show the character from front, side, and behind, and have annotations of important character features. This helps you remember little details. To make all your characters more unique, you might find it useful to read my concepting tutorial. It’s not about designing characters (although there is some stuff about that at the end) but the techniques it describes can be used that way.
I would think that PS and Illustrator would give you all the tools you need, but Mypaint is free and may augment what you are doing, could be worth looking into.
There’s a lot of ways you can do this. Many webcomic artists do most of the work on physical paper, or they might use the computer to add color. Then again a lot just are completely digital. I think for something like the example you linked to Gimp would be fine. As you have Photoshop available that’ll be a great choice.
Another option is to do the characters or common elements in Blender and paint over renders to get your strip… that could be a little tricky because 3d comic strips tend to look a little tacky, but that’s the method that Paul C. is using over at http://theprocessdiary.blogspot.com for his upcoming webcomic. You should also check out http://moon-town.com
I’m working on something myself along this line… I wouldn’t call it a comic but more of a graphic novel… I’m writing it as a book, but with lots of illustrations. I’m taking it in a very realistic painterly kind of direction though, sort of away from the traditional comic book style.
But my point is, there’s a lot of ways you could do this… and you don’t even necessarily need to be consistent. You could from the getgo use different styles within the work (within reason -obviously readers need to be able to follow it) but maybe one week you do everything one style and next week you explore a new style… and keep doing that until you hit something that you feel works for the story… Of course you can always just do that in concept phase on your own, but it may be a lot more helpful if you just start drawing/painting comic strips in whatever style you choose to start getting feedback quickly on your work.
I’m in a similar position. I have a story in my head but have yet to do a script, sketch board and so on.
I downloaded a script among many called “Death by Mosquitos” from the internet, went through it, made a sketchboard.
I use make-human, inkscape, blender, some *.3ds free files of the internet, some self-made props like a hat, modified hair for my heroine. All the props are to the best of my belief “free”. I expect all the panels of my comic to be no more than 200. I have put my WIP in the traditional section of this forum, and once I have all the panels, I will work to have it up in a decent comic book strip set-up that I don’t intend to make money from, or release my actual name in case of legal ramifications.
Once I have this practice comic up, all the knowledge I gain from it will be put to my original idea, this I have had in my head since I was maybe ten. At my rate, it will take about a decade, unless I am put in a wheelchair.
In that case you might want to consider doing a “sprite” comic. Many popular webcomics, especially gag comics, use vector-drawn characters produced in Flash or Illustrator or Inkscape. This allows them to move and position the characters after only drawing them once. It’s considered to be less “legitimate” than drawing it the old-fashioned way, but still, many people do it, and for you it might be a good solution.
I’m not getting what you are after. The way you write is leaving me an impression that you have never drawn something in your life. That you just got your wacom and expect a web-comic to happen over night.
There are many webcomix on the web that doesn’t need any drawing skill whatsoever, like http://xkcd.com/. All I hear from you are the setbacks you encounter and no creative progress at all. Start out with stick figures and make a couple of stories. Then take the next step.