How to make a comic book online

Create comic strip designs with Adobe Express.

Introducing Adobe Express, the latest and greatest way to design and publish your comic strips. Adobe Express helps you create stunning graphics that you can build from scratch or with stunning template designs to get you started. Easily resize your creation to share on any social platforms or printed format. It’s as easy as choosing a template, customizing, and sharing. Design your comic strip now

How to make a comic strip.

Start with inspiration. We hook you up with thousands of professionally designed templates, so you’re never starting from a blank canvas. Search by platform, task, aesthetic, mood, or color to have fresh inspiration at your fingertips. Once you find a graphic to start from, tap or click to open the document in the editor. Remix it to make it your own. There are lots of ways to personalize your comic strip templates. Change up the copy and font. Sub out the imagery with your product shots or photos. Or browse from thousands of free images right in Adobe Express. Spend as little or as much time as you want to make the graphic your own. With a premium plan, you can even auto-apply your brand logo, colors, and fonts, so you’re always #onbrand. Amp up the flair. It’s easy to add extra flair and personality to your projects with Adobe Express exclusive design assets. Add animated stickers from GIPHY or apply a text animation for short-form graphic videos in one tap. We’ve taken care of all the boring technical stuff so that you can focus on your message and style. You can also add collaborators to your project, so you can have more hands-on-deck bringing your comic to life. Resize to make your content go further. Gone are the days of having to memorize image dimensions for every single platform. Once you’ve landed on a design you like, you can easily modify it for any social network by using Adobe Express handy, auto-magical resize feature. Duplicate the project, hit resize, and select the platform you want to adapt it for, and our AI will take care of the rest. Boom. Content for all your channels in a fraction of the time. Save and share your comic strip designs. Once your comic strip is complete, hit that publish button. You can share your designs right to your social media channels or share them digitally via email or link sharing. Or, print out your graphics at home or with a professional printer to be turned into a print, greeting card, or published comic book or graphic novel. Adobe Express saves your designs, so you can always revisit your project if you need to make updates.

Tell your story with creativity on your side.

Comics are an incredibly versatile art form. With Adobe Express, you can create a custom aesthetic for your comic strip that you can recreate again and again for consistency throughout your story. Or, turn a comic strip into a meme that you can share across your social platforms. There are endless creative opportunities to turn your comic strip idea into something magnificent.

Let Adobe Express be your comic strip design expert.

Hone your creativity with the power of Adobe Express. Explore professionally designed templates to get your wheels spinning or create your comic strip format from scratch. Establish a theme for your designs using photos, icons, logos, personalized fonts, and other customizable elements to make them feel entirely authentic. Duplicate designs and resize them to create consistency across multiple types of materials. With Adobe Express, it’s free and easy to make, save, and share your designs within minutes so you can add collaborators, get approval, and publish your comics for all to enjoy. In the past, comic book artists like Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby created comic books over many long hours. They’d sit hunched over drawing desks, illustrating characters and filling in speech bubbles by hand. Due to technological advances in the modern illustration world, many comic creators have turned to online tools to help them make their comic books and graphic novels a reality in a matter of days. Online comic book creation tools range from illustration programs to websites that provide uploadable formatting templates. In addition, printing sites like Comix Well Spring provide affordable, easy-to-use printing options so you can publish your comic story. Learn how to make a comic book online with this helpful guide, from idea generation to holding the physical copy in your hands.

Getting Started

There are many ways comic book creators can implement online tools to get started on a comic book project. Depending on your stage of the creation process, you may use an
online brainstorming tool to generate story ideas and help spur your imagination into action. If you already have your original story, characters, and dialogue in mind but need help understanding the process or illustration techniques, you can turn to YouTube video tutorials for visual aid. You can also read helpful blogs that give you insight into everything from writing an engaging comic book script to what format or layout to choose for your comic book.

Making Your Comic Online

When you are ready to create your own comics, explore the wide variety of
comic creation software and comic makers available on the internet. Some software programs are downloadable, while others are SaaS products, meaning you can buy a subscription and access them online. Other sites offer pre-formatted comic creation options for digital comics. These are often free or partially free, with added features for those who pay for a subscription. You choose the online creation tool depending on your artistic ability and end goal. If you can’t fully illustrate your comic book with original drawings, you can find a program that provides elements for you to choose from; alternatively, use an illustration program to create original illustrations.

Comic Creation Software/Apps

Although countless comic creation software options and free tools are available online, a few stand out in terms of quality. ComicBook is an app for iOS that can use photos to create comics at a relatively inexpensive price point. You can find this and other illustration programs in the app store on your smartphone or tablet. Comic Draw or Adobe Illustration provides an excellent way for artists who are artistically inclined to design their own drawings. With these options, you can exercise your creativity and create a comic that tells your story with vibrant colors and graphics with a unique style, then save and upload it into a template with comic strip panels and text bubbles.

Online Comic Makers

If you want to create a digital comic or use pre-made illustrations, an online comic strip maker like Pixton, Storyboard That, Make Belief Comix, ToonDoo, Strip Generator, and Canva provide an easy way to do so. These provide you with web-based tools to create your webcomics. There are free trial versions of these online tools and paid options to access additional features. You can even get your kids involved, as many of these online makers are tailored for classroom assignments and are kid-friendly.

Printing Your Comic Online

If you want to print your comic book rather than keep it in digital form, download your comic strips into the appropriate format, typically a JPEG or PDF file. Then, visit a professional comic book printer and publishing website like Comix Well Spring to choose your desired binding for your book. Comix Well Spring offers saddle stitch binding for comic books with a short narrative or multiple series. If your comic book features a longer storyboard and intensive narrative structure, then a square-bound comic book works best. Once you have your final product in hand, you can use web and social media tools to market it. Start an author webpage and an Instagram or Twitter to keep your fans posted on comic-related topics and tell people about new comics you are writing. Mail out copies of your comic book with a customized bookmark to promote your author brand.

Bring Your Comic Book to Life

Online creation tools allow you to create vivid characters and engaging narratives, even if you aren’t a skilled illustrator. Using the combination of online comic creation programs, web-based creative resources, and the power of professional comic book printing by Comix Well Spring, you can bring your comic book to life and get it into the hands of readers who will appreciate your story. The team at Comix Well Spring can help you choose the right printing option to make your comic book vision a reality. Browse our website to view binding options and access our helpful articles that give tips on comic-related topics, from comic strip designs to creative control over your comic for publication. When you are ready to order, follow our easy online system and reach out to our staff with any questions about the process. In the days of cold, hard newsprint, only people who could draw were successful comic strip authors. In some cases, this resulted in comic strips that had very nice pictures, but weren’t all that funny (cough, Blondie). Thankfully, the internet has taught us not to accept an inferior form of comic artistry, but a more flexible one. Comic strip enthusiasts who want funny but don’t care about pretty drawing can have their strips, those who want artistry have theirs, and even those with very specific tastes can find something just right. The best part about these developments is that they allow you, regardless of any talent as an artist or comedian, to create your very own comic strip. Depending on what you’re going for, you can use one of these four sites to help you do it.

1. MakeBeliefsComix.com

Mashable Image Make a comic strip with help from MakeBeliefsComix.
Credit: screenshot / make Beliefs Comix MakeBeliefsComix.com is a comic strip creator easy enough for children to use, but there are enough options for adults to get a message across, too. Users can choose from 25 characters to fill a two, three, or four-paneled comic strip. The pre-set options that make the site so easy to use can also be slightly limiting. Your custom comic strips will look pretty generic. There are only about four different expressions for each character. The upside of this is that you can finish a perfectly respectable online comic in about 10 minutes. The creator, Bill Zimmerman, is the author of numerous books — including Make Beliefs: A Gift For Your Imagination. «My hope is that by giving you a choice of characters with different moods and the chance to write words and thoughts for them,» he writes on the site, «you will tap into your creativity and explore new possibilities.»

2. Pixton

Mashable Image Make your comic strip, artists.
Credit: screenshot / pixton This is the comic strip creation website for artists. The site allows for as much customization as possible without the need to build from scratch. Instead of just choosing the color of a character’s shirt, for instance, there are options to adjust the collar, shape, sleeves, and size of the shirt. Instead of relying on preset poses and emotions for each character, users are able to click and drag character limbs into new postures and can customize eyes, ears, noses and hairstyles. It’s also convenient to add images from Flickr or Google images. Successful comics vie every day for a spot in the prestigious Pixton top 10.

3. ToonDoo

Mashable Image ToonDoo allows you to make your own custom comic book.
Credit: screenshot / toondoo ToonDoo hits the fine balance between creative versatility and user friendliness, ensuring that the final results look sharp. While there’s still an extensive library of characters and objects to use in your comic strip, there are also tools to create your own touches. The TraitR tool allows you to create custom characters and DoodleR lets you paint freely. If you want to use your own photos or another image in your comic strip, you can manipulate it through the ImagineR photo tool. Unlike other comic strip creation sites, there’s an option to save your project mid-creation so that you can come back to it later. When you finish a handful of ToonDoos, you can compile a book. It’s easy to embed individual cartoons in a website or share them over networks, and you can buy print-quality images of your favorites.

4. Strip Generator

Mashable Image Strip Generator is a comic strip maker that allows for adjustable frames
Credit: Screenshot / strip generator The stoic characters of Strip Generators lend themselves to sarcastic commentary. There’s not a whole lot of opportunity to create a personal style — you need to work with what the site gives you — but that doesn’t mean you can’t be creative. The community-themed galleries are testimony to this. One unique capability is adjustable frames. If you need a specific cell to be a bit wider or longer, you can just drag the wall. Another stand-out trait is the personal library. When you tweak an image to get it just right, you can save it to use again later. Additional reporting by Jack Morse. Original story published in 2010 and updated in 2018.

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