Comic strip idea - where to start?

[AlexH]

I have an idea for a comic strip I'd like to play with. I'm not a pro artist, designer, or graphics guru, I'm just a regular guy who occasionally draws stuff with paper and pencil. But, I'm thinking this process might be best suited for the computer or iPad (I have access to an iPad Pro) since I want to publish it online.

So here's my question: What are the best apps for an iPad Pro or for my Mac I should look at to draw a comic strip?

 

[phobos]

Hey AlexH
For the iPad you cannot go wrong with Procreate. It has everything or almost everything you might need and it's constantly being updated. A truly great app. Concepts is also another great app that works in a different way than all other drawing apps. Everything is vector based and you can adjust everything after the fact. Really good app.
In both cases try to read the extensive manuals. You will learn a lot of things that are not visible from the get go.

For the mac if you don't want to go the creative cloud way which would probably be overkill, try Affinity's tools.
Affinity Designer and Affinity Photo the alternatives to illustrator and photoshop. They're cheap and you don't have to pay a subscription for it.

I think the easiest approach would be for you to draw individual panels on the iPad and then stitch everything together on your mac. You could also draw the whole thing on one image on the iPad and then make adjustments on your computer. The resolution will be adequate for a comic strip. Either way you choose it's going to be good. Just try to find the way that suits you the best.

 

[mrex]

apps for ipad:
comicbook!
- easy to change photos/drawings to look alike comic art
halftone
- photos/drawings can be adjusted with two tools
strip design
- same as above, photos/drawings can be adjusted, but tools feel abit unpolished

 

[MechaSpanky]

I have used Illustrator (before Adobe decided that all of their customers wanted to pay monthly for the rest of their lives to use their software) and after I switched to Affinity Designer and I love it. For drawing, I feel that Affinity Designer is much better than Illustrator. Many people in Japan use http://www.clipstudio.net/en which I believe used to be called "Manga Studio" here in the US (and it may still be called that, I'm not sure).

Best of luck,
Mecha

 

[Jim Campbell]

Clip Studio/Manga Studio is still the gold standard for drawing comics digitally, but doesn't have an iOS version. There's a free Manga Studio knock-off for iOS called MediBang Paint that's really quite good and works a treat with the iPad Pro/Apple Pencil combo. It also exports JPEGs, TIFFs and layered PSDs, so you have a route, via iCloud Drive or Dropbox, to get your pages back into a desktop workflow.

(If you're just looking for a nice iPad app for drawing, however, Procreate is pretty hard to beat.)

Be aware, however, that none of these packages is worth a damn for lettering, which is almost exclusively done professionally with Adobe Illustrator. Affinity Designer is a credible alternative to AI for lettering (there's even an iOS version in the works, although there's no release date for it) if you don't want to shell out for a CC subscription.

Nothing makes nice comic pages look amateurish more than bad lettering -- if you can't do it yourself, find someone who can do it for you.