Tips on Storytelling for Webcomics

I'm an artist and creator of the award-winning webcomic Jake the Evil Hare . I've been drawing since I was a kid, and have recently launched my comic in print as well.

I originally created JTEH in 1994, and briefly promoted it as a webcomic in 1998 before life got in the way, and didn't come back to it until September of 2009. At that time, I produced 45 pages of Jake and posted them on DrunkDuck, and then I ended up stuck in the middle of nowhere in Wollaston Lake, Saskatchewan, unable to get any serious work done for months. In the Summer of 2010, I lived in a cabin on the Renous River and cranked out more than comic 50 pages, and since then launched a separate site. This past January, my comic won The Weekly Rumble at WeVolt, and is presently a contender for Lord of the Rumble.

One of the things I've learned in this journey is that the best approach to storytelling is a combination of simplicity and implication. Keep the action straightforward, and set it up so that your story implies even more than it tells, and you can further engage your reader. One of the biggest challenges I faced was studio space. Over the last year or so I've had to travel a lot, and so comfortable workspace was hard to come by, never mind internet access. When I was at the cabin, my drawing board was a cabinet shelf propped against a window sill at the top, and on my lap at the bottom. However, I somehow managed to get pages done, and even improve my artwork as time went by.

Another key to creating webcomics is focus. Some comics seem to be trying to tell too many stories at once, and usually you'll lose the reader. Not only must the story and its plot elements be focused, but your characters should also be focused. No character is less interesting than the character who doesn't want anything. What's your character after, and how bad does he want it? Think of some of your favorite books, movies, comics. In the best ones, most often the main characters had something they wanted very badly, and the obstacles in their way not only developed the story but reveal their character as well.

Good examples of this dynamic would be Burn, Battle Angel Alita, or Kat in The Path.

Finally, there has got to be clarity in a comic artist's work. The last thing you need to do is confuse your reader. There are tens of thousands of webcomics out there, so it is really easy to lose readers if your art and storytelling are more conducive to confusion than to clarity. This doesn't mean it has to be all spelled out, but rather, each segment of the story needs to coherently and clearly show what's going on at that point in the tale... otherwise, what use is there in reading it?

I'll try to post some more hubs on drawing, studio tips and more in the future.