## A Comic Primer

If you're planning on telling a story with a Comic Life comic it's best to work from a "script" that you've developed - much like you'd write a script for a movie or a play. The script will give you guidance on the kinds of photos to take (who, what, where) and what dialog will be added to each "scene".

Once you're happy with the script you can gather your "actors" and start taking pictures for each scene.

Don't be afraid to take a few different shots for each scene as digital pictures are free and it will be good to have options when you are laying out.
Make sure your actors are making the appropriate expressions for the scene and dialog - happiness, sadness, excitement etc. When you have all the pictures you need import them into your computer and perform any editing that might be needed - color correction, red-eye reduction etc.
Comics might be a good excuse for using some of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements Filters. You can make your photos look like comic illustrations. Good candidates include:

Artistic
  Dry Brush, Fresco, Watercolor
Sketch
  Chalk & Charcoal, Graphic Pen, Watercolor

Once your pictures have been prepared it's time to think about how you're planning to publish your comic so that you can choose the appropriate page size. You can publish comics on the web or print them out - each has an appropriate page size.

Now launch Comic Life and create a new comic with the page size you've chosen. Use the Page Templates to quickly layout the cells in your comic - or design the pages yourself based upon the images you want to use.

Drag and drop the images onto the appropriate cells - the images are automatically sized to fill the entire cell. You can adjust the size and positioning of the images (and the cells for that matter) to best suit the scene. Make sure that the order the images are presented on the page is natural for your readers so they don't have to hunt for the next scene in the story.

Now it's time to letter your comic. Lettering is the process of adding the titles, captions and speech bubbles that help tell the story for the reader. Try to keep the lettering off of the main focus of each scene but use the bubble tails to clearly indicate who is saying or thinking the contents of the bubble.

Add "sound effects" where necessary to add excitement and help the story along. Typical sound effects are screams, strange noises, animal noises, mechanical sounds etc.

Web Resources:

- Balloon Tales
- Blambot Comics 101