Create Comics: A Sketchbook: Includes Over 50 Pages of Lessons & Tips to Create Comics, Graphic Novels, and More! (Creative Keepsakes)

Drawing your own comics has never been easier! Create Comics: A Sketchbook gives you all the tools to get started creating your own comic world by combining helpful tips and tricks with sketchbook pages with panels.

Whether you prefer to draw single-panel comics or a graphic novel, the 58 pages of helpful instruction in the front of this sketchbook covers all the comic-making basics, including:

• Creating Characters
• Bodies in Motion
• Villains
• Battles
• Adding Speech
• Some Dos & Don’ts
• Sound Effects
• Inking Techniques
• How Does it End?
• Creating Your Own Comic Book

Then, get right into planning and drawing your comic with the 144 blank pages in the back of the book that have panels outlined for you. The layflat format lets you focus on your drawing.

So, are you ready to become a storyteller? This is just the beginning of something big!

With so much of our lives and contact going digital, the Creative Keepsakes journals offer an intimate way to nurture your connection with yourself and the people around you. An entertaining way to get off your screen, these guided and free-form journals are great for writers and artists alike. Each journal offers content around a different theme, including silly prompts for a laugh, random yet thoughtful questions, inspiration for art and composition, interactive prompts to learn about your heritage, and blank interiors on high-quality paper stock to use as your creative canvas. Beautifully designed and full of mindful prompts, channel your inspiration as you put pen (or pencil, or marker, or crayon!) to paper to learn more about yourself, your talents, and the people you love. 

Also in this Series: 3,001 Questions All About Me, 3,001 Would You Rather Questions, 3,001 This or That Questions, 301 Things to Draw, 301 Writing Ideas, Anti-Anxiety Journal, Complete the Drawing, Create a Poem, Create a Story, Design & Destroy, Forever Friends, Gratitude Journal, Inner Me, Inspired by Prayer, Internet Password Book, Mom & Me, My Family Story, My Father's Life, My Grandfather's Life, My Grandmother's Life, My Life Story, My Mother's Life, Our Love Story, Sermon Notes, Sketch - Large Black, Sketch - Large Kraft, Sketch - Medium Black, Sketch - Medium Kraft, This is Me, Write - Medium Black, Write - Medium Black

• ISBN13: 9781631067686
• Publish Date: 29 December 2020
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 17 May 2023
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Book Sales Inc
• Imprint: Chartwell Books Inc.,U.S.
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 204
• Language: English

Reviews

[annieb123]

Originally posted to my blog: Nonstop Reader.

Create Comics is a sketchbook based guide to planning and creating comics. Collected and collated from Quarto publications from 2017-2020 and published (in this edition) in Dec 2020, it's 204 pages and available in paperback format.

This is a streamlined look at the comics creation process. A very short introduction is followed immediately by short one-page step by step tutorials with line drawings of characters, villains, facial feature drawings, some action tutorials (battles), speech bubbles and text/lettering, some introductory info on inking and textures, and very (veeeery) general story arc advice.

The actual book and "instructions" are contained in the first 60 pages of the book. There's a one panel exhortation on page 60 "now it's time to take everything you've learned and make your own comic" followed by literally 144 pages of empty panels which the reader is supposed to fill in themselves. The panel pages are also repeated. There are 3 different layouts on repeat throughout the last two thirds of the book.

I'm not really sure who the intended audience is. It might make a good choice for a youngster who would like to draw their own comics or for a group/class as a hand-out exercise, but I'm not really seeing enough instruction included to make that more than an exercise in frustration. It's available in paperback format, so presumably would be readers will flip through it before buying and see that 2/3rds of the book is blank/DIY, but for potential readers who order online, my advice is to proceed with caution. If I had bought this one sight unseen, I'd be disappointed.

Two and a half stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.