Making EW Comics with Supr Dee!

Hey Eddheads! Welcome to today's class on making an Eddsworld comic strip! By the end of this post you too can make an official comic strip. (But please don't. We have lawyers.)

It starts with a template...

We have basic templates for 3 and 4-panel comic strips, but we usually try to stick with a 4-panel layout. If we're using a guest artist we will send them this template.

The artist will use this to sketch out a draft for feedback. Like this one, from Dee's first strip:

This was actually Dee's first illustration with Eddsworld characters. Here's a coloured version:

As you might have noticed, some aspects of the character designs are a bit off-model- particularly the hair. With strips we do allow the artists a bit more freedom with style, but for this first outing we worked with Dee to find a middle-ground between his style and EW. We gave Dee access to some of our style guide materials and he updated it. The hair, body shapes, and line thickness were all subtly updated. We also changed the backgrounds to look like the classic Eddsworld house. Here's the finished strip:

For his second strip Dee really wanted to work with two of his favourite characters, Larry and Evil Director Man. We went back and forth a few times on the exact script/joke. Here are a few early sketches:

Then we landed on the idea of product placement and it started falling into place. This was a fun opportunity to poke fun at ourselves, as well, because we need to promote our store and sponsors sometimes (which has had MIXED responses...). A lot of discussion was had about the monster design... For inspiration we looked at old-school Power Rangers villains.

Often it's the last panel that changes the most, because it's the punchline, so comics can go through a LOT of different versions at this stage... (For example with this one Matt gave a LOT of notes on the monster hands, which changed about 6 times.) But we get there in the end.

Dee is one of several artists we started working with this year and so far the results have been amazing. He's collaborated with other members of the team on several more strips AND helped design some of the limited Red October merchandise.

You can find more of Dee's work elsewhere online, like his webcomic Pen & Ink or his syndicated print strip Rosebuds.

Browse all Eddsworld comics here. - C x