Paprika Comic Making Hot Tips

What does it take to make a comic? How do you get from an idea, to the full fledged panel? I just wanted to share a quick crash course on my comic-making method. Some essential skills when it comes to making erotica comics: The prompt, ingredients, etc.

1) Seed: My ideas start with a small prompt, or a prompt with a commissioner, a fantasy, an erotic image:

"I want this story to be about a college swim team coach, and one of his swimmers who's had a crush on him. He accidentally ingests a formula that makes his pecs and ass grow, and they have sex.

2) Ingredients: What kind of things/kinks/poses/scenarios do I like, that can be relevant to the idea? Brainstorm! Look at your favorite erotica! Look at your lists of kinks you love! What makes you excited and passionate? What kind of characters and kinky scenarios? This is your bucket of ingredients, a mood board of erotica to give you a good sex. Eg) Male lactation, wet bodies, missionary, pec/ass growth, size difference, small top-big bottom.

3) Composing the Story: The story is not just sex; whenever I write my stories, I mentally have a heat meter from 0% to 100%.

A coach has sex with one of his players.

Not enough!

While the erotic imagery is nice, what is important is the context: setup, buildup, and backdrop to the scene. Its not just the sex itself, but the sporty setting of young men trained by their muscled coach, the tense dynamic of a swimmer crushing on his coach, and the tension that builds up that leads to the eventual climax.

You can think of the erotic scene itself as a piece of steak, but in my opinion, that's not enough to be a well-rounded erotic scene. The context surrounding the scene is the extra garnishes, spices, sauces, aromatics, etc, that round out the flavor into a complete meal.

Just like an orgasm, you can write stories that match that pacing, from the setup of the elements that will explode when drawn close to each other, the spark of desire/arrousal, to the buildup of excitement, the height of animalistic excitement, and the explosion... and if you choose, the resolution (post nut clarity)

Setup : "A swimer has a crush on his Coach... when his Coach gets in the water to start practice, his body starts tingling.

Rising Action: The coach calls off practice, alone with the trusted swimmer protag, his ass and pecs uncontrollably grow to erotic proportions. He begs the protag to suck his nipples, and the protags dicks size grows to hyper size, matching the new size of his coach's ass.

Climax: The swimmer fucks his coach doggy style, and them mounts him in missionary style, sucking his nipples as they orgasm together.

Resolution: The growth effects have worn off, and they are having an awkward shower in the changeroom together.

Or, if you'd like a more unexpected left-field twist or to incorporate an element of humor and surprise in your comic, you can also refer to Kishotenketsu, the four-act story-building structure of many classic Chinese, Korean, and Japanese narratives. This structure is utilized for Yonkoma, four-panel Japanese gag comics, and for narratives in general.

When I want more erotic ecchi kind of humor to set up jokes and have fun twists, this has been my favorite resource which I used to help plan the comic below.

4) Script Writing/Panel Planning

This is where you plan out your story's dialogue, panels, and script. I use this format to plan out my dialogue and panels.  It's possible to condense a story into one page or stretch it out into 10+ pages. I like to keep each page to have a range of 2-5 panels. Think of it like storyboarding, a film in your mind, and what each shot would look like. This allows you to give some thought to what could happen in each panel. (Try researching your fav comic artists to get an idea of how they layout their stories/drawings)

You might realize you might have to take out or sacrifice some ideas depending on the length, but thats the magic of the script planning phase to problem solve what you can fit into or expand onto panels!

5) Thumbnail Comic

On small squares, based on the dialogue, do a rough sketch of each panel to get a good rough draft of the comic. This is what youll use to problem solve spacing, prioritize which panel to be bigger, and all of that!

That should be a base idea of how to prep your comic for drawing it out in your own style!

Making comics for me is like composing a song of sorts. I wish I could provide more details, but Scott McCloud has been a great reference point for me to make me think of comics more abstractically, to think more about time, space, pacing, emotions, mood, feeling.