Neraluna

I thought it'd be nice to share how I make my comics. So, in this post I'm going to explain the process I use, and reply to some questions you may have about my work.

How do you create your comics? First, I think about a possible story and I try to develop it in my mind for a while to see if it there's a point to work on it or not. Then, I open The Sims 4 game for the first time and create my characters as I imagined them before. After that, I start writing a plot for my story and develop it into short chapters. Sometimes, I draw a draft of my frames on paper, if I feel like I have no clear ideas of how to develop a scene. When I have my script for a chapter done, I open the game again and create my builds. Sometimes I use builds made by other players too (they'll be credited in each related post). When everything's done, I put my characters in play and take billions of screenshots. I choose the screenshots that best fit my script and I edit them with an image editor. Finally, I assemble my comic with another editor and, if needed, I edit the comic strip again with a graphic editor.

What software do you use to create your comic? I use a free image editor called GIMP to edit and apply filters to my screenshots, and then I use an other editor called Comic 3 Life to assemble my strips and add clouds.

Do you make use of any AI generated content? I could go on hours ranting about how I despise AI generated contents, but I'll be short. I didn't open this blog with the purpose to become rich and popular by scamming people with fake empty contents. I did it because I wanted to share a human interest with people who have that interest in common with me. That means I won't ever use an AI content generator to produce content for this page. I don't think I even need it, because my human imagination is probably enough to produce billions of content ideas in a day. And I don't mind for my hands taking their time to put those ideas into a computer file. So, no AI in this blog… unless you consider mixing a series of graphic filters with a graphic editor AI too. Personally, I don't think they are.

What do you take inspiration from your stories? I take inspiration from my in real life. I tend to think about stories and characters that are somehow inspired by my experiences and I have a certain knowledge about. To make you an example, I won't ever write a story about cars and car racing, because I know my cars like you know nothing about me. And, of course, also because there are no cars in The Sims 4... =) Then, I start fantasizing about things or people that inspired me somehow. I usually do that when I go to bed, while waiting to fall asleep, because it helps to distract my brain from other thoughts that otherwise wouldn't let me sleep.

It's a story filled with gags that revolves around the relationship between depressed career woman Maddie and happy afro-Japanese guy "Mushie".