How to Start a Big Creative Project
(Comics, Animation, and Other)
Disclaimer:
I donāt work in the industry. Iām not a studio professional, and Iām not here to sell you a perfect system.
What I do have is over ten years of drawing, multiple animation projects behind me, and Iām currently working on a comic.
This blog is about my personal experience what worked, what didnāt and the mistakes I made!!!
I want to share the things that wouldāve helped me when I first tried to tackle big creative projects. I wanna help you get past that awful moment where you want to start something bigā¦ and somehow never do.
First things first: you need to know what you actually want to make.
A comic, an animation, game. These might look similar on the surface, but they all follow different rules.
Yes, a lot of skills overlap. Drawing is drawing. Storytelling is storytelling.
But an animation is not a comic, and a comic is not an animation. Each medium has its own logic, its own workflow, and its own problems. Ignoring that is a great way to get stuck very early.
And I know what youāre probably thinking now:
āOkay, but what do I actually need to know?ā
āAnd how am I supposed to learn all of that?ā
I wonāt pretend thereās a simple checklist. But in the next part, Iāll show you what ābasic knowledgeā can look like using animation as an example.
My bachelor thesis was an animated short film, thats why I use animation as example since I have actual material for it XD
A very quick rundown of my bachelor animation project
Alright, this is going to be a really quick overview of what I did for my animated short film as my bachelor thesis.
The idea
Yeah, obviously you need an idea.
I pitched a lot of different concepts, made sketches, character sheets, and tons of stuff that honestly isnāt that important right now. What mattered was where it landed: a steampunky reinterpretation of the old German ballad āErlkƶnigā by Goethe. You can watch it here btw š
Once the idea was locked in, I needed to figure out the aesthetic.
So I did what everyone does: I went on Pinterest and collected images for the general vibe of the animation. Colors, moods... anything that helped define how this thing should feel.
This is actually an industry standard and often used for pitching.
You draw the key moments of your story in just a few panels. Very reduced, very focused. Itās about the core beats!
Thumbnails are very rough drawings of the entire animation from start to finish.
You go through the whole film once, shot by shot, but in the simplest way possible.
No details, no clean drawings. Just enough to understand composition, camera, and flow.
This step is about planning the animation visually before doing any real work. It helps you see if the story works, where cuts are needed, and what can be changed early without wasting time.
This is a more detailed version of the thumbnails.
Itās used to define timing, camera, and clearly show whatās happening in each shot. Itās also important for voice acting, because you need the dialogue recorded before you animate.
The animatic is the storyboard put into an editing program.
Here you add timing, sound effects, and the voice acting performance. This is where the project starts to feel like an actual film instead of a pile of drawings.
The color script defines the colors used throughout the animation.
You plan this ahead of time to support mood and emotion in different scenes. Yes, this is very extra but it exists for a reason.
Why Iām telling you all this
For my bachelor thesis, I followed a process that was, for the most part, close to professional industry standards.
And hereās the important part:
My point is NOT that you need to memorize all of this to start animating.
You donāt need a color script for a 10-second meme animation.
What did matter is:
Learning how this stuff works helped me understand what actually goes into an animation. More importantly, it gave me tools I can now pick and choose from. These steps are resources not rules.
And this doesnāt only apply to animation.
You can transfer the same way of thinking to other mediums like comics or even writing. Knowing what a process could look like helps you break big projects down without having to apply everything like a professional, especially if youāre doing this as a hobby.
Maybe using a beatboard helps you visualize your animation faster.
Maybe rough thumbnails are enough.
Maybe you skip half of this entirely.
Thatās fine. The value is simply having heard of these basics, so you can steal whatās useful and ignore the rest.
Now to the part:
Where do you actually get the information and skills you need?
Not everyone has the privilege to go to university. And even if you do, school has limits.
A huge part of what I can do today, I taught myself. I also studied during COVID, which made things even more restricted. So no you donāt need a perfect educational background to start big projects. But you do need input.
The obvious answer is: the internet.
There are endless free tutorials, videos, articles, and threads.
And thatās great.
But as a beginner, this also comes with two big problems:
AI slop. Yes, even in the learning space. Low-quality, wrong, recycled, or soulless content is everywhere.
Information overload. There is so much out there that you donāt know where to start, whatās trustworthy, or what even applies to you.
So hereās the honest answer to how I built most of my skills:
One of the biggest strengths of books is that the knowledge is in one place.
Theyāre usually very clear about who theyāre for beginners, intermediate, advanced. They have structure. A thought-out order. A progression.
The downside?
Theyāre not always easily accessible. You often have to pay for them or get lucky at a library. And yes, you have to put time into actually researching which books are worth it.
But honestly? Itās worth it.
One of the most important books I ever bought was āThe Complete Guide to Figure Drawing for Comics and Graphic Novels.ā (I think that what its called in english I only have the german version ._.)
Itās written by a comic artist and aimed at total beginners.
That book became my comic bible.
Another huge advantage of books is that youāre learning from one personās full perspective. One workflow. One way of thinking. A clear guideline instead of a thousand half-answers.
A lot of books are written by people who actually worked in the industry and decided to document their knowledge. Thatās not random content thatās experience :O
3. Use the Skills You Already Have
Okay, now let's get to what I think is the most important point. When you're thinking about starting a project like an animation, comic, game ... you're probably already a creative person. Whether you're an artist, a 3D modeler, or something else entirely, you already bring skills to the table. And honestly? You should lean into those skills and make them part of your project.
Let me use myself as an example because I'm cool trust!
People who follow me probably know I'm working on a comic. It's an FNAF AU comic, planned at over 100 pages. And here's the thing: I had never made a long-form comic before. Sure, I'd done a few small ones, but that hardly made me an expert in long-term storytelling. I genuinely had no idea what mattered in a comic beyond some basics I'd picked up from a beginner book.
One of my first comic you see where I came from XD
But when I actually sat down and evaluated what I did have! I came from animation and storyboarding. I have the ability to think in panels, to draw quickly, to stage and frame scenes. I didn't try to reinvent myself. I just redirected what I already knew.
Same goes for writing. I'm not a writer :o I've never written anything seriously. But I do have a sense of humor that people responded to in my short comics, and that became part of my voice in this project too. I think that's actually one of the things that makes my work feel like mine. Bacause I'm the funniest person I know!!!
You can apply this same thinking to your own projects. Are you a traditional artist considering making an animatic? Try it with traditionally drawn panels, photograph them, sequence them. You might be surprised how well it works. Even full animation can be done traditionally. Is your strength character design? Build your project around strong, expressive characters. Are you a musician first? Start with a project where the audio does the heavy lifting and the visuals support it.
The point is: don't feel like you need to master an entirely new skill set before you can start. Start with what you have, and build from there.
4. Don't Be Too Hard on Yourself
One thing that held me back for a long time was the thought: "I'm not skilled enough yet. I need to practice more before I can start something big." And when I did start something and it wasn't perfect on the first try, I'd lose motivation and drop it entirely.
Before I went to study, I really tried to get an animation project off the ground. But the moment my storyboard panels didn't look the way I wanted them to on the first attempt I just quit FR.
And that's actually a pretty damaging way to think. Because how do you know you can do something if you never try? How do you practice something you never even attempt?
I know you've probably heard this a hundred times, but it's true: just start. If your first sketches look rough, that's fine concept sketches are supposed to look rough. You can refine it later. That's the whole point of a process.
I mean thats how my first sketches of anything I start look like.
Create something, even if you think it's bad. I promise you, there will be things you like about it whether it's specific details, the fact that you actually made something, or simply the skills you picked up along the way.
Get your basics down, gather your resources, build on the skills you already have, and then just begin. Not when you feel ready, not when you think you're good enough, not after one more practice round. Now.
Big projects are scary. They're supposed to be. But the people who finish them aren't the ones who waited until they were perfect. They're the ones who started messy, kept going anyway, and figured it out as they went.
You're probably more ready than you think.
