Ideas for a new comic...

[Rain_Davenport]

I'm kind of amassing a number of characters in the same style, but I don't have a story for them. Usually, I draw one person for whom I don't have a story, and either stick them in a preexisting story, or they just kinda fall out of my memory. But this is, like, a small community of people. I know that all I really need to do is throw around some ideas, and things should fall into place, but I guess the real reason I'm posting is cuz I kinda wanna talk with other people about it first.

Some of the problems I'm kinda tackling:
-The most major one, I'm finding, is I can't decide on the ages of the characters. I want them to either be in high school or college, but I can't decide on which. Each one brings about its own scenarios, problems, plot twists, etc.
-Names. This is always a problem, but argh. I can't decide if I want them to have normal names, or if I want them to have themed names or just completely random.
-I can't decide on the story type. I can't decide whether I want this to be story-focused, arc-focused, or what. This may be the least of my problems, as I can't decide on a clear path anyway, but...
-Most of my characters are turning out to be girls... They're just so much easier to draw T-T
-Sexual orientation... I never wanted to have one of those comics where everyone (or most of the cast) was glbt, but I also don't wanna just ignore it. What's a good balance...
-Four-panel, strip or page?
-Color, black and white or toned?
-I don't have a tablet or scanner. I'm leaning toward tablet. Any suggestions? (Would have to be able to ship to Japan. Also, not looking to pay any more than $200.) A friend suggested to me Wacom's products, but I'm so bad with wading through reviews and figuring out what's the thing I'm -actually- looking for...
-Title... but I always have problems with titles. I was thinking of naming one of the characters Penny Candey, and making that the title, but I'm not sure if I want to make a certain character the central focus of the story. Still, somehow, whether that's her name or not, the name Penny Candy has a nice ring to it, somehow, but really has nothing to do with the story whatsoever...

Some things I've already solved:
-I want this to be the kind of world where everyone has a weird hair color. This poses its own problems, though: what -is- a normal or abnormal hair color? Do I do this with the eyes, or normal colors, or any colors, or just black? And also, when I look at a picture I've drawn, I tend to think of them as having a certain hair color - most of which are generally within the normal range. So I'm having problems envisioning a color for a lot of the characters.
-I want this to be the kind of world that exists within the real world, but isn't an actual location (Simpsons, wherever they come from; Moral Orel, Statesota; etc.) Still deciding the parameters on this, but not a huge problem.
-I want this to be the kind of comic where people wear the same clothes all the time. Just easier. This is also posing some problems for me, though, as I'm really bad with putting together outfits on characters...
-I definitely want a good amount of comedy, but I also want there to be some drama. Hard cuz I'm not very funny >.>;;
-The drawing style is simplified, very slightly true-to-life.

I want there to be come concreteness to this before I start, but it's hard to make a decision and stick with it, I think... I dunno...

Any thoughts, opinions or comments are very welcome

I'm soooooo way, way hyper right now, and I don't know why...

[Laemkral]

I'm kind of amassing a number of characters in the same style, but I don't have a story for them. Usually, I draw one person for whom I don't have a story, and either stick them in a preexisting story, or they just kinda fall out of my memory. But this is, like, a small community of people. I know that all I really need to do is throw around some ideas, and things should fall into place, but I guess the real reason I'm posting is cuz I kinda wanna talk with other people about it first.

Some of the problems I'm kinda tackling:
-The most major one, I'm finding, is I can't decide on the ages of the characters. I want them to either be in high school or college, but I can't decide on which. Each one brings about its own scenarios, problems, plot twists, etc.
-Names. This is always a problem, but argh. I can't decide if I want them to have normal names, or if I want them to have themed names or just completely random.
-I can't decide on the story type. I can't decide whether I want this to be story-focused, arc-focused, or what. This may be the least of my problems, as I can't decide on a clear path anyway, but...
-Most of my characters are turning out to be girls... They're just so much easier to draw T-T
-Sexual orientation... I never wanted to have one of those comics where everyone (or most of the cast) was glbt, but I also don't wanna just ignore it. What's a good balance...
-Four-panel, strip or page?
-Color, black and white or toned?
-I don't have a tablet or scanner. I'm leaning toward tablet. Any suggestions? (Would have to be able to ship to Japan. Also, not looking to pay any more than $200.) A friend suggested to me Wacom's products, but I'm so bad with wading through reviews and figuring out what's the thing I'm -actually- looking for...
-Title... but I always have problems with titles. I was thinking of naming one of the characters Penny Candey, and making that the title, but I'm not sure if I want to make a certain character the central focus of the story. Still, somehow, whether that's her name or not, the name Penny Candy has a nice ring to it, somehow, but really has nothing to do with the story whatsoever...

Some things I've already solved:
-I want this to be the kind of world where everyone has a weird hair color. This poses its own problems, though: what -is- a normal or abnormal hair color? Do I do this with the eyes, or normal colors, or any colors, or just black? And also, when I look at a picture I've drawn, I tend to think of them as having a certain hair color - most of which are generally within the normal range. So I'm having problems envisioning a color for a lot of the characters.
-I want this to be the kind of world that exists within the real world, but isn't an actual location (Simpsons, wherever they come from; Moral Orel, Statesota; etc.) Still deciding the parameters on this, but not a huge problem.
-I want this to be the kind of comic where people wear the same clothes all the time. Just easier. This is also posing some problems for me, though, as I'm really bad with putting together outfits on characters...
-I definitely want a good amount of comedy, but I also want there to be some drama. Hard cuz I'm not very funny >.>;;
-The drawing style is simplified, very slightly true-to-life.

I want there to be come concreteness to this before I start, but it's hard to make a decision and stick with it, I think... I dunno...

Any thoughts, opinions or comments are very welcome

I'm soooooo way, way hyper right now, and I don't know why...

You need to start focusing on the grand stuff before you start worrying about the details. You've got a big case of "putting the cart before the horse". Don't worry too much about the little stuff like "how many girls should there be", "how many should be glbt", "what are their names", etc until you hammer out the major details like "what's the main plot line". Once you know what it is you're trying to tell, the other details will come a little clearer into focus.

[Lostmind]

I agree with Laemkral, you should first decide the over all plot first and foremost.

Yet you seem to have answered a few of your own questions.

Title-You seem fond of using "Penny Candy" yet want it to relate which leads to
Names-Use names of candies/sugar treats; Peppermint, Lollipop, Taffy. I'm sure if you look you can find male sounding candies.
Style-Your comment about the hair decided the tone as color. The ones about the clothes would mean uniforms (just two to design: girls and boys), which would mean your leaning toward private high school. However I've seen to many comics set in high schools, try thinking of other places that require uniforms. I don't want to push you in any one direction.
Setting-The fastest way to make a place thats real but isn't, is to use a real building and give it a new purpose; the Superfriends Hall of Justice is/was a real building. Comic strip cities are just rows of boxes till someone drops in a recognizable landmark. They grow to meet the needs of story arcs; need a lake you got a lake, need a bay you got one. When Springfield was first shown it was just a collection of sight gags for the opening credits with no care of space or design. Use your own and modify it later to fit you needs.

But in all case focus on main plot first.

[RobboAKAscooby]

Ditto. Get the story worked out first.
Make the characters fit the story not vice-versa.

A couple of specific tips:
- with the sexual orientation thing the character needs to have some purpose in the story, either their sexuality is a plot point or you treat it as background, otherwise it will appear you've just thrown them in there for the sake of a stereotype.
- themed names, this depends on the nature of your story the more serious the story the cornier this concept will become.

One big tip for storytelling - INTERNAL LOGIC - whatever decisions you make need to make sense within the story.

[Ti-Phil]

The pose in which you draw your character tells of it's personality and from it, it's background can be written.
You draw the character as a kind of shy pose, then you can assume she has difficulties speaking in front of crowd, that she's a bit asocial and that she is an intraverted people. You can give her skills and passion kinked to that, be it reading, drawing or walking for hours in the woods.

[Rain_Davenport]

Well, a story has to be mine, right? I can't really ask for help with something like that. However, these smaller details, I can ask for people to through out suggestions, an don't really have to commit to any one, helping me through the thought process of this whole thing. Just making these less tangible things more... tangible, I suppose.

As for the story, it seems as the characters are developing, plots are falling into place. But can a comic function like that? Or does there need to be a more central, main plot?

Style-Your comment about the hair decided the tone as color. The ones about the clothes would mean uniforms (just two to design: girls and boys), which would mean your leaning toward private high school. However I've seen to many comics set in high schools, try thinking of other places that require uniforms. I don't want to push you in any one direction.

I meant more like each person wearing their own clothing every time they appear, as opposed to changing their clothes. Many American cartoons do this (The Simpsons, Spongebob, South Park, etc.)

[McDuffies]

As for the story, it seems as the characters are developing, plots are falling into place. But can a comic function like that? Or does there need to be a more central, main plot?

I think that, at least for a beginner, the oposite is better. Plot dictates the setting, a lot of character's traits, mood, genre. Characters are defined through their actions - you may know what they're like, but readers will only get to know them through what they do - therefore, plot. Knowing more about characters lets you decide what age they'll be, sexual orientation, names, etc. Genre helps decide whether characters will be in the same clothes or more realistically dressed, whether they'll have weird hair colour or normal, whether it'll be four panel comic or full page, etc. So most of problems you named in the first post should actually fall in the place once you've outlined central plot or central idea, and started working on it.

Mind you this is just one way of doing this, but for a beginner who's still uncertain what writing process will work for him, it's better to start forused, from the middle, and then gradually build on that and expand. So yeah, I think that most of those questions are better left for later, and it would be hard for us to answer them anyways, since we don't know what fits for your comic.

-Color, black and white or toned?

Colour comics always have more chance to be popular, but making a colour comics takes much more time. So I guess if you can keep up making coloured comic, try it, but if it takes too much, revert to bw. I personally am a fan of bw comics, but seeing as you have many unresolved decisions here, you shouldn't make an issue out of this.

-I don't have a tablet or scanner. I'm leaning toward tablet. Any suggestions? (Would have to be able to ship to Japan. Also, not looking to pay any more than $200.) A friend suggested to me Wacom's products, but I'm so bad with wading through reviews and figuring out what's the thing I'm -actually- looking for...

Tablet and scanner are two pretty different techniques. Disadvantage of tablet is that it takes some getting used to, learning how to use it, adapting your hand to it... shouldn't take more than a week or so, though. Advantage of tablet is that it takes fixing mistakes, erasing pencils, colouring, much, much easier. They're really two completely different comicmaking technologies.
I have Wacom tablet and am satisfied with it (though there are some issues around drivers, but aren't there always?) I also have some cheap scanner which works well, even cheaper scanners fulfill the purpose.

I'm soooooo way, way hyper right now, and I don't know why...

Your enthusiasm is very refreshing.

[Procelis]

I got my current scanner for around $20, but it was on sale so I don't really know what it was worth. It seems to work perfectly fine, the quality is good, and its wireless so it can stay by my drawing desk and scan to my computer from all the way across the house.

I was originally looking at a $35 8"x6" tablet from DigiPro, but when I found the scanner I decided scanning my drawings would probably be much easier then redrawing them or tracing them with a tablet. If anybody wants I could link to the place I found the $35 one, I also found a review for it at some point that sounded trustworthy, but I'd have to fish through my web history to find it.