Introducing Ghost Grabbers!
An original webcomic premiering on Tapas and Webtoons May 31, 2021
Ghost Grabbers! is a supernatural, comedy adventure following Robin, a high school girl looking to make a quick buck through her newly established (fraudulent) spirit cleansing business. She figured her new job would be easy, just wave around some sage, sprinkle some salt, and chant some made-up, magic words. After all, ghosts aren’t real, and it was all just an act of pretend. However, things don’t exactly go as planned when she gets called to a particularly spooky looking house. Robin soon finds out that not only are ghosts very real, but one seems to have taken quite a liking to her and has even made a cozy home in her backpack. Robin must now go on a paranormal adventure to figure out how to exorcise her backpack ghost, and maybe even become a real ghost hunter along the way!
I thought of the idea for Ghost Grabbers! two years ago when I made a watercolor illustration of a young ghost hunter being frightened by a ghost that snuck into her backpack. Even though this was meant to be a one-off drawing, I couldn’t stop thinking about the piece, and a larger story grew around it. After two years, I finally started to put her adventures into writing, and eventually into this comic!
The illustration that inspired Ghost Grabbers!
To create this comic, I began by typing up a rough script. The general plot of the entire story, start to finish, existed in my head, but putting my fingers to the keyboard helped me get a clear idea of a more detailed story. After much writing and refining, I had a complete and detailed outline of the events I wanted to portray in the first two chapters, as well as the dialogue spoken by each character.
Before getting into drawing the comic, I created several reference materials to make my life easier in the future. Having character reference sheets and turn-arounds for all the major characters would prove to be incredibly helpful when it came to drawing the comic and coloring.
When it came to drawing the actual comic, I was super excited to dive in and make something visually interesting, fun, and easy to read! I started out with a very rough sketch in pink. With this I’m tried to figure out a panel layout that flows nicely, while keeping in mind where I might place things like word bubbles. Then I’ll drew a rough version of the illustrations that will be appearing on that page. Next, I moved on to my refined sketch in purple. Here I cleaned up the drawings and make them less scribbly. The third step was to create the line art. I used a texture black brush and created a clean illustration. Finally, I colored in the comic, using my limited color pallet of purples and blues.
On June 7th, 2021 I will be uploading the first chapter of Ghost Grabbers! to the free comic websites Tapas and Webtoons. After that there will be regular updates in which I will publish one new page every week. I look forward to seeing you there!
