Comic Strip Maker – Tell a Story in Pictures

How Comics Tell a Story

A comic strip is a story told in a row of pictures called panels. The thin white space between two panels is the gutter, and it is where the reader’s imagination does its work: in one panel a ball flies towards a tree, in the next a child looks up in dismay, and the reader fills in what happened in between. Learning to choose which moments to show, and which to leave in the gutter, is the same skill as deciding which events belong in a written story.

Words in a comic come in a few kinds. A speech bubble with a pointed tail shows what a character says, and the tail points to the speaker. A thought bubble, drawn like a cloud with little circles, shows what a character thinks but does not say. A shout bubble with spiky edges is for loud or sudden words. A caption box, usually at the top of a panel, is the narrator’s voice: “One Saturday morning…” or “Ten minutes later…”. Reading order matters too: left to right, then down to the next row, and inside a panel the bubble on the left is read first.

From Comic to Composition

Most primary school stories follow four steps, and a four-panel comic fits them exactly:

1. Beginning – who is there, where they are and what they are doing.
2. Problem – something goes wrong or something surprising happens.
3. Solution – what the characters do about it.
4. Ending – how it turns out, how the characters feel and what they learned.

Once the comic is finished, each panel becomes a paragraph. The pictures give the events; the faces give the feelings (“Jun’s heart sank”, “Mei Ling beamed”); the speech bubbles give the dialogue. This is why teachers often say show, don’t tell: instead of writing “he was sad”, describe what the sad face in panel three looks like.

A punctuation tip for dialogue: the words inside a speech bubble go inside quotation marks in a story, with the punctuation inside too, and a new speaker starts a new line. The bubble “Watch my super kick!” becomes: “Watch my super kick!” shouted Jun. In Chinese, use the double quotation marks “ ” and a colon before them: 小明大声说：“看我的超级射门！”

Tips for Picture Composition (看图作文)

• Look at every picture before writing. Find out where the story ends before you start, so the beginning leads somewhere.
• Name the characters and the place in the first paragraph: who, when and where. A Singapore setting, such as a void deck, a hawker centre or East Coast Park, makes the story feel real.
• Write about every picture. Each picture should have at least one paragraph, and the problem picture usually deserves the most detail.
• Read the faces. A surprised, worried or angry face tells you how the character feels. Use feeling words and describe actions, for example 他急得像热锅上的蚂蚁 or her hands were shaking.
• Add what is between the pictures. The gutter is your chance to add events, dialogue and thoughts that the pictures do not show.
• End with a feeling or a lesson, such as 我明白了… or From that day on, I always…

For full Chinese picture compositions with guiding questions, 好词好句 and a sample essay for each level, see our Chinese picture composition sets.

How to Use This Page

1. Choose a layout and type a title and your name.
2. Tap a panel to select it, then pick a scene for it: a classroom, a park, home, the kitchen, the beach, a hawker centre, a bedroom, outer space, a street of HDB flats, or a plain colour.
3. Add characters, props and bubbles. Drag them where you want. Tap one to make it bigger or smaller, flip it, move it in front or behind, change a character’s feelings, or type the words in a bubble and choose which way its tail points.
4. Save or print. Save picture downloads the whole comic as a PNG. Print comic prints it on paper, with writing lines under each panel if you tick the box, so the comic can be turned into a written story.
5. Make a picture story in the third box for a ready-made four-picture composition worksheet with lines or 作文格.

Tips for Parents and Teachers

• Talk first, then make. Ask your child to tell the story out loud before building the comic. Children who can say the story can write it.
• Swap comics. One child makes a comic without words; another adds the speech bubbles. Then compare the two versions of the story.
• Use feelings on purpose. Ask: how does the character feel in each panel, and why does it change? Stories are more interesting when feelings move from happy to worried to relieved.
• Practise both languages. The same comic can carry English bubbles one day and Chinese bubbles the next.
• Keep it short. A three-panel joke is a complete story. Younger children can start with the three-panel layout and one bubble per panel.

Nothing to Install, Nothing Uploaded

The comic strip maker runs entirely in your browser on any phone, tablet or computer, with no account and no download. Your comic and story plan are saved only on this device, so they are still there next time; saved pictures go straight to your own device and nothing is sent to us.