Understanding the Longform Comic – Tools for Visual Storytelling is a thesis covering a comic artist’s view on how a longform comic can be defined and created as a form of visual storytelling. This thesis discusses the characteristics and possibilities of longform comics from the different viewpoints of storytelling, characters and worldbuilding.

Moving from the speculation over the potential of the art form, the thesis showcases different ways to work on longform comics. The process of making a comic is divided into sections on planning a story and scriptwriting, character creating and worldbuilding. Understanding the Longform Comic has been written to support the process of an artistic diploma. The source material includes examples of longform comics, articles, books and other forms of publications by comic researchers and professionals and the experiences of a comic artist.

An essential observation is that the characteristics of longform comics are best suited for multi-dimensional stories. Still, when the wide spectrum of different longform comics and their creators are observed, there is no single pre-fabricated formula for longform comics story or process that can be identified. The connecting link between longform comics is that they are a complex and time-consuming task for artists. In order to help the longform comic artist to understand their art form, the result is to study a variety of tools for visual storytelling. A range of different methods for longform comic's creative process are described in this thesis. With the help of the collected methods, thoughts of making a longform comic as an artistic diploma work are reflected.