Thanks.

You should just do it. The way I do it is I write down anything funny that pops into my head. If I'm joking with some friend and something that would work in a comic happens I take note of it. Then I keep it as a list of comic ideas. That way I don't have to try to come up with an idea I can just look through the ones that naturaly happened. I find that if you try to think up a joke it can often come across as forced, but if you write down something funny from your real life, even if it's just a silly joke between friends, it feels more natural.

As for the art part. Don't worry about color or technique. Some of the funniest comics online have some of the simplest art design. Stick figures can be just as funny so long as they have faces.

Other than that, you just have to give it a try and see where it goes. Don't let the first few you do discourage you if they don't turn out well. The best Newspaper comics are hit and miss every week.

If you're using the full version of PS (not Elements), you can find a ton of brushes that work very very similar or you can make them yourselves. It has a massive brush engine and they've included bristles in the latest version. Painter comes with all sorts of traditional tools preloaded though. You'd have to check, but usually Wacom came with an light version of Corel Painter and Photoshop (or either). You can try it out and see maybe if you want the full... it's a cool program, but I prefer Photoshop, it just seems to go better with my workflow.

Yeah I'm very familiar with Photoshop's brush tools and I have a bunch of brushes that I've made my self. I'm just interested in Corel Painter if it simulates painting in a more natural way, if you know what I mean. If it has a demo I'll check it out. But yeah, I love Photoshop too.

Yes, it has a mixer and you can 'load paint' in the brush,etc... Corel Painter has so many traditional tools, your head would spin. It's like walking into an art store and picking out what you like... in the menus anyway. It is definitely a very nice experimenting program since you can mix media... I believe you can also use textured paper as well.

As requested by Trunken, here are my animated, "Eastward Bound", video game toons:

Cliff Drops the F-Bomb

All Play and No Work

A Cold Day in Hell

My Name is Monty and I'm an Addict

My Kingdom for a GameStation 3

A History Lesson from Montgomery Hood

A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Dorm Move in Day

Hiding from the Sun

Yes, it does. =)

Yes, you can choose and even create the texture of your canvas. You can work with dry as well as wet brushes and they all behave differently and realistically.

There's a lot of artists out there who use Painter only to do all their work. You can use it in temdem with Photoshop as well.

I prefer Painter over Photoshop because it's more straight forward and  the tools are really centered around creating the feel of traditional mediums. You should really give it a try.

Thanks, I'm going to seriously look into Corel Painter after I finish shopping for my first tablet.

Thanks for posting that video. It's going to come in very handy when my new tablet arives. I'm so excited to finaly upgrade beyond my mouse.

How do you like y our Bamboo? Which model do you have?

I got the Bamboo Capture, which is a pretty basic tablet. I wanted to make sure I would enjoy drawing with a tablet before I invested in something bigger and more expensive. So far I'm liking it a lot but I'm still getting the hang on drawing good lines with it.

I never took any art classes so I developped some bad drawing habits that I need to get rid of. For example, I used to draw long curving lines by doing a series of short strokes with a pencil and while the result was pretty good on paper, doing the same with stylus is just not an option. Luckily Ctrl+Paint has tons of videos on loosening up and drawing from elbow/shoulder so I should get better soon.