Marooned

So you’ve been reading webcomics of one sort or another for awhile and you’re thinking you’d like to make one too. But you have no idea how to get started or how the process works. Never fear! Having spent the last six months trying to get my own process down to a manageable system, I can tell you that you can do a webcomic AND have a life too!

The point of these articles is to show you how I came up with a streamlined process that works for me. This is by no means the only way, or the best way to do a webcomic. This happens to be the best way for me at this moment, for this strip. But you can certainly learn from what I’ve learned and adapt this to your needs. Okay? Great!

This article assumes that you’ve already got a strip idea and characters and such sorted out already. I’m not going to cover writing in detail nor characterization in these articles. So let’s get started.

Dialog and Thumbnail Sketches

When I begin I already have an idea of what the strip is about. I may already have most of the dialog in my head, including the punchline – and I may not. Regardless, I begin by writing out the dialog and working it out across the top of a sketchpad. I make little circles with an initial to indicate who is talking, and I write across the page in blocks to match up the panel in which the dialog will reside.

Once I have that settled, it’s time to do some thumbnail sketching. The point of doing a thumbnail sketch is to decrease the time you spend in the penciling stage. You don’t want to spend all kinds of time drawing different poses and swapping around the staging of the panel, drawing and erasing, drawing and erasing.

Instead, work this out with rough thumbnail sketches – and I mean rough. These are not much more than gesture drawings. I merely want to know how each panel is staged, where people are standing and roughly what sizes they will be, and what kind of shot I’m looking at. So is it a closeup, a mid shot or a long shot, etc. You are never concerned about details at this point.

In rare cases where I think something might be tricky to draw, I might work in slightly higher fidelity to get an idea on what I’m going to do. But this doesn’t happen often. Take a look at the picture below to see both the dialog and the rough thumbnails.

The sketch is merely a guide for me to do the actual pencil work. I don’t have to guess at what I’m doing with a blank piece of Bristol – I can dive right in and start drawing without really thinking much.

Penciling

I didn’t get a shot of a blank piece of Bristol, but essentially before I begin penciling I take out an 11 x 14″ sheet of Strathmore Series 300 smooth Bristol board. I mark out two rectangles 13″ x 4 1/16″ (standard strip size). Often I do this with a non-photo blue pencil, but in this case I used regular pencil (H hardness). For me it doesn’t matter as we’ll find out later.

I mark out the panels how they need to be for the strip, and cut the piece into two (so I get two strips out of one sheet of Bristol board.) Then based on my thumbnails, I pencil in the panels.

My style is very simple – very cartoony – so I try not to get too detailed. My big challenge is consistency – making sure the characters are looking the same all the time. I’m getting better but I still need lots of work. I try to be extra careful that I am “pushing” my poses (an animation term) to give them action and making sure facial expressions are correct and hand gestures are appropriate. I think this goes a long way toward making the artwork interesting to look at.

I also do my best to make somewhat interesting backgrounds, although this is not a real strong point of my work. When the pencils are done, they look like this:

Inking the Comic Strip

So far I’ve enjoyed the whole process, but I’ve really come to enjoy the inking once I got a process that works for me figured out. I use three types of inking pens:

• Faber Castell Pitt pens – size “S”: Used for most linework
• Copic inking pens, sizes 01 and 02: Used for finer lines or smaller stuff
• Micron inking pens, sizes 08 and 02: The 08 is for the panel borders and the 02 is again for smaller, finer work

The Copic is a really nice pen but you have to be careful because it doesn’t quite dry almost instantly like the others. They are also a bit more expensive. I’ve really come to like the Faber Castell Pitt pen a lot – it’s perfect for what I need.

At this point I have to mention that I draw and ink my stuff in a very specific way for a reason. I try to make almost every single shape a “closed” shape. This saves me loads of time in the coloring stage because I simply select areas with the magic wand tool in Photoshop and color away. The only exceptions are Captain John’s head and some background lines.

So, when I begin inking I’m making sure to extend all lines to the frame border and close all shapes as indicated. I do not vary my line, I draw a simple, solid line with the S pen, in keeping with the simple stylized look I shoot for.

The key with inking is to try and not lose the spontaneity and fluidity of your pencil work. This is tricky at first, and takes lots of practice. Essentially you have to just dive right in almost like you do with a pencil. I try not to think too much at all when I’m inking. I open the pen, start with John’s nose and just charge ahead.

While I’m inking I’m trying to pick out the best line in the pencils, and I’m trying to stay loose. I certainly make the occasional mistake or do something that I don’t like the look of. Sometimes I just leave it alone because it’s not a big deal. If it’s something I feel I can’t live with I either use some white out and go over it or fix it digitally. You have to be careful here, because a digital drawn line with the mouse and brush/pencil tool doesn’t look quite the same. So I only do that for small fixes. (I do not use a tablet with a pen, so I can’t get that natural look digitally).

So here’s the inks in the first panel:

Final Inking and Frame Borders

I continue on in this way until all the panels are complete. Now it’s time to do the frame borders. You can hand draw them if you like. It will often give the comic a nice organic feel. You really have to decide what type of look you are going for overall. In my case I like the perfect lines that I get with a T-square so that’s the way I go.

The best way to do this is to use a table that is square, like a drawing table, and a T-square. But a regular old ruler will do if that is all you have, it just may not be as spot on. What I do is line up the straight edge of the paper with the T-square, tape the board down using blue painter’s tape (which won’t ruin the board), making sure my horizontal lines are parallel with the T-square. That looks like this:

Then using the T-square on the right side and bottom edges of the table, I ink all the borders. Again I am careful to get my lines that I inked to the edge of the panels to line up with the panel borders. The final piece looks like this:

Scan Comic Strip and Prepare for Coloring

The last stage of part 1 of the process is scanning the finished artwork. I scan into Photoshop using my Brother all-in-one scanner/printer. It is very important here that you consider if you ever plan on printing your work at this stage. Because you need to scan and color properly if you do.

I am planning on printing, so I scan at 600 x 600 dpi in “True Gray” format. This is going to give you a nice large file, which you want. I have to scan in two pieces due to the 14″ length of the paper. Then I put the two pieces together. Here’s the scan settings:

And a shot of what it looks like raw, scanned in:

I merge the layers to have “layer0″. At this point I have a Photoshop action that does the next set of steps for me, so I don’t have to manually do it every time, which is a real time saver. The steps give me a nicely prepared strip to color. They break down as follows:

• Image > Adjustments > Threshold: I choose a setting of 130. This is what gives you that aliased black line. It will seem to look like total garbage, all jaggedy and such – but don’t worry. When it’s reduced or printed, it looks like a nice smooth line to the naked eye. This makes life much easier during the coloring stage.
• Reduce file to 300dpi: This might be somewhat controversial, as some people want to have that 600dpi file for printing. I really don’t think it’s necessary to have it that high, and it makes working on files difficult. 300dpi is sufficient for printing and will save you much hard disk space and large file headaches.
• Convert the CMYK: This allows you to print your final piece. When you’re ready to post to the web, you simpy convert to RGB first.
• This is the best part. Select all and copy your artwork in your layer. Create a new channel (an “alpha” channel”) under channels in Photoshop. Paste your artwork in that channel and invert it (cmnd I). Select all again and copy. Go back to CMYK mode and back to the layer (you should still have all selected) and delete the layer so you have nothing showing but the transparent background. Then go to Selection > Load Selection and choose the alpha layer from the dropdown list. You now have your inked lines as a selection in your layer! Fill them with black, and bingo, you have your linework on a separate layer. This is golden for coloring work.

I now have my prepared strip ready for coloring which looks like this:

In the next article I’ll talk about coloring the strip and posting it to the web.