Eight step comic page process

Eight steps to creating a comics page...

1. It all starts with the script from the writer Noel Hannan. It contains images that are not easy for me to draw. So I fudge and tweak it in my mind until I can see me drawing it.

2. Noel also sends rough thumbnails. I'm not sure if he does these before writing the script, as he writes the script, or after he's written the script. He says it's his way of working stuff out. They are useful even if it's just to say "no. That amount of detail won't work".

3. My roughs, some of what Noel has written doesn't work for me. It might not read left to right, there might be too many characters or actions going on in one panel. So I simplify trying to get the story across more than making epic tiny pictures.

4. These are my pencils, they are a tighter version of the roughs and some panels feature drastic changes. I'm working stuff out on the paper trying to make it work and an easy read for the reader.

5. Inking is my favourite bit. I use dip pen and Indian ink and on thick cartridge paper. I'm going directly over the pencils. In the past I've used a light box but getting gritty with graphite and ink is a lot of fun. To save time I went from working A3 to A4. Working at A3 size was taking me too long to complete a page.

6. When the ink has dried I erase the pencil marks and apply spot watercolour to the main characters or anything of interest in the panel. This saves me a lot of time doing the colour 'flats' at the digital stage. I have already drawn this page three times and we'll, I need to move on.

7. I scan the page into Photoshop and clean it up enhancing the watercolour and apply a layer of digital 'denim blue' colour. This can be quite free and easy and I'm not trying to do 'flats' for the colouring. It is applying background textures more than anything. The artwork is now digital so I resize it for the size it's going to be printed at. I used to aim for artwork to be A3 at 600 DPI. But over the years my hardware (computer, scanner, pen tab and I use Photoshop CS5!) have all aged and slowed down so it's a lot quicker and less frustrating to do the artwork at A4 300 DPI computer processing wise.

8. Colouring done I then drop the lettering over the top. The lettering is done in Clip Paint Studio because it seems to be designed to do specifically that. For some reason I then export out of Clip Studio and import back into Photoshop to layer everything up. Some of the special sound effects are drawn directly on the page. Most of the speech bubbles and lettering are created in Clip Studio, Komika is the font, I recently learned about the use of the letter I in comic lettering and Komika allows a sheriff and sans sheriff version. 

And that's it. The page is finished. Just have to do that 14 more times and you've got yourself an episode.