In case someone out there enjoys reading “process” pages as much as I do…
The Stuff
I keep everything in this clipboard box that I got at Office Max for $15. I later discovered that Walmart has them cheaper. Alas!
- Far left: black ball point pen for writing, mechanical pencil and eraser for sketching
- Right-top: Pitt pens for inking. I’ve also recently started to try out this cool calligraphy brush pen that I got at Daiso.
- The other pens: On the left are Tomboy Brushpens left over from CGU. On the right are copics. Copics are expensive! So I pick up a few every time I go to the art store. I have: W0, W1, W2, N3, T4, W5, and W7. I’ve discovered that W0 pretty much doesn’t scan, and T4 is redundant, so I don’t really use those two.
- Underneath: my planning book and some paper.
I got this planning notebook at an Office Max bargain bin for $2 a few years ago. Haven’t encountered it since, but I love it to bits. I started out using printer paper, but it wasn’t holding up in the erasing, so then I switched to drawing paper, but it was too textured. Finally I eschewed the art store and ended up buying 250 sheets of “bristol” paper at Office Max for $8. It’s worked superbly thus far.
The Process
1. Do Nothing. (2-3 weeks)
Basically, I put the comic on the back burner for a few weeks. Don’t think about it actively, etc. I’ve found that if I push myself to keep to a schedule or to start a new one immediately after I’m finished with the previous one, I get writer’s block. Usually after completing one page, I’d have a vague idea of what I’d want to do next, but I might end up doing something completely different. One reason might be that I’d be burnt out from drawing lots of tiny people, or lots of food, etc, and so I want to draw something different. Another reason might be that I haven’t figured out the right way to present something. For example, “The Street” or “Bathrooms”.
2. Write/Plan. (15-30 minutes)
This is the most crucial part, and also the most difficult. I need to be in the right mindset, and that apparently happens about once every other week: The desire to create comic needs to trump:
- work fatigue
- easy internet browsing
- hanging out with the husband
- other creative projects
When the moment hits, I retreat into a quiet place, take out my planning notebook, and do this:
What I do first is write out what I want to say, and doodle little mental images that pop up.
Then I draw a thumbnail sketch of the layout. I jot some notes as needed, and trim down the words so that it works with the layout. Basically, this is the hard core creative thinking and planning part. After this, the rest of the process is just drawing. This is why this step takes about 2 weeks of rest.
3. Pencil (1 hour)
I pencil things in. I usually go panel by panel, and draw many stick figures. (I use these sorts of stick figures at school a lot, and a student dubbed them “salt-and-pepper shakers”). On this page, I ended up running out of room at the bottom. Then I hand it to Jono and ask him to read over it to check if it makes sense. In this one, he pointed out that some of the mini-captions didn’t make sense. I also asked him if he thought the “home”, “stoop” and “outside” labels were necessary, to which he replied, “not if you have enough background to show where it is.
4. Ink (2-3 hours)
I use my pens and ink it. I always start with the “M” and ink in all the captions, speech bubbles, and panel boxes. Then the main characters. Then I use the “S” and ink in everything else. Although lately I’ve been trying a brush pen. I sketch with pencil if needed. I mess up a lot, but that’s what post-production is for! Then I try to erase all the pencil lines, but I always miss some. Those also wait for post-production.
5. Shading (3-5 hours)
I mostly use my Copics, but I use the thin side of the Tomboy to do grey lines (like the wood, or some background outlines). I also use the brush side of the Tomboy for a slightly grainy texture. Since I have a mixture of warm, neutral, and cool grays, it sometimes throws me off because something that looks very different on paper might end up being the same gray on the computer. So… I don’t really know why I don’t have the same types of gray. Part of it is legacy issues and me being a cheapskate. Part of it is that I recently discovered the awesomeness of warm grays.
6. Post-production (1-3 hours)
I have an ancient copy of Photoshop CS on my computer. Mostly I just use the brush tool and the stamp tool to fix things. I often make lots of tiny fixes, which is why I’m kind of embarrassed about the original page. In this particular case, I’ve made changes to all but the “men can wear less” panel. Can you spot them?
As you can see, my usual cycle is: 2 weeks without doing anything. Then I spend 2-3 evenings drawing.