How I Draw, post #1: The Technical Side of Things

This post is devoted to describing the process I go through when drawing Familiar Magic.

Materials:
-Bristol Board (smooth)
-Drawing Pencil, #3 or #4
-Plastic Eraser
-Pigment liners, 0.5 to 0.7, or
-Technical Drawing Pens, 0.35 to 0.7
-Brush Pen
-Scanner
-Computer + Mouse
-Photoshop

Step 1: I lay out panels with a pencil and ruler.

Some days I actually have ideas about what I will later put into each panel. This, however, is rare. I generally have an overall concept for the page--what it does to the story, who appears in it, etc.--and keep that in the back of my mind while I set up a "grid" that I, at least, find visually pleasing. The geometric pattern of the page almost always comes first.

Step 2: I sketch the comic in light pencil.

This is where the plastic eraser comes in. I sketch, erase and sketch again until I'm satisfied the page does what I want it to do. Bodies and faces are the things that take me the longest and involve the most trial-and-error. Plants give me the least trouble. This is in part because I never check to see if the plants I draw actually exist in our world. I just draw the "tree/flower/grass I want to see there" and call it good.

Step 3: I ink the page.

I take my 0.5 pigment liner and ink all the 'normal' to 'medium' lines (in terms of thickness). Lines from pigment liners smaller than 0.5 have a hard time surviving the journey from my scanner to my computer unbroken. I can go a bit smaller with the technical pens. I use wider pens to color in small sections of black and a brush pen for large sections of black that I don't plan to color on the computer. I also occasionally use the brush pen for hair, feathers, emotional SFX and other flowy, wispy things. I do not ink the panel borders.

Step 4: I clean up the page.

All hail the return of the plastic eraser! I erase stray pencil lines to prep the page for scanning.

Step 5: I scan the page into Photoshop.

I usually scan the page in at 600 dpi, though I've used both larger and smaller resolutions.

Step 6: I clean up the page again. I play around with levels, fills and the magic lasso to make the black-and-white page, well, black-and-white (instead of black, many varieties of gray, white and some other colors that snuck in when the page was scanned). This can get really tedious.

Step 7: I color the page.

This is where I really go to town. I mean, the comic is basically a digital coloring book at this point. What's not fun about that? I use brushes of different sizes and textures--and many, many layers of opacity--to get the effects I want. I play around with contrast/brightness and color settings when I feel the need. My wireless, ergonomic mouse is quite a blessing at this stage.

Step 7.5: I reboot Photoshop, cussing out the program the whole time, and make up my lost work so I can finish coloring. This step only happens for the obvious reason. Fortunately, I usually prefer the final version to the "one that got away."

Step 7.75: I compulsively save my work at near-random intervals, compelled by my recent loss of progress.

Step 8: I add speech balloons and speech balloon tails, guided by a general idea of what the characters say.

Step 9: I add speech. This is when I decide what the characters actually say.

Step 10: I add any verbalized thoughts and SFX that were not added during the penciling and inking stages.

Step 11: I resize the page. All standard Familiar Magic pages are 700 pixels wide, though they vary in length.

Step 12: I save the page in .png (though it was .jpg up until a few updates ago) format.

I then post the page, wait for it to upload, check to see how it displays, update my archives, etc., but all that isn't really part of my drawing/pagemaking process (except perhaps in a broader theoretical sense, as webcomics do not truly stop at the borders of their comic pages) so I will not discuss it now.