How We Make The Comic Go Now
Wednesday, May 13th, 2009For our first summer comic of the Gateway, I decided it would fun to outline the process of making the comic. I wouldn’t say that this comic is special, or particularly interesting, though, because of this fact, it’s a represents me pretty fairly. I don’t glamorize my work at all. I’m a student and try to cut corners whenever I can.
I draw the general positions that I want the characters to interact on.
I sketch out the characters with their most complex poses that they will be in in the comic.
I scan in my sketch on a printer that I got free with a digital camera. 
The image is imported into Photoshop on my six-year-old Dell. I crop it and then put into a shared documents folder.
Now on my new computer, I open the same image as well as pre-made panels.
I drag the sketch into the panels, resizing when necessary.
Here’s the script that we wrote earlier. We usually conceive of the idea together and then Evan types it from there. Editing happens throughout.
I drop in the dialogue very roughly, to give me an idea of how much space I have.
I digitally ink the comic using my Wacom Intous 3 tablet. I believe it’s 4 by 6 inches.
Here’s the first panel partially inked. Although this is probably obvious, I should say that I ink on a different layer from the sketch.
Here’s a close up of the guy I’m drawing. This is usually how close I have the image when I’m inking, though I’ve been known to draw even closer.
Completed first panel with background objects and props.
This is what the comic looks like so far.
To maintain consistency of what I’ve already drawn, I create a duplicate image of panel-one-guy to trace for panel two. If I’m feeling lazy (as is the norm) I will just edit the expression, and would not redraw the whole character.
Panel two inking with panel one inking at about 40% transparency.
Just panel two inking.
This is how it’s shaping up.
I create duplicates of the panel one people and make any rough edits. Notice the edited raised arm.
Completed third panel. Changed expressions and whatnot.
Evan, hard at work playing NHL 09.
Completed fourth panel. I used the same process as third panel.
Completed inks. The hard work is done.
Evan comes in now and fixes the dialogue positioning. In this comic, Evan also puts in the the rectangles that represent thought in the second panel.
I draw the bubbles and then fill the comic with various levels of black transparencies. Usually it’s between 20%-75%. This step doesn’t take very long, but it goes a long way in making the dialogue and people really stand out.
Here’s a close up. There’s our signatures.
I make a different layer anytime I feel like I’m working on something that it seperate. 
This should give you an idea how layers I work with. This is a pretty average amount. In some comics the layer total could be twice as many or more. I use to name my layers, but now I just memorize which layer is for what ink.
After that, I flatten the image and then resize it depending on if I’m sending it to the Gateway or uploading it to the web.
-Lance