Song of the Day: Switchblade Symphony – “Wallflower”
Get the entire album here: Switchblade Symphony – Serpentine Gallery
I think Doomie needs to buy some more clothes.
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Video/Song of the Day: IAMX – “Volatile”
I was inspired [by someone or something, I'm not sure if I remember...] to get my comic drawing process in order. Now that I am officially working on two webcomics at the moment I was having a difficult time remembering how much work I have done on each and what I needed to do to complete them.
So I created a Master Checklist for each of my comics.
Down the left side are the Numbers and Titles of the individual comics. Across the top are the steps I take from beginning to end [left to right] to complete each strip. These steps are as follows:
1. Write the strip. This includes the initial idea for the strip, the joke I want to tell, or the part of the story I want to reveal. The text for each panel is planned out including who said what. Settings are described briefly as well as who is in the panel and how they are acting.
2. Edit. I then hand all this off to my editor [girlfriend] to check for grammatical errors, readability, humor, and whatever else she suggests to change to make the strip funnier and easier to understand. Re-writing the strip is included in this step.
3. Word Balloons. After the strip is rewritten, funny, and understandable, I make the word balloons in Manga Studio so that I know how much space is taken up in each panel. That way I know how big to make each character and where I can place them.
4. Print word balloons. When I have a significant number of word balloons I copy and paste them onto a 8″ x 10.5″ Photoshop file and print them out at normal size.
5. Sketch. I have a stack of printer paper on which my comic frames are printed. I then use a light box to trace the word balloons into these frames and then sketch the characters in each panel.
6. Draw. After several panels are drawn I pick and choose which ones I am interested in drawing and then, well, draw it. This is the part that takes the longest as there is often a lot of erasing and redrawing involved.
7. Transfer. Once the drawing for all the panels in a particular strip are satisfactory, I use the light table again to transfer the drawing onto the final art paper.
8. Ink. I ink the drawing. I use the light table once again to carefully trace with a Micron pen the word balloon and all the text. I erase all the pencil marks, fill in all the blacks, and use Dr. Martin’s Pen White to fix any mistakes.
9. Scan. I scan my drawings in at 1200dpi and save them in the Scans folder on my desktop.
10. Scans converted and saved. I manipulate these original scans in Photoshop [converting them to Greyscale and upping the contrast] and then save them in the same folder with the Manga Studio files.
11. Finish in Manga Studio. I open the Manga Studio file again with the word balloons and import the image files, placing everything where it needs to go. I then export this file to the desktop.
12. Finish in Photoshop. I clean up the image in Photoshop [using the pencil and eraser tools] to make sure everything is just right.
13. Rename, Resize, and Save. I save the initial file as a 1200dpi .psd file, then as a 72dpi .jpg for the web [with the appropriate file name for ComicPress purposes], then as a 1″ tall 72dpi .jpg for posting purposes. This last image is used in places like LiveJournal and VampireFreaks. People can see that it is a comic strip but they cannot read the tiny words. Therefore they click on it to bring them to the full-sized version which happens to be on my website [yeah traffic!]
14. Upload. I upload the strip to my website.
15. Schedule and Tag. I create a post for the strip where I write anything witty that comes to mind, Title the post, tag it, and choose when it will be posted.
Really there should be a 16th step in which I go to several sites the day the strip is posted and spread the word that it’s up.
