Making comics is a pretty involved undertaking with a lot of steps. The first one is the rough thumbnailing stage. After I knew what was going to happen in my story, I made a bunch of small, scrappy drawings to illustrate it. Since the drawings don't have to look good at this point, I drew on cheap paper with a ball point pen and then cut out and taped the thumbnails in sequential order.
As you can see, I tried to keep everything simple, with only the most basic details. (I probably could have made these even less detailed, actually.) I hadn't even figured out the character designs and all the panels and angles are pretty bland. But the whole story was at least in picture form.
After figuring out the characters and aesthetic of the comic, which you can read about here, I moved the final thumbnail/layout stage. This was the hardest part of the whole process for me. I had to decide on the composition and camera angles for each panel, as well and the relative sizes of the panels and roughly how they would fit together. I also put in some rough values, so I'd have an idea of where the shadows would be.
Although it's still pretty rough, this is the first really indication of how the final comic would look. I did end up changing a few of the compositions and panels along the way, but the structure of the comic was really built here.
With the final compositions fleshed out, it was time to start drawing! And since I accidentally made the final thumbnails fairly elaborate, I opted to use them as guides for the final drawings. I lightened them up, transferred them to separate pages via Photoshop, and redrew them with colored pencils. It was a pretty involved step, but ended up being the best course of action.
After a few adjustments plus redrawing a panel or two, I was ready to start inking! I went over all the characters and foreground elements with a brush pen, then did all the background elements in a mechanical pen. The differing pen styles added depth to the compositions and created an interesting sense of contrast. I also designed and inked the title during this stage.
Once everything was inked, it was time for the final step, color! This was definitely the most exciting and frustrating part of the process. I decided to draw, ink, and paint on card stock, which is not really intended for watercolor. It took the paint ok, but I've officially decided never to use watercolor on it again!! Paper annoyances aside, adding color is the most magical stage (and probably my favorite); everything really comes to life at that point! ^_^
By now, the end was in sight and I was sprinting dragging myself to the finish line. After a final round of tweaking, I scanned all the painted pages, edited them in Photoshop, then arranged them into a final page format!
And there you have it; how to make a comic in a bajillion complex steps!
If you made it to the end of this post, I officially award you a gold star for Champion Long Blog Post Reader! ;-P In all serious, thanks for sticking around to hear about the comic making process. Creating and sharing comics on the web has been a long time dream of mine and "Thistles" is my first real step into that world! ^_^ Thank you also for all your kind words, support, and encouragement! It really means so much to me!
All the best!
Bethany
