Hmm, what do you do when you’re in a post-Christmas, no-comic stretch, and you have a spot to fill on your webcomic site? How about showing some intermediate stages of how the comic is put together? Yeah, that’s the ticket!

Okay: the first two panels above indicate how story looks as I’m blocking out the panels and writing the dialogue. I often cross things out and go back and change stuff, which is why the two “rough” panels are from different pages.

The next two panels show how the inked linework magically appears out of nowhere!! Wow! Well, yes, of course I pencil it in first, but I didn’t scan any pencil work, so oh well. Anyway, there’s two panels of inks, pre-cleanup stage.

The next next two panels demonstrate cleanup and black fill-ins, done in Photoshop.

The next next next two panels have color, lettering, and word balloons added. I take the cleaned-up inks and double-click the layer, making it editable, and set the value to “multiply” in the drop-down window. This allows you to put all sorts of coloring layers beneath, without interfering with the line work. The text gets its own layers above the linework layer, as do the word balloons. (Save often, folks!) I save the Photoshop file, and also save it as a 72-dpi file for the website. Tah-dah-h-h-h-h!

What do you mean, they’re crappy instructions, and I left too many things out? Well, yeah, I guess I did… maybe a more detailed piece is in the future, but this one gives you a rough idea, a sniff of the cork, as it were. Speaking of sniffing the cork, here’s hoping your holidays were full of swell stuff, and that you have a Happy New Year!

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