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Okay, here we go. I think I'm clever, and I think I'm cool, and, since this webpage is a means for me to share this with you, you now have to hear about how I put these lame piles of shit together! I'm trying to make this interesting to both people who don't use Photoshop, and people who do. I'll use my most recent comic (at the time this was written) to demonstrate. Believe it or not, I actually do start with a script. I have a .txt file that has all my scripts, notes, html code, etc, and I plan, script, and revise everything before I even start the strip.
The first thing I do is get all the text into Photoshop, and arrange how the panels will be laid out (layed out?). I normally have an idea of where everyone is going to be, but anything can change. Also, if you notice, some of the text has changed, and some has been added at this point. They say you should never use Comic Sans, which I totally agree with, however since it's 9px, and not blended, I don't think anyone would know.  I used to just start drawing, but I've found that taking 10-15 minutes to rough out the strip is worthwhile. It makes it easier to make big unforseen changes before you've already gotten really far into it. Then again, in my case, it's pretty easy to move stuff around.   The final...umm...inking, if you will, is not quite as dramatic as you might expect. For me, the line art is just a foundation for the colors, which is when things really shape up. This is why I wouldn't consider a black & white strip. I use the pencil tool in Photoshop, which does absolutely no blending, and makes for the pixelated look. I draw with a mouse rather than a Wacom tablet or anything, which, I'm sure, is not surprising. I go back and forth on whether I draw the background or the characters first, so I just combined this all into one step. This phase consists of a lot of drawing, erasing, and redrawing. It's hard to make things look how you want in so few pixels, but that's part of the fun.  This is the fun part. I've gotten a bit more complicated with my coloring, but I still try to hold true to the overall shittiness of the strip. Everything is done on a seperate layer in Photoshop, and the color layer is set to multiply (darken would work too I think) so that you can scribble all you want, but the black lines will always show through. This makes it much easier than coloring inside the lines. The final .gif is this big, but is scaled to 200% by your browser, this makes it a little easier on bandwidth, especially since it's not upposed to be high-res. Click on it (or here) for the larger version on the comic site.  |
