Backstage: Americat Comics

After about the fiftieth time someone tries to tell me how to do something, I finally ask, “Can you just let me watch you do it?”

      One of the most effective modes of instruction I’ve found is when someone describes the process and tools they use. It’s a little scary to be vulnerable and expose what goes on behind the scenes, but if I can encourage, inspire—or at least amuse—other artists, it’s worth it. So, learn from my methods or laugh at them, and please leave comments about what you liked and what I could do better.

     Today’s featured project is the Americat comics, written by my dad, R. Eugene Pearson. The basic plot is that a skinny alley cat called Al E. Cat consumes cod liver oil and is transformed into Americat: a red, white, and blue defender of freedom and free enterprise, who battles feline crooks and corruption everywhere. The humor revolves around puns and parodies, and the art style is supposed to be simple and slapdash. In keeping with the need for this project to be turned out quickly and conveniently, I use some materials I wouldn’t otherwise recommend, but I’ll cover those things as I come to them.

A sampling of my tools:

*HP laptop equipped with Microsoft Word 2010, and an HP Deskjet scanner/printer

*Porta-Trace 10” x 12” lightbox (frustratingly small for some projects, but it fits well in my little workspace)

*Sakura-Pigma Micron pens

*Koh-I-Noor-Hardtmuth woodless color pencils (I’m in love with woodless pencils. They rarely break, sharpen with ease, and lay down rich color.)

*Artist’s Loft watercolor dual-tip markers (set of 24—I had to get some greys from my Pro Art set of 100)

*Artist’s Loft drawing pad (12” x 9”, medium tooth, 70 lb)

*Standard 2B pencils

*Kneaded and plastic erasers

*Paper towels and plenty of scratch paper

This is actually a facsimile, since I threw the original away!

Step 1: Thumbnails

Thumbnails are beginning sketches for a comic. Here, I’m just figuring out where the basic page elements—panels, speech and narration bubbles, and the main objects—are located.  I draw the Americat pages small, half the size of the drawing paper, so I do two on each sheet.

Step 2: Template

It’s important to establish the template for a comic before you begin drawing it. The template includes all the elements of size, shape, style, and, if you’re using it, color. Basically, you lay down rules for yourself, and stick with them. It starts with knowing how you intend to publish your work.

     I’m going to publish Americat as a Kindle e-book, and I know from experience that pictures tend to show up very small on the Kindle screen, so I limit the panels on each page, averaging two, and never exceeding four. Since the Kindle will likely show wide margins of white space around the page, I’m keeping everything contained in panels, never breaking the fourth wall (having something pop out of the borders of a panel), and not using two-page spreads, since the pages will be viewed consecutively on the Kindle screen.

     Some other rules for the Americat template include:

    *Page content is always within 4 3/8” x 7 1/2” limits (determined by the size of the paper and the scanner/printer I’m working with)

    *The font for all text is Comic Sans—9 pt for narration bubbles, and 9.5 pt for speech bubbles unless extra emphasis is needed.

    *The color scheme for the characters comes completely from the 24-color marker set, except for some added greys.

    *All the cats have three-“fingered” paws, no thumbs

Step 3: Pencils

Using my trusty 2B (the only wood-encased pencil I’m going to keep buying), I’ll work out the drawings at full size on scratch paper, bringing in all the details. I rough in the text so my dad can review it and I can keep track of what goes in each bubble. I can be as messy as I want with the pencils, because…

Step 4: Inks

…I just use my lightbox to trace the drawings onto a fresh piece of “nice” paper with ink pens. The advantages of this method include the freedom of the pencil drawing, the cleanliness of the inked-in drawing, and the “insurance” of having the unharmed pencil drawing if something goes terribly wrong with the ink. Disadvantages: Sometimes things like subtle facial expressions are lost in the transfer, and you have to work in a dark room with the bright light of the box, which can bother your eyes after a while.

    Tidbit: I use Sharpies for the bold black borders of the panels.

Step 5: Bubbles

I figured out very quickly I didn’t want to hand-letter this comic, regardless of the quirky charm of that style. I also didn’t want to slap bubbles onto the finished pages, potentially covering parts of the drawings and wasting color. The answer to the dilemma came when I discovered that, if I cut my drawing paper down to the 8 1/2” x 11” size my scanner/printer takes, I could run it right through the printer. So, I scan the inks into my computer, and add the bubbles with Microsoft Office. A note: I insert the narration bubbles, but I pre-draw the speech bubbles so they have unique character and fit correctly on the page, then add words via transparent bubbles.  Then I print! Occasionally, I get the sizes a bit off, but overall this method is fun.

     A further tidbit: I scan the pages in on the "Black and White" setting, which removes uneven tones, smudges, and any Wite Out I might have used.

     A big disclaimer: my scanner/printer is nothing fancy, and I’m certainly not using archival ink. I don’t recommend this method for a project meant to last a long time. The ruling principle of this project is that it needs to be done quickly. But I still have my pristine ink drawings, should there be a future need for them, and if I make a horrible mistake with the next step of this process, I can always print out replacement pages.

Step 6: Color

Originally, I was going to color the entire comic with markers. Yikes! It was a gaudy, splotchy mess. So, I decided to do the backgrounds in much gentler pencil colors, and do the characters and most foreground objects in marker, making them “pop” nicely into life, and giving a feeling of depth.

    Another disclaimer: I’ve heard your average marker isn’t very long-lasting. They’re convenient for this project, and I think with protection (I keep the finished pages in plastic sleeves) they’ll last long enough.

     I lay down the pencil colors first, use a paper towel to soften and blend the grainy strokes, and then erase the blotches.

     Tip: I like kneaded erasers for drawing pencils, since they don’t produce any flakes, but color pencil marks are tougher to get rid of, so a plastic eraser is necessary. I’ve found you can shape them with an X-Acto knife to make sharp edges and fine points for smaller work.

     Once the pencils are cleaned up, I bring in the markers. I love the bright colors they produce, and this watercolor variety have lovely brush tips, but they also have some downsides. For instance, they tend to make the computer ink bleed, often producing messy results. I’ve had to get rather clever with my brush-work. They also get darker wherever they overlap, leading to accidental “shading” I didn’t intend. I’ve learned a few tricks I can do with them, such as laying down a pencil layer first and going over it with the marker for a dulled-down effect, or adding a pencil glow to an otherwise marker-colored character to mimic night lighting.

     I keep a couple of “cheat sheets” nearby, which show thumbnails of the important characters, sets, and objects with their colors listed beside them. I’ve labeled all my markers with memorable names, such as “chocolate”, “rose”, “juicy”, “cement”, and so forth—which has the bonus benefit of entertaining me when I see lists such as sunny-dust-tomato-cobalt-navy next to a character.

Ta-Da!

The Home Stretch

In case you didn’t guess, the pages I’ve been showing you in progress are the final two! Which means I’m soon going to be publishing this comic book. The remaining work to be done is scanning the colored pages back into my computer, formatting the book, creating a cover, and hitting the “publish” button. Maybe I’ll save those steps for a future “backstage” post.