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
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| 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.
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| 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.
