The wonderful world of comic-paging!

So I figured it might be interesting to see how these pages come together as some free content this month!

Some background: I'm a professional illustrator for a living. The skillset you need for illustrating, doesn't overlay much with comic making, and at best you can apply a sort of fractured amount of information to it. Illustrators are business hippies- we more often than not, illustrate for companies and things in a professional setting, and make sense out of chaos. "Make it look better, I don't know how" is common to hear, so illustrators are problem solvers. But always with static images.  I know many illustrators that won't touch sequential art with a 10 ft pole. 

The standard approach with illustrators is to...well...illustrate. Go to the 9's on everything. You'll occasionally find artists that do this, a very elaborate, full illustration each panel, and the books take years to come out.  Ambitious, not practical, real easy way to burn yourself out. I've seen more people fall out of comicking doing that (though a few can do it well and more power to them) than anything else. So the purpose of these pages are to be manageable for one person to complete, in a legible style that gets the point across and tells a story.  Simple enough. 

Since I currently don't employ anyone to help me out with these pages (a patreon goal far in the future) I can be as illegible and chicken-scratchy as I want.  And I am. I have the written version completed years ago to go off of, but where smart people would do planning and paneling, I'm more by the seat of my pants. Is that a good idea? Probably not. Will i fix that in the future? I sure hope so, but it seems to be working for me so far.

Comic pages shouldn't be so disjointed that a person flips between the two and wonders what the hell happened. The final panel should also have some concluding idea to it, so the pages feel less like a run on sentence. You should be able to look at the first panel and go "Ah, I remember what's going on" and the last panel should leave you interested, or excited for the next page.  I keep both of those in mind when drawing, so people aren't terribly confused, but I also try not to make the panels redundant, if you're reading it at full tilt in one sitting later on. 

With this page a few pages back, you can see that in action. First panel slowly reminds you we're with an annoyed mom with a daughter that can see ghosts and everyone's kinda worn out.  Middle panels tell the story the page needs to, and the last three  (usually just one, this slow pan in just builds more tension)  gives us a sort of finalized idea of what'll happen the next page. 

Prior to learning how to draw in my late teens, I was a storyteller first and foremost, that's the thing i've done my entire life, so I just applied basically...serial TV show logic to a page. I also assume most comic readers read infinite amount of comics so reassuring people where we are seems like a given.

Anyways, the process: 

Step 1: Chicken scratch. The whole purpose of this is to get the emotion and the reaction/ faces that I think tell an effective story.  Usually there's not bodies for the characters, I try to keep as much energy in the sketch as I can, as rendering/ painting will always sap the life out of things. But if you jam a BUNCH of energy in there, some usually remains.  I sketch the ideas out first, then figure out a format as I go. I try not to have panels line up with ones in the next line, try to allow appropriate action to take place in the appropriately sized box. This is probably where illustration comes in handy most; learning to cram the right composition into the right box because you don't plan enough. Text is also generically formatted to fit bubbles but often changed.

Step 2: LINES. Refine the boxes and do proper formatting of text in bubbles. No tails though, tails are for special panels that are finished.  Sometimes I'll sketch into vague areas more detail if I think i'll be totally lost without it, but honestly step 2 takes about 15 minutes total.

Step 3: Base colors. I fill in background information in this step.  Colors are snagged from the previous page, sometimes with slight changes to show time moving. In this one our sky's the tiniest bit lighter in the later panels to show Neri's been sleeping for a little while and we're nearing morning/ sunrise. Future pages progress it more. This is more for fun, as painting the same thing over and over irritates my ADHD, so new colors bring different shades of red, different reflections, etc. It seems detail oriented but I honestly do it out of boredom, lol. It's beneficial boredom.  I also like putting pops of color from doors opening, to carlights to spark joy and visual interest.  Base colors are often as loose as the sketching is. 

Step 4: Draw the rest of the Owl- So this is the frustrating part. There's not much building up or many steps between shitty back coloring and done panels. I'll focus on one, put a layer over the whole thing but beneath the panel strokes, and just paint. I go over my sketch, I paint the whole form, go into shadows, go into lights and do details and it's done. I also color white over the sides to show the panel I'm currently working on.  When the panel is done, I add a tail to the dialogue box. Sometimes as I'm working on other panels i'll go into that one for something I didn't see before, but I more or less jump around to the panel I want to paint most at that time, and get working on it.  Eventually all the panels are done, I look it over a bit more, then I schedule it for patreon. 

This style is something that's easier for me to do, and where illustration comes into play again. You have to know how forms work, how light works in general fantasy painting, so I use those same principles in flat coloring done on the comic. It's something that comes from years of practice and even then it's not guaranteed to come out as quick or as nice as I'd like.  The fastest I've gotten a page done was about... 3 hours. The slowest was probably around 15 hours. It's entirely random. 

I believe this one took me the longest, and what you'd think took longer: 

was the one I did in 3 hours.  I think just more panels tends to build up time, and large complex panels are easier to sort out.

Anyways, so that's my process! It's hectic! I'm currently being commissioned to work on a comic for a company where I'll have a few people doing like.... sketching and lettering and inking and I have no idea how that's going to translate. But for right now, like this, it works. 

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask!