Douglas's approach to making comics

Hello delicious friends!

Normally I take a 2 weeks break after finishing a comic part/chapter before resuming work, but this time around I decided not to, because I'm not only really excited about beginning to work on the Interdictor, but also because I want to be able to pull this comic out as fast as I can (within reason and with a quality threshold, of course).
So no promises for a page this Friday, because I also want to test out some new techniques which might take a while longer for me to get the hang of, but on the bright side, I've made some progress!

I've probably gone on about how I do my comics, but I wanted to have this written down with a picture for better understanding. So let's get down to it!

1 - The Rough Script.

I have a general idea of what I want the story to be in my head. So whenever I'm close to starting up a new chapter, I reflect on what I want it to be and write down a summary of each scene it's going to contain. (During his break time, Derek meets Scott on a park bench, they talk for a while and unexpectedly, Scott leaves a good impression on Derek, for example)
My rule of thumb is to keep each scene to a handful of pages, but I always leave room for more or less pages, so I always imagine each scene to be around 5 to 8 pages long.

I write down the entirety of the chapter in this manner and try to end the chapter (and every scene) in a sort of cliffhanger or decisive moment, but also leaving a good margin for continuity on the next part. Then I get down to the breakdown.

2 - Scene Breakdown

This is trickier. I pick one scene at a time and try to write down each page in the same manner I wrote down the scenes (a short, concise summary), but since I don't know exactly how many pages there are going to be in the scene yet, I try to measure the events by finding a good break point where I can transition to the next page without cutting off anything important (halting a conversation middway is tricky, and you have to find natural pauses when splitting them between pages if it comes down to it). I also try not to make pages too lenghty or too bland, I always have to have something interesting in them, something that moves the story forward. If a page has not a single event that helps the story move along or exposes something important, you can probably discard the entire page.

After I'm done writing down the breakdown of each page and now have an idea of what they feel like, I start to sketch it down in little thumbnails.

3 - The Thumbs + Speech Script

With the scene breakdown in hands, I know exactly what a page is going to be like, then I draw a small rectangle to act as the page (around 7cm diagonaly, or 2,5 inches). The idea isn't to get any detail down, but to get a feel for the flow of the page and the composition. In this part I lay out the placement of panels within the page, and characters within the panels according to the scene. I also write beside the thumbnail the speech for the characters. I feel like it helps immensely to get the feel for the scene and the page when I know what the characters are saying, but until now, I was trying to keep everything short. Now is when I start to explore more visual and literal things, but just loosely. I still want to have some flexibility for when I start doing the big layouts.

4 - Pages Layout + Speech

Now it's the homerun. With a lot of resources in hand (both the things I did for the script and the thumbs, and also references I find online from other artists and comics), I can finally start putting down a little bit more definition into those pages.

I get an A4 paper, divide it in two, throw in some margin lines and start to go crazy with it.

This is the most visual part of the whole prepping, using the feelings conveyed through the speech and the layout of the thumbs, I try to sketch in a more definitive pose for the characters while also exploring new angles, new poses, some expressions and etc.
I also leave A LOT of notes all over the page for future reference on things that I was thinking, things I should change or improve upon, etc. (this is mostly due to the fact that I'm doing these layout sketches with a pen, so if I make mistakes, I can't erase them).

After everything is ready and done, I take photos of these pages, set them up in a 6150 by 4000 pixels (600dpi) file on Clip Studio and start working on the digital phase of the comic, which is doing the digital sketch. A process that I have streamed on Twitch many times in the past and possibly will again in the future.

And there you go, this is my method for making comics.
This is certainly going to change depending on how you work in general and if you're doing it all alone or in a team (I keep my planning very loose and flexible in case I change my mind later down in production, but if I'm working with a team, I can't afford that level of flexibility, besides, I gotta write everything down as clearly as possible to ensure that another person would not misinterpret what I meant by a passage or description).
I started working like this during the latter parts of The Golden Week and have found this method to work incredibly well for me.
So, if you're planning to plan a comic, try it out until you find the method that best suits you.

I hope you guys enjoy this and, as a final note; if we don't have a new Interdictor page this Friday, then we most certainly are going to have one next week!