Kai’s Drafting Material + Updates!

Hello,

It’s February and a start to a new journey! As mentioned in previous posts, rewards have been changed to only $1 and $5 tiers. If you have not update to the newer reward tiers please do so immediately! I will be refunding any rewards that were charged above $5 and be contacting patrons who have yet to update. If you’re one of these patrons, I highly encourage you to update before the end of February. If no changes are made or if you do not get in contact with me, I will have no choice but to temporarily ban you so that you’re taken off the reward list. This is to help you not get charge for next month’s billing. You can rejoin again with the new tier options！

—————————————————————————————————

Now moving on, I’d like to share with you what I’m currently using to draft my comic pages/stories! I like to thumbnail and draft traditionally as I have always found it most comfortable for me. Here are the materials I’m currently using to draft my Lonbin doujin (and my originals too when I get around to it):

Studio Motto notebook - I thumbnail all of my pages here! It’s small and slim so I don’t have to worry about making space to reference my thumbnails when drafting out the pages. Plus this notebook opens flat! I always recommend getting notebooks that can open flat as it will make your life so much easier! I also do like to use Muji’s ring binded notebooks too when drawing thumbnails.

Muji A5 notebook - I draw the drafts of the comic pages in this notebook! It’s a nice size to carry around and has enough pages for usually 2 or 3 chapters worth of materials. Afterwards, I take a pic of the drafts with my iPad Pro and do more detailed drafting (setting up panels, adjusting character or balloon placements, etc.) to move on to final pages.

Kitaboshi 2mm pencil - This pencil lead holder is a heaven sent! It’s pretty much my “skeleton page pencil” where I go in and quickly set up the panels, dialogue balloons, and character placements. I like to use HB or even H leads for this holder as I find these leads are light enough for drawing the foundation of the page. It’s compatible with all 2 mm leads so no worries about trying to find a specific lead for it.

Pencil - Nothing special, just any regular pencil will do. Heck even a mechanical pencil is fine! I just really like the wooden feel of a regular pencil. I use it to draft out my pages.

Muji eraser - I like using a large eraser compared to the tiny ones on a regular pencil. This app Muji eraser is my favorite, even over the Mono brand ones that you see a lot of artists use! This is because the Muji eraser’s body is hard but when you erase it’s so butter smooth. I always find that the generic large erasers or Mono brand erasers break apart too easily over a certain period of usage.

You can pretty much simplify or substitute any of these materials out. These are just my personal preferences when it comes to drafting comic pages. All of these materials can be found on Amazon and JetPens if you’re interested in any of these!

—————————————————————————————————

Here’s a quick look at how I thumbnail!

When I thumbnail pages, I always do a 2-page spread! This allows me to keep in mind how the pages will be like when printed digitally or physically. This also helps in drafting scenes that require a spread. I usually “x” mark where the two pages meet as to keep in mind that’s where the gutter (the area that gets binded) will be. Knowing the gutter placement will help in making sure that I don’t put any of my important visuals or dialogues there.

Here are some sneek peak of my Lonbin drafts!

Note: I used some pages of Muji’s 4 panel memos to draft out some silly 4komas!

And that’s pretty much what I use and do for drafting my comics~! I hope this post was a helpful insight to how I work. If you have any questions, feel free to drop a comment below and we can discuss! : )