Comics process: Visual referencing

Good morning folks!

Today I'd like to continue the series on documenting the process Joshua goes through to create comics. For reference here are the previous posts about the rhythm, sketches and dialogue and about his workspace! 

How do comics start? Josh will generally have a general idea of what he wants to make a comic about - a funny situation, or a feeling he wants to evoke. I'll take you through the process for the one he's working on this week! 

This one isn't going to be a "funny" comic, but one of those that just evoke a feeling - which is an aspect of False Knees I love! It always takes people by surprise and makes them feel good, or reflective, like "I'm not giving up" or "When I'm with you" or "Misplaced". This one started with the idea of evoking a sense of the peace and tranquility one feels when in nature. He had the desire to draw it with a bunny.

Naturally, he went outside for inspiration. He started taking pictures to get reference pictures for the backgrounds he'll be drawing. We are lucky to live close to a small park with a river, so the backgrounds in a lot of comics are often real places right next to our house! For this one, they needed to be from the point of view of a bunny, so he took pictures very close to the ground. He is looking for inspiration on how the light hits the ground, and nice shadows.

Once he has the backgrounds and feels inspired, then come looking for reference pictures for the animal he wants to draw. It's much harder to take the right reference pictures for animals, so he heads over to good old Google Image Search. He starts to get ideas about the specific angles he wants to draw the animals in, so finding the exact pictures he needs can take a long time. He'll try to make sure he only gets pictures from the exact species he wants to draw, because he really cares about representing the species accurately! This is the tabs he had open for this comic:

He'll save the ones he wants, then assembles a medley on his computer so he can head over to his drawing table and have all the references up in front of him. He'll often end up drawing a medley of different pictures into one - for example if a bird has the right posture, but a closed beak, he'll draw an open beak from a different reference picture with the same angle. I often come home around the time he's doing this step, and it's always funny and exciting to see his big computer screen covered with pictures of a random animal!

(So cute. I can't wait.)

He'll also sometimes tape his iPad to his drawing table (it's on an incline!) to have the reference closer. Then he starts sketching, and when he's happy with the practice he got, he'll start drawing the 4 boxes of the comic in pencil, and slowly sketch the animal in the right position. This is what's on his drawing table at the moment:

That's it for visual referencing! He's painting right now, so you'll see the finished comic later today or tomorrow :)