17 – Muzak || Delorean DMC

[J][041021]

Look! Color!

I started drawing this comic yesterday, and finished coloring it just minutes ago. This marks the fastest time from production to fully-colored I have ever done. w00t! (Of course, it’s the only colored work I’ve done besides the rant pic…)

No, I don’t think I’ll have another colored one for a while. Good night.

[D][041021]

You know, a lot of times I look at professional manga, and I wonder how exactly do they go around drawing? Like… do they draw directly on the paper? No guidelines whatsoever? Do they do one frame at a time and assemble a comic on the computer? If so, how do they get past the pixelization of their images? And you know, stuff like that…

Whereas I can’t answer any of those questions, at least I can *ahem* enlighten you all on my own process, and J-san’s process as well. (That’s process pronounced with a long ‘o’). Not that anyone would care to know… but you know…

Anyways, what I do, I start off drawing guidelines with a 2H pencil This includes perspective boxes and skeletons for the characters in that frame panel. That even applies for Chibis. I can’t draw anything without guidelines. Period.

So then I put down a rough pencil layer. This is basically the same layer that would become the finishing layer of a sketch, kind of sloppy, but it has the general shape. I don’t shade or anything on this layer, that comes in the next step.

Which, of course, is tracing. Yep. That stuff I never thought I’d use after third grade came back and haunts me. It makes for a much better finish that if I tried to just draw over the guidelines. Just trace all the lines that you need (And keep in mind, the second two layers are all in HB), and then shade apporpriately.

Then scan and assemble on the computer. Each NWars panel is 260 x 352 pixels.

J-san’s process is pretty similar – He does a rough sketch in pencil (But usually without guidelines), but instead of tracing it, he goes over it DIRECTLY in pen, and then erases the pencil markings. Then he shades.

Personally, I don’t like the brute force erasing thing, but you know, that’s just me. Sometimes J-san’s comics come out cleaner than mine… and I should stop before I flood the rant box.