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Tutorial 1: Comics!
+ much-asked questions about lineart/color!
I love doing comics, and over the time I've been doing them I've vastly improved in both effort and technique. Over this time I've also been asked things about how I do comics, so: tutorial! Why not?
This isn't a tutorial as much as it's just "here's what I do. Whee!" But hopefully you will learn something from me.
Tools used: Mechanical pencil .7 lead, white nylon eraser, 8.5"x11" paper, Wacom Graphire3 tablet, Adobe Photoshop 7, Corel Procreate Painter 7
This is the finished product of the page I'm going to use! It's page two of Moon Puma, a comic whose production is currently on hiatus.
ONE The Script!
...Scripts! Some people use them, some don't. I have a terribly forgetful mind and often want to get my ideas written down anyway, so I write out all my dialogue and actions. (Scripts also help when you're writing prose!) I sometimes rearrange things ever-so-slightly when drawing it out.
.../whose existence is for our despair and that alone;/
(Through the trees there is a huge black panther, blending in with the night, fangs already bloodied.)
/...who punishes us for reasons beyond our knowledge, eyes alight with with lucid animosity;/
(The man whips through trees in thicker areas where the puma can't fit.)
/who takes us from our children;/...
TWO The Sketch!
Using that as a guideline, I then sketch out the vision in my head. Looks kind of bare so far, huh? I use regular 8.5"x11" paper and make a line for the area proportional to 5"x7.5". (Sometimes I put notes in the extra space.) Since the rest of this will be done digitally, I usually leave out a lot of backgrounds and details and leave in some innacuracies, since it's a lot easier for me to detail and fix things on the computer. (I'll detail if I think I'll forget something, or if it would really help - like buildings.)
That last panel is blank. (You can see some scanner mess, too. ()) That's because sometimes I'm more comfortable drawing the subjects of panels on a separate page.
The convenience of computers for the light-table-less comes in here, as it will be added in digitally. Sometimes I'll also do something like this after detailing the background in sketch too.
THREE Digital Fixing!
I scan my picture in at 300 DPI. Not only this, but I crop off the extra paper and resize it to be twice its final print size - in this case, 10"x15". You can imagine this makes it a very large file (these examples are at 12.5%!), especially in Painter (but we'll get to that soon).
At this point, I add in separate panels (such as #4), put the sketch layers at 50% opacity, then I like to start fixing what I can by manipulating the sketch itself in Photoshop, mostly with the Lasso and Move Tools, and Transform (ctrl/cmd t). Things can look pretty messy here. I've decided that Puma in the first panel doesn't need to be completely shown and made him larger. I also decided he looked strange because his muzzle was too short. After this I sometimes lock the sketch layer so I won't mess with it anymore.
FOUR More Fixing & Borders!
The red lines, drawn by tablet of course, are more things that needed fixing, such as when I screw up anatomy or proportion, or when I want to add something in loosely. In the first panel I've added what will be a large foreground tree, and on the child I've fixed a lot of positioning and proportion issues. Looks better than the original.
I also add borders sometime around this point, mostly by drawing lightly stroked boxes with the Rectangle or Pen Tools and then Filling the extra outer space with black. Of course, areas where things will extend from the panels would be erased away.
FIVE Lineart!
Since I began using Painter 7 for such purposes, lineart has become a lot more easy and fun for me! Lineart is, of course, done on its own blank layer. Since there will be more emphasis on color, the lineart isn't extremely detailed. Sometimes on top of taking advantage of pressure sensitivity, I will also add more strokes to lines to make them thicker at certain points. You'll probably notice a few more such details come later on, and even some left out now - for instance, that little necklace thing Puma was wearing. (Oh, and I took this screen with guidelines just to show I have them going halfway horizontally and vertically to help me spot composition bugs. So far so good!)
This is the lineart at 100%. As you can see, it's pretty smooth. You can mostly chalk this up to the tool - more precisely, Scratchboard Tool - but over time, people have always asked me how I get lineart so clean. It's mostly because, on top of doing it at these rediculously high sizes, I do them in strokes, in the way one writes letters. For example, the outline of the inside of Puma's mouth is two or three strokes and not a continuously drawn line. It looks good resized, as most lineart does - the benefit of working large. Also, often I will undo over and over and over until I get the desirable stroke. You can imagine it makes me a little slow, but it's very worth it.
SIX Flat Color!
Back to Photoshop! With "all layers" and "antialias" clicked on, I use the Fill Tool on a layer beneath the lineart layer for the flat color. I usually click twice in each area to make sure the color fills it all in. When the lineart doesn't close in an area the color floods somewhere it shouldn't, so I usually use the brush tool to close off the area with color on the color layer. I also use the brush tool for small areas the color didn't reach, like in corners of hair.
The thus-far flat background color is on its own background layer.
SEVEN Backgrounds!
Lately I start doing backgrounds before shading and highlighting to help me more with the environment's lighting. In this comic, backgrounds that don't need special emphasis are lineless, so I wing it with Painter 7's Smeary Round. Photo references help out sometimes.
EIGHT Shading & Highlighting!
I mostly use Smeary Round and Round Camelhair to shade and highlight in Painter. Smeary Round is good for all purposes, but especially blending. I like using Round Camelhair for highlights and things like hair and fur. I usually do darks before I do highlights. I also usually add several steps of darkness, then a bit of a color like deep blue or purple for depth. My highlights are usually simpler, but still in steps depending on the situation.
NINE Special Effects!
At this point, if there are effects like mist or smoke that also interact with the foreground, they will be added. On this step, there's a bit of light mist, added on background and foreground layers. I'm nuts about layers. Since it doesn't look that different in this instance, I won't post the picture for this step.
TEN Color Correction!
Next to the other one, it really does look different.
Usually I will have to change color balance of the color and background layers in Photoshop because of special environmental situations (night, rain, volcanic eruption). I use an adjustment layer in Photoshop since it will not directly edit your layer (so if you screw up you can delete it). If you click the two-colored circle in the Layers Palette, there's your options. I've added a bit more cyan and blue to the picture. Afterwards I group (ctrl/cmd g) the adjustment layer with the color layer (the adjustment layer must be above it in order to do this, of course). I also make a copy of the adjustment layer (by dragging it onto the new layer button on the layers palette) and group it with the background layer. Things are like this:
(Click for larger)
Color Balance works wonders, especially for people like me who can't yet think to apply these colors to things manually. If you use an adjustment layer, you have to make sure you're not going to swap the file back over to Painter or the layer will disappear. If you have to, you can apply the adjustment layer to the layer it's affecting, if you're happy with it. You can always readjust things later.
In this case, I added a little bit more cyan and blue. Also, I used Hue/Saturation (ctrl/cmd u) to take the saturation down some. Nighttime feel! Every so often I'll also have a lighting situation which requires new shading layers with fun blending modes. But not this time.
ELEVEN Type!
This is the part I enjoy most after lineart. Type can either add to or take away from your page severely, depending on how it's executed. After all, just like no stroke of a line should be arbitrary, text shouldn't just "be there". More than a tool - it's an art by itself.
Whenever there are word bubbles, I usually draw them the same way I do lineart and fill them as well. In this case, there aren't any, so. I copied the "narration" text layer (after I merged each line into one) and repeated them at different opacities for that effect. I'm very particular about the fonts I use, so they may be changed. (You can't really read some of it so far... I'm lazy right now.)
And—
Hey, that's it?! Well, I guess so! The only thing left worth noting is that I resize it to 72 DPI and then a bit smaller (not affecting DPI) for web output. Although sometimes I may change a few things last minute (such as things I forgot/just thought of that wouldn't be a hassle to put in).
So, that's how I complete a page of Moon Puma. Notably, Millennium is done in much lesser a way (no shading, not too much color detail) and also quicker, but the same principles apply...I won't let it get too sloppy.
I hope this was a help to you in any way!  If something needs to be clearer, tell me.
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