And the final page of episode 8 of The Word Smith has appeared on-line. Yes, this is ending the episode on a cliff hanger, so, dun, dun, dun!
There'll be an intentional hiatus for maybe about a month or so as I finalize script details for episode 9 and (hopefully) get a bit of a head start on drawing the actual pages.
Please look forward to it!
Freak Out,
-TFitC
Sunday, June 7, 2015
Friday, June 5, 2015
Processing Time
The latest page of The Word Smith is not quite done - it's in the process of being coloured (nearly finished!) and should be up sometime this weekend, but in the interim, I thought it might be interesting (for some definition of interesting) to talk a bit about my comic-making process, such as it is.
It all begins with a script, or something like one, anyway. I do, in fact, have the entirety of The Word Smith planned out, in point-form, at least. Before I start actually drawing an episode, I write that episode up in detail, on a panel-by-panel level. Sometime I'm a bit lazy with dialogue and don't finalize it until I need to start actually putting it on the actual comic, which is a bad habit that I need to try to avoid. Anyway, the script stage is all just typing into a word processor so I'm not going to dwell on it.
The first actual drawing that happens is creating thumbnails. My thumbnails are pretty rough and (usually) drawn four pages to a single piece of (scrap) paper, like so:
There are some artists out there who do pretty detailed thumbnails, but I keep 'em simple mainly for two reasons. One, I'm lazy. Two, as this is just a hobby and I try to get things done in a timely manner, I prefer not to spend too much time on something that's just going to get redrawn anyway. Even so, I do view thumbnails as an important planning tool. Sometimes I do change the final layout from the thumbnailed version (as shall be seen), but overall, I don't think I'd want to attempt drawing the actual final page without some sort of plan in place regarding how I'm going to do it.
After thumbnails, I move on to the actual page. I draw pages on pieces of bristol board which measure approximately 28cm x 35.5cm. My current batch of bristol board (which I started using as of page 2 in episode 8) is also made of partly recycled material, for what it's worth. I start by drawing the panel borders, usually measured out using a ruler, though occassionally (as with page 7 below) I just draw them in roughly. I do this if I'm not entirely sure what proportions some of the panels should be or if I'm still a little unsure on some parts of the layout. By just drawing in a rough sense of the panel borders I feel freer to draw outside of them, if need be.
After panel boundaries are in place, I do the rough pencils. In theory, I actually put in any dialogue/text first so that I know that the text will all fit and I don't waste time drawing stuff that's just going to get covered up by word balloons; however, this doesn't always happen, especially if I haven't gotten around to finalizing the dialogue yet and sometimes it comes back to bite me. Fortunately, I did everything in the correct order for this page.
Once dialogue is in place, I draw everything in pencil. I generally start out fairly rough and then refine it. For instance, I'll often use rough shapes (boxes, mainly) to position and size characters in relation to each other before getting too caught up in the details; some of those guidelines can be seen in the above pencils. I currently use a mechanical pencil for the pencilling stage, mostly because I don't have to worry about sharpening it constantly.
When pencils are done, I ink everything using a set of inking pens (one brush pen and a set of pens of varying widths), erase all the pencils, scan it in and colour everything in Photoshop. Colouring could really be its own post so for now it'll suffice to say that there's several annoying things about it.
Anyway, that's an overview of everything up until the colouring stage, at any rate. Perhaps in some future post I'll go into the details on colouring.
Until next time,
Freak Out,
-TfitC
It all begins with a script, or something like one, anyway. I do, in fact, have the entirety of The Word Smith planned out, in point-form, at least. Before I start actually drawing an episode, I write that episode up in detail, on a panel-by-panel level. Sometime I'm a bit lazy with dialogue and don't finalize it until I need to start actually putting it on the actual comic, which is a bad habit that I need to try to avoid. Anyway, the script stage is all just typing into a word processor so I'm not going to dwell on it.
The first actual drawing that happens is creating thumbnails. My thumbnails are pretty rough and (usually) drawn four pages to a single piece of (scrap) paper, like so:
Pages 5-7 of Episode 8. The last quarter shows a couple of alternate ideas for page 6 - in particular it shows the composition I ended up using for the first panel, which was different from my original idea.
There are some artists out there who do pretty detailed thumbnails, but I keep 'em simple mainly for two reasons. One, I'm lazy. Two, as this is just a hobby and I try to get things done in a timely manner, I prefer not to spend too much time on something that's just going to get redrawn anyway. Even so, I do view thumbnails as an important planning tool. Sometimes I do change the final layout from the thumbnailed version (as shall be seen), but overall, I don't think I'd want to attempt drawing the actual final page without some sort of plan in place regarding how I'm going to do it.
After thumbnails, I move on to the actual page. I draw pages on pieces of bristol board which measure approximately 28cm x 35.5cm. My current batch of bristol board (which I started using as of page 2 in episode 8) is also made of partly recycled material, for what it's worth. I start by drawing the panel borders, usually measured out using a ruler, though occassionally (as with page 7 below) I just draw them in roughly. I do this if I'm not entirely sure what proportions some of the panels should be or if I'm still a little unsure on some parts of the layout. By just drawing in a rough sense of the panel borders I feel freer to draw outside of them, if need be.
Rough pencils of episode 8, page 7. Note the layout of the lower right corner has changed from the thumbnailed version.
After panel boundaries are in place, I do the rough pencils. In theory, I actually put in any dialogue/text first so that I know that the text will all fit and I don't waste time drawing stuff that's just going to get covered up by word balloons; however, this doesn't always happen, especially if I haven't gotten around to finalizing the dialogue yet and sometimes it comes back to bite me. Fortunately, I did everything in the correct order for this page.
Once dialogue is in place, I draw everything in pencil. I generally start out fairly rough and then refine it. For instance, I'll often use rough shapes (boxes, mainly) to position and size characters in relation to each other before getting too caught up in the details; some of those guidelines can be seen in the above pencils. I currently use a mechanical pencil for the pencilling stage, mostly because I don't have to worry about sharpening it constantly.
When pencils are done, I ink everything using a set of inking pens (one brush pen and a set of pens of varying widths), erase all the pencils, scan it in and colour everything in Photoshop. Colouring could really be its own post so for now it'll suffice to say that there's several annoying things about it.
Anyway, that's an overview of everything up until the colouring stage, at any rate. Perhaps in some future post I'll go into the details on colouring.
Until next time,
Freak Out,
-TfitC
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