Friday, August 19, 2011

Process

I always like seeing other people's process creating comics, so I thought I'd share how Matt Sheean and I put an Expansion page together.

First, I write a "script", although it's almost an outline. It has dialogue and everything, but it's not very detailed. This way the story is more of a collaboration between myself and Matt. From there Matt creates thumbnails for the whole book. Here is his thumbnail for page 9 of Expansion Part 3:
After the thumbnails are finished we make revisions. The sequence that page 9 is a part of got shuffled around, so the layout changed. Matt starts working on the pencils, usually giving them to me in batches of 2-4 pages at a time as he finishes them. The pencils for page 9:

Matt keeps the pencils loose so that the finished image is also more collaborative. I get the page back and use the following tools:

Recently I've been using a Japanese brush pen that I don't know the name of. (This is a little different for me, I usually use the watercolor brush next to it) I use a 08 Micron for the panel borders, and the Staedtler for lettering. Page 9 doesn't have lettering... so we won't get into that. My inks, unedited:

Expansion has a flat grey tone for most of the book. After I finish inking the main page, I tape another piece of paper to it and use a light board to create the shapes that will be grey:

I scan the two parts in and tidy them up. I put the grey tone (which at this point is still solid black) on its own layer, set it to "Multiply", and then change the opacity to a grey tone. For page 9 it's a little darker because it takes place at night.

That's that! Here's the final page:


9 comments:

stephen said...

I like how you do the grays by hand, then manipulate them digitally. I usually go all digital when I'm doing color and shadows. I might experiment with that in the future.

thedave said...

interesting for sure...i would love to see more posts like this from you.

Sam Spina said...

duuuuuuuude, so awesome to see this

Jason Bradshaw said...

Oh man, this is awesome. Love how you ink the gray tones on a separate sheet.... honestly never even occurred to me to do that.

Jeannetto said...

Thanks for that. I am also surprised by how you do gray. Neat.

Herr Gilke said...

I like your "making of", too!

Tyrell Cannon said...

This is fantastic! I also love seeing the process. Can't wait for Expansion 3. I'll also be exhibiting at APE and would love to chat. Keep up the great work.

Chuck Dillon said...

Awesome, man. I'm always so impressed with your work.

Unknown said...

Thank you!