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: