Your Work Flow

edited July 2011 in The Toolbox
For clarity, my current work flow is:
  1. thumbs on bond paper (artists bond paper in pads is translucent and easily used to trace).
  2. printed size roughs on bond paper.
  3. roughs scanned and manipulated in pshop as needed and printed out full-size on 11x17" paper.  At this point perspective grids, photo reference or Sketchup objects can be dropped in.  As often as not, this is essentially the photocopy enlarge 150% I used to have.
  4. Pencils are tightened and mast-work details like facial expressions worked up as needed, but pages are no where near as tight as they are when other people inked me.  
  5. Page is scanned into Pshop and tweaked as needed.  The real time saver in all this are cut n' paste and the warp tools.  If the eyes are off-center, the arm too long, need more balloon space in a panel, that head too big, want a little more bend in that spine, and so on it can all be fixed here.  Further, looking at the page small again gives me an opportunity to look at the storytelling and composition again.
  6. Once saved, Windows user that I am, it's mode select: CMYK, ctrl+A, ctrl+X, select cyan channel, ctrl+V, layers, ctrl+A, ctrl+X, and ctrl+V .  I set the opacity to 20% or less to get the right barely-there non-repro blue, then print out onto plate bristol.  (I started with 25-8% blue but I've been making the print out lighter and lighter the more I work this way and get used to how faint the lines are, but I tend to let things get darker the more detailed the page is.)
  7. Ink.  Nibs, brushes, markers, white paint, the usual tried and true.
  8. The finished inks are scanned and the blue stripped out then the page is coloured in Pshop in the usual manner.  Another pass of corrections as needed prior to colours commencing.
I'm considering lettering prior to printing out the page, either printing them out in the same blue as the pencils and using the traditional tools to trace them but add a more handmade feel or just have them print out in black (placed on their own layer in Pshop).  I haven't lettered enough to get fast at it yet, but I'm thinking having the balloons and captions on the boards might speed up the whole process a wee bit more.

How're you guys making your pages now?

Comments

  • edited July 2011
    I'll play. THough some of this is theoretical as I'm in the middle of two separate comic projects and I haven't got to the lettering or inks on either.

    I use Manga Studio EX with a Wacom Intuos 3 tablet.

    1. Thumbs are done in MS. I do the thumbs on the final "page" at print size (whatever the dimensions are of the final project. I create my own templates for each unique project if they are different from standard US size - which I made my own template for). I try to work with the page pretty small on the screen. I can cut and paste, move things around, take a panel or two and move to another page, etc. And, I can see the over view all at once to see flow etc. I started using MS in a big way when I finished laying out the final Wahoo Morris book that way.

    2. Pencils - done in a new layer/s over the thumbs. Tighten up the thumbs to a point I'm comfortable inking. Usually trying to work no bigger than actual size, but I find myself really blowing it up for details. Another saving grace of MS is that I have a tendency to draw faces a tad lopsided. Meaning it looks good to me but when reversed it looks horrible. I remember reading an interview with Tim Truman (I believe) who said he had the same problem and would put his pages backwards on a light table to fix the mistakes on the back of the page, then flip it over again to adjust. I use the flip-horizontal function constantly while pencilling, often starting the construction in flipped mode,  so I can sometimes lose track of whether I'm flipped or not, and end up with hair parted on the wrong side in a few panels, etc. I'll drop in any reference, BG's etc. in this stage. And, once again, the perspective tools have made my life a lot easier - no more balancing a 3 foot ruler, and extra 11x17 paper taped to my pages trying to reach that far off vanishing point!

    3. Inking. Project "R" (which is the top of the pile comic project at the moment) will be inked in MS. Probably how I will do all of my comics going forward, with the exception of perhaps covers so I have a few rare pieces of art to sell. The undo function means I can start inking with much rougher pencils.
    WM book 2 was half pencilled and inked on paper when I switched to digital, so for consistency I will be printing out blue-lines on Strathmore and inking traditionally - brush, nib, india ink, white out etc.

    4. Lettering. Here's the theoretical part. For Comic Book Tattoo, I exported a tiif of the pencils to Illustrator, lettered over that, then imported a copy into MS, made any necessary adjustment to the pencils, then inked it. I deleted the lettering layer once inks were done and combined the lettering and art in PS for colouring. (I only did that because there was a gray halo on the lettering when imported into MS)
    I'm not lettering Project "R", and WM I'm planning on lettering by hand (again for consistency with the hand-made first half of book2). I may do guide lettering in MS for the blue-lines, so I'm just tracing in ink the letters and balloons. Further projects will be lettered digitally, either in Illustrator or MS.

    5. Colour. What little I do/have done, I will probably continue to do in PS, though after a few things said in the Manga Studio thread, I might try flatting in MS to see if it is easier than PS.

    6. Further theory. I'm thinking of writing my next book in Manga Studio. Yes, I said writing. I can write on one text layer, and make drawing notes on another as I go along. When I do the thumbs I can adjust/cut the text into rough lettering as I go. I'm several months away from even contemplating that, so we'll see if I break down and go back to a traditional script.
  • Interesting thread. Here's my process right now (it changes a bit from year to year)

    1) I do a thumbnail rough of the page in the border of my oversized page (my pages are wider than traditional comic art boards, so I use the extra real estate as a sketch pad).

    2) I pencil fairly rough layouts right on the board with a VERY light pencil- 5h. I put just enough detail to figure out shapes and composition (if you look at my work log, you can see an example of my pencils).

    3) I go straight to ink. I've found I've gotten more comfortable drawing at the ink stage. The brush gives me so much more control of details than a pencil does. The light pencil is great because I rarely have to erase anything

    4) scan into to photoshop, fix anything that doesn't look right and get to coloring (in photoshop).

    My workflow is fairly simple. I need it this way to be flexible since I'm drawing and inking in fits and spurts during breaks and lunch hour at the day job. I'd love to be able to tweak pencils in photoshop, print them on to boards, and ink, but that takes too much of the little time I have. Maybe if I ever get to the point of this being the full-time job, I can perfect the workflow a bit more.
  • My workflow varies from project to project, so I'll refrain from adding to that, but I do have a question: What kind of printers are you guys using that can accommodate printing on 11x17 art board?
  • ahhh, I just grab a sheet of bristol, pencil in H or HB, ink with Pitt markers, sometimes I erase stray pencil marks, scan, drag the scans to a template of the page, place borders, colors and letters in Photoshop.

    In other words, I just sort of go at it.
  • @pjperez there are a number of affordable printers that accommodate 11x17 or larger sheets.  I use an Epson Stylus Photo 1400.  A number of people are really happy with the Brother All-in-One that scans and prints 11x17 sheets. 
  • I use a Pixma Pro 9000 MII, it's quite good. Fast, quite, good color reproduction if I want to do some prints of my own. 
  • @Richard_Pace @SteveWallace thanks for the recommendations. I need to get a new Mac-compatible printer anyway, and I definitely need one that can accommodate 11x17/A3. I have a workhorse Oki laser printer that is awesome, but only goes up to legal size and is only PC-compatible.
  • Not that I'd recommend specifically buying any printer without OS X support in this day and age, but if you find yourself with one, there is a free package called Gutenprint that includes OS X drivers for a lot of printers which the manufacturers and Apple neglected to hook up on.
  • These days, I do everything with Photoshop and a Wacom tablet.

    1. Create a file: 600 dpi, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2" for a digest-sized minicomic.
    2. Pencil tool set at 20 px, 33% black. Rough in the major shapes. Lots of stretching, shrinking, and rearranging elements until they all fit nicely on the page.
    3. New layer. Drag down guides from the rulers to mark the panel borders. Tinker with the roughs some more to make sure everything fits. Use the marquee tool and a 10 px stroke to draw the borders.
    4. If I'm worried about how the text will fit, I'll start typing it in at this point. But usually it comes later.
    5. New layer, pencil at 10 px and 66% black. Tighten up the layouts, get the details nailed down.
    6. If I haven't already typed in the text, do it now. Each block of text on its own layer. I could also draw the balloons at this point, but I usually save that for last for no particular reason.
    7. New layer. Pencil tool at 20 px with Shape Dynamics checked, 100% black. Time to lay down the final "ink" lines. Since the panel borders are on another layer, I don't have to worry about going outside the lines -- it's easy enough to clean up any stray lines later.
    8. For the online presentation, I'll throw on some simple, flat colors. New layer under the "ink" layer, blocks of color laid in mostly with the lasso tool.
    9. New layer for the balloons, under all the text layers. Pen tool and bezier curves to outline the oval balloon and triangular pointer. Convert to selection, fill with white, stroke with a 7 px black outline.
    10. Done! For b&w print version, hide the color layer, flatten and save as a TIF. For online version, shrink to 700 px wide, flatten, save as a GIF.

    The list of layers, from top to bottom:
    Borders
    Text layers
    Balloons
    Inks
    Colors
    Pencils
    Roughs
  • edited July 2011
    Here's how I'm working on a typical JAQrabbit Tale:

    0) Remember or conceive of a story.  Put a note in my iPod with a working title and a brief explanation of the premise/hook so I'll remember it later.  Find a place for it in my master spreadsheet which serves as an outline for the monster biographic novel that JAQrabbit Tales could one day become.

    1) Write a full script in LibreOffice (the new 10%-more-liberated version of OpenOffice), starting from a blank template file that's formatted with page-headers and a cover page that'll look professional-like for those that might be sent out to artists.

    2a) If Zlatan's penciling it, I give him the script and he thumbnails it for my approval.  I might scribble some suggestions on his thumbnails, but mostly I just give him some feedback and he eventually comes back with a page of pencils.  They often have backgrounds. :)  I scan that and resize it to fit in MSex.

    2b) If I'm penciling it, I take a blank MSex template, rename it and put it in its own folder on my Dropbox account, then open it on my HPad (obsolete 10" TabletPC).  I thumbnail it at full-screen size.  Based on that, I'll usually start roughing it another layer or two, one for backgrounds, the other foreground objects.  This gives me the flexibility to move characters a bit, rescale them when I realize that I just drew an adult to look 4 feet tall or reduce someone's head by 10% because I drew it too large (again), etc.  It also helps me get the backgrounds right: horizons stay at the same level, etc.because I'm at least sketching most of it.  For good or ill, it empowers me to draw better without having to get it right the first time, and without having to erase it and draw it again.  I set the layers to different colors so I can see what's erasable at any given moment.

    3) I ink in MS, pretty much the same way I pencil.  I do most of this on the iMac with Intuos, but much of my productive time comes during my lunch breaks, at the laundromat, etc. so a lot gets done on the HPad.  This usually requires clean-up on the big screen however.   I ink on a couple layers, sometimes three or four.  The main reason for that is to allow follow-thru on my strokes: I can run a background line right thru a foreground object and erase the hidden part later. Or if I have two overlapping or intertwined objects, I can ink them in either order and not worry about where exactly I need to stop this line without it running into that object.  When I'm done, dump the ink layers together in a folder.  This folder serves as a virtually flattened "ink layer", while leaving the various layers intact for going back to, and changing.  I don't think this can be done in Photoshop.

    4a) For Zlatan's art, I'm coloring in MS.  Again: easier on the big screen, often done on the small.  At first I made the mistake of using a whole bunch of layers; now I'm down to something closer to my foreground/background approach.  With his style of cleanly delineated art, magic-wanding on the inks folder and paint-bucketing on one of the color layers is pretty quick and easy.  (It'd be nice if there were a way to paint-bucket non-contiguous selected areas though: a feature they need to steal from Photoshop in the next version.)

    4b) For my art, haven't started coloring any of those Tales yet.  I might try doing it in MS, but my style is more realistic, and I think I should do more than mostly-flat colors for it, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to need Photoshop and the iMac for that.  The jury is still out on that decision.

    5) Letter it in Illustrator, on the iMac.  (I haven't figured out how to do it in MS, and I'm just used to doing it in in Ill instead of PS, even though PS can do it now.)  I create a live link to the Photoshop file or to the TIFF exported from MSex (because I will find things in the art that I need to go back and fix later), and add balloons and letters, using the methods explained in the same online tutorials you have all seen.
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