How do you create your webcomic?

[nikaalexandra]

Are you a digital person? A traditional person? Do you make your comic by summoning the demon Azazaroth and cutting a deal with him?

Tell me about the programs/techniques you use, and if you have any specific trick to make your work WOW that you feel everyone should know about!

[FlutterbyBubbles]

Bill Cipher possesses me and uses a Wacom Intuos Draw and Manga Studio 5 (I think, I tend to spend a lot of time shouting at that razzle dazzle Dorito) and he tends to make the canvas size between 940x1000px to 940x1300px so yeah! Also multiply layers for shading, they're great! And for anyone starting, don't worry if your process is different to other people, you do what you feel comfortable with, for example, if you want to shade before colouring, or do your lineart after colouring, then do. Nobody cares how you do it, so long as you have fun!

[KennDemon]

My process starts with driving @HollowEve to school. I am not kidding. In the car, we discuss the characters for Super Ordinary House, and this is where we come up with the script. Then I sit down at home and actually write down what we discussed, which allows me to only work on the stuff that's good enough to stick in my head.

As for the art, I draw the line art by hand, then scan it onto the computer. I colour it using Photoshop, and once all the panels for a strip are done, I assemble the strip in Illustrator. It is in Illustrator where I add speech bubbles and any other text that is needed. Then I export, select an icon from it, and wait until it is time to post.

[IdiotWithPencil]

I cut a deal with Beelzeboss for a wacom bamboo ctl-460 and a life time subscription to photoshop cc and a comic kit plugin with Lazy Nezumi, I mostly ink and use web colours with a noise monochrome filter and my canvas size is 1500x2000 with 300 dpi, which when I'm done,I drop it down to 72 dpi and 940px width
I wish I knew about the importance of perspective and the diagonal points in the horizon to make perfect squares =P

[UrMom]

Traditional all the way, baby! (except doing touch-ups in photoshop)

My process: Vomiting out a crude thumbnail on whatever paper I can get my hands on, usually scrap paper or sticky notes I filch from work. Then I draw the basic page layout on bristol board, ink the boarders, flesh out the contents, ink contents with blue pen (except speech bubbles, FX, and motion lines are black), colour everything with colour pencils, then re-ink everything with black, sepia, and blue pens. Scan the page, and since gel pens don't like colour pencils, I add shines in photoshop as well as do the final touch-ups. Then BAM! The page is done!

Tip: If you go for colour pencils be careful with Prisma Color Verithins, they scratch the page and break easily. I've managed to avoid breakage by using an electric pencil sharpener, but scratchy pencils are unavoidable.

[nikaalexandra]

wow! very insightful! i can't believe how many of us are summoning hellspawn!

thanks for sharing !

[feardeer]

My process is different for every comic I create, but my current is entirely digital. I use FireAlpaca. I blow up my thumbnails first, then sketch over them in more detail, lineart, ink, flats, gradient overlays (set the mood and time of day), 2 cell shading layers, a highlight layer, misc details, and finally dialogue + balloons.
I've been meaning to make a process video or at least a gif for some time...
I don't think I have any special tricks though, unfortunately haha.

Took me weeks of testing out different coloring methods to settle on one that I felt was right for this comic. It takes a long time to churn out a page, but I hope I'll get faster eventually. If not I'll have to get in touch with one of those demons to summon.

[insomniascrawl]

I just kind of have ideas spring to mind. Maybe a word inspired it, or a doodle I did and then I make a world for whatever inspired me and figure out how that world would work and how my characters would wok in that world. I think what kind of trouble they'd get into generally and a general story arch, then I just sort of play connect the dots as I go.

Art wise, I'm not an amazing artist or anything, I sort of just got into art for the sake of story telling (but don't get e wrong I adore doing art). For my comic, I use a super old Wacom 3 tablet that my dad bought and never used back when he did graphic design and use Clip art Studio, because the thought of paying monthly for photoshop makes my blood literally boil; it's quite a sight.

Sorry that was wordy. I guess I got into this haha.

[Vanzish]

I sit here vegetating like a beached jellyfish until i get a mental image of what i wanna put in each panel, then i either sketch on paper and scan or attempt to sketch directly on the PC with my mouse. I don't own a tablet so most of the time, when i wanna be accurate and quicker, i sketch on paper.

I use paint tool Sai, which has that helpful lineart layer, the only tedious thing perhaps is manually modifying the width of each line, but I've grown accustomed to it by now. Coloring is no issue either. If i don't get side tracked, i can finish a page in 1-2 days. I did actually finish a whole page in a day once. I like detailing them so it might take a lil extra, but it's satisfying!

[gwizdala]

Whiteboard Reviews is a little different, because my content is generated from recommendations by the readers. I started with games that friends recommended to me but I'm hoping to be sustained by all of your great requests! I usually look at poster art and jot down parts of the game that I find especially interesting to use for the drawing.

The Simple Things, I really just fly by the seat of my pants and just draw what's immediately in my mind. I've purposely removed a buffer so that it's all immediate thoughts. That works the majority of the time but can get really stressful.

[punkarsenic]

i whack my head on the keyboard until something of merit comes out. its a long and arduous process.

I'm a basic bitch actually, i use paint tool sai and a huion tablet, when it comes to hard- and software. the process includes writing out the story in prose - useful in nailing down emotion and dialogue - and then convert that into comic format, which sometimes means deleting and re-purposing entire scenes. my comic thumbnails are sketched out with pencil and paper, and then used as a rough guide for drawing out the pages themselves. the drawing process itself goes sketches & bubble plan -> inks -> lettering -> flat colour -> finishes / lighting, though sometimes i stick lettering at the end, i dunno.

[XzynderVexymous]

I have a question. How do you draw the comic in the correct px size. I’ve been trying to figure that out for a while.

[YangKoete]

I use Krita and a Wacom Intuos drawing tablet.

Sometimes Paint.Net for editing too.

Or on occasion my sketchbook for traditional stuff.

[nikaalexandra]

@Vexymous i might have a different answer for this than @KennDemon, but drawing a comic traditionally by hand "in the correct px size" is as simple as knowing what px size you want when it's finished, and translating that ratio to paper. so for example, if i was going to draw 64 by hand, and my canvas size to post is 1000x1222px at 300 dpi, or roughly 3.3x4 inches. you always want to work larger than your final file size, and the magic number for me has always been 3 times bigger than your intended final product (especially if you're planning to print later!), so i would work on pages that are 10x12 inches at least and scan them in at 300dpi+ (art school taught me to scan things in at 600dpi but that can be murder on your computer if you're scanning dozens of pages so to each their own)

sorry, that got a little wordy, hope it makes sense!

[erma]

I do the thumbnails on the weekend, do absolutely nothing for the next three days, then do the final sketches, linework and colouring all in one day because I love pain.

It's all done in Clip Studio Paint, I used to do a combo of SAI and Photoshop but my computer starts screaming in agony the second I open Photoshop.

I carry around a notebook that includes a checklist of things I still need to do, and it also serves as a place to write down any new ideas I get.

edit: just as I posted this I accidentally opened Photoshop and the graphics card crashed. Y I K E S

[parkcathedralgrace]

Step 1: Draw out the panel layout.
Step 2: Sketch out each panel (characters, background, word balloons, etc.)
Step 3: Ink the characters
Step 4: Add in the Word Balloons
Step 5: Paint everything that needs to be painted
Step 6: Export each panel as its own image to upload here and on Webtoon
Step 7: Export the whole comic as one image for dA & Tumblr
Step 8: Upload

[darkone4587]

I don't draw I write, and for my ideas I stare into the void of the Elder Gods and let the madness wash over me, and from there I put the pieces together into a story.

But seriously it's all about finding the time to practice your craft in your own way, like maybe doing a fan comic or something to try out a new program or technique.

[LoboSong_Hitaka5Ever]

My friend sketches, inks, sets up the comic page, and does the backgrounds for our comics in Paint Shop Pro and I color, shade, and add speech bubble text in Paint Tool SAI 2. My friend I believe uses a Wacom Pen Touch and I used one of the original Wacom Bamboo Fun tablets (I recently bought a new tablet that I haven't used for the comic yet, but soon!)

[KennDemon]

There's probably a better way to do things, but I basically don't worry about correct size until the end. I scan at 300dpi, and it's always bigger than I need in the end. When I bring the images into Illustrator at the end, I have that canvas set up to the max px dimensions for uploading here, and just resize the images to match (making sure to maintain the aspect ratio). I don't really worry about the vertical length, since the horizontal one is more constricting (in my opinion).

Hope that's a good enough answer. I'm new to making comics, so I'm probably a horrible example to follow because I don't know what I'm doing.

[millanmarcusmarc]

I make digital comics, i really like it the digital art