Show your drawing process!

[AffectedMind]

Yo! Show me how you do things! Backgrounds, characters, inking, whatever you want : D

Here's how I do characters:

1) Firts I draw the body,
2) then I create a new layer and draw the hair,
3) and simply erase the body parts
4) the same goes with clothes
5) the last is tooning and shading.

Simple and fast!

[AnnaLandin]

I got me a process-GIF! You'll have to click on it to make it work, I think - the forum is a bit weird about displaying animated GIFs.

1.) Super rough sketch on one layer.
2.) New layer on top with a clean sketch
3.) Ink the characters on one layer
4.) Ink the environment on another layer
5.) Flat colour the environment on one layer
6.) Flat colour the characters on one layer
7.) Shadows and atmospheric lighting on two separate layers
8.) Lock the lineart layers, set to multiply and colour the lines. I leave the outlines of my characters black, to make them pop against the background.

The speechbubbles and the lettering is there from the super-rough sketch stage, but I just turn those layers invisible while I work, and draw all the stuff that goes underneath them too. Also not mentioned in the step-by-step - on this page, the blood is on a separate layer so I can mess around with it without touching the character-flats.

[carloswebcomic]

1) Sketch on paper

2)Rub out previous sketch, sketch again and realise the composition doesn't work.

2.5) Have a beer.

3) Keep sketching while banging head on table till it works or I pass out. Whichever one comes first.

3.5) Have a beer.

4) Clean up sketch with Manga Studio.

4.5) Have a beer.

5) Ink sketch with different layers for characters, backgrounds and black fills.

5.5) Have a beer.

6) Colour in the image.

6.5) Have a beer.

7) Put speech bubbles.

7.5) Have a beer.

8) Realise that the original script doesn't really work.

8.5) Have a coffee.

9) Re-write script.

10) Re-do whole page again for scratch.

10.5) Have a beer.

11) Realise I'm a hack and that I don't deserved the number of readers I get.

11.5) Have a beer.

12) Finish page, go to sleep.

[Doubtcent]

It's pretty long and complicated, but here goes:
First I sketch a basic layout:

Then I start inking by layering the backgrounds, detail, then characters. Sometimes speech bubs.

I then remove the sketch layer and add text to see if it fits correctly inside the speech bubbles. If not, the speech bubs need to be altered.

Next I duplicate the background layers and start erasing any overlapping areas.

Now that the inking is done, next comes the flat colors.

Next is the effects...

And finally, shading and highlighting. By then it's finished.

This episode will be uploaded this Monday. Total time spent: ~ 6 hours

[starsyscomics]

I don't have any photos and I'm mostly on the writing side of this gig, but a general step by step is:

1) I get an idea, and run it past A. She filters out all the ridiculous navel-gazing crap and points me to "the good stuffs".
2) I sit at a computer and try to turn that nugget into a full fledged script. It's hard, I cry a lot, there's lots of stress baking involved.
3) I finally get the script tightened up and we run it past our editor, who is awesome and works for all the cookies I stress baked.
4) We sit together and run character designs and thumbnails together. She laughs a lot because I am bad at art, so any ideas for a shot I have are communicated at the level of Paleolithic cave drawings.
5) She disappears for a week and comes back with several pages of penciled drawings, which she then inks by hand.
6) I scan all these in on our small, grumpy scanner. It is tedious, but I do it out of love.
7) She uses photoshop to ink wash everything, and then I add the panel borders and the speech bubbles and dialogue.

And that's how the magic happens.

[Mharz]

Here's mine:

1) Construction

2) Ruff Sketch

3) Clean-up

4) Tones and shading (if necessary)

5) Extra FX (if necessary)

After that I just added the speech bubbles... then FINISH!!!

[heterodont]

Uploading a gif as well! Fairly straight forward tbh
1) Sketch of basic gesture +emotion. forego speech bubble placement bc you fail to follow basic advice
2) Lineart
3) Color setup- put down a base color, usually super bright so I know if I missed a spot in the case of characters
4) Flat colors. Hard brush for the characters and soft brush for the bg
5) Slappin the shading on. Bc this is at night I have to double the shading
6) Render. Realize the face you drew looks wrong. Edit the bg a lil
7) Text + speech bubbles

On good days I can finish a page within 2 hours but normally it takes me 4/6 hours.

[Aetherwing]

My process is actually pretty simple ;A;

1) Rough sketch

2) Line art

3) Flats

4) Shades

5) Speech bubbles

All of this requires a million layers of course, but overall fairly straightforward. Can take anywhere between 6 and 12 hours.

[shazzbaa]

I don't have a cool gif, but I do usually save my work at various stages so, here's that!

Step One: Very rough sketch, making sure balloons fit, completely changing panels I don't like.

Step Two: Perspective grid in photoshop

this is normally an ENORMOUS file in order to be big enough to fit all the vanishing points on there. I mask each panel's perspective grid so they don't overlap each other confusingly, then convert that to non-photo blue and print it out to pencil it.

Step Three and Four: Pencilling and Inking

* changes yet another panel in between roughs and pencils *
Pencils get scanned in, converted to non-photo blue and printed back out on cardstock for me to ink with ballpoint. I'm one of those people who likes to work with really tight pencils so I don't have to invent anything when I get to the inking stage and can focus on line weight and such, so I don't usually change much at this point!

Steps Five through Nine Billion: Colour It and Letter it

My colouring process involves an underpainting to adjust the lighting of the scene, so my flat colours are baaaaasically just local colour. I've started working on being more flexible about this lately, but since choosing colours is a huge weak spot for me, having a place to start from helps me work a little faster!
I digitally hand-letter; it's the most zen step.

And that's the basic overview! Altogether this probably takes me somewhere between 10-15 hours, but I haven't timed myself recently.

[AffectedMind]

@vincentprendick oh my, it's so messy at first x_x
@shazzbaa the croooooowd! So much pepol!

[Silerna]

1. pencil sketch.

2. lines digital,fixing mistakes if needed and correct image size (940px width)

3.Text,deleting extra layers(or put them all in one) and done! xD

[J.MORK]

this is how i do it :] sometimes i add the dialogue right away and sometimes i wait until the end of painting to do it.
if anyone wants a specific step detailed out i can do that, but i think they are pretty self-explanatory

[Raven_C]

1) sketch
2) color the lineart sketch by locking layers
3) put base colors on a separate layer
4) merge lineart + color layers together
5) paint on top of everything to finish it off!

Here's a quick timelapse that i did (it doesn't show everything, but that's the gist of it):

[greenraptorstudios]

wow, that must take forever, all this people and shades.

[joannekwan]

lay down text and rough sketch

refined sketch

box and line

tone and bubbles