More concept Art this week: These are the sketches of the two characters in Page 5 (and the next few pages) that I drew when I was designing the cast of characters for this comic. Artor is the one built like a grizzly bear. Myles is a Blacksmith, so he has a Blacksmithing apron and a hammer in this drawing.

Page 6 is shaping up to be a pretty cool page, I will be posting it next week.

I have had a crazy and stressful past week, and wasn’t able to finish Page 6. Instead, I am posting an overview of my comic process, using the 2nd panel of Page 2 as an example. This is Part 2 of my drawing process.

Next I do the inking layers for my comic. I start with a layer that is solid black, then I erase into black to create the woodcut-like outlines (Figure 5). I do the character and setting woodcut outlines on separate Photoshop layers. After that I block in the basic colors for the setting. In (Figure 6) you can see the setting has been blocked in, and that I added the lines for the portal. Next I color in the characters (Figure 7). I finish it all up by polishing the details. I added ground shadows, reflected light to the cave walls, and the shadow in the portal (Figure 8).

I have had a crazy and stressful past week, and wasn’t able to finish Page 6. Instead, I am posting an overview of my comic process, using the 2nd panel of Page 2 as an example. Page 6 will go up next week as usual.

 

For making comics, I start by taking a planning week to draw a chapter’s worth of small thumbnails, in which I design the page layouts and write the dialogue (thumbnails not shown). Then I go into Photoshop and sketch a very basic layout for each page. This is usually very rough, with only circles for heads and swiftly drawn shapes for the bodies and settings (Figure 1).

 

Then, in the following weeks, I work on each page individually. I start by sketching a new layer on top of the light blue layout, trying to nail down character proportions and gestures (Figure 2). After this I do yet another sketch layer (Figure 3), where I draw in the details, such as eyes, hair, and hands. I do one last drawing layer to clean up the lines and details (Figure 4).