How I make a comic strip

I’ve been wanting to do this for some time, but well…I’m somewhat lazy. Anyways, here’s how a comic strip at MyLifeComics is made. I keep a list of things that have happened over the past days so I don’t forget. When it’s time to draw, I scan the list and pick the one that I want to do. For this comic, the note simply said out walking, scared of muggers.

Next, let’s call this officially Step 1, I do a loose sketch to get an idea of what I want the comic to look like. At this stage, I’m seeing if the dialogue and art mix, and what kind of little details I want that I can remember. My sketching is pretty crude, but I generally only have to draw it out once.

Step 2 is drawing the comic strip on paper. I switch between a 2H and 5B pencil. I actually ink simultaneously at this stage as I go. Call it compulsive, but I can’t just leave pencil art on paper without inking. I think I have a fear of a ghost erasing it when I’m not looking.

After this is Step 3, where I scan the artwork into my computer and open it in Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 to start coloring. There’s a few other little things I do at this point to clean up the artwork, but it’s really boring so I won’t go into it. I do have a copy of Photoshop 6.0, but it doesn’t work too well on my dinosaur-slow computer, and after constant usage I grew used to using Elements. So, at this stage I put down the base colors of the comic on a separate layer. I dislike bright tones.

Step 4 has me coloring on a second layer, adding shadows and some simple shading.

Lastly, Step 5, the easiest one. I toss the date the comic will be posted on the bottom right corner of the artwork. Comics are drawn a few days in advance, with the topic of the comic probably being a week or so old. Yeah, it’s a weird schedule but it works for me.

And that’s how I do things over here. Capiche?