I’ve been promising a process post for a while now and today seems like a good day for it, since I’m too buried under freelance work and shipping (hooray!) to draw new comics.

This is just MY process of course–and even at that, it’s not always the one I use.

Step 1. Layout

I’ve been doing all my layouts just doing quick sketches, copying and pasting and adjusting, etc. right in Photoshop (where I created this whole comic). I really like how fast it is to edit my layouts this way, although thumbnail sketching works well too. I usually have a pad of paper and some no.2 pencils by me when I wok digitally because somethings just don’t make sense on screen, but are easy to solve with a pencil.

Step 2: Lines

Once I have a story that I’m happy with, I start in on my final lines. I’ve been doing them pretty loose and rough at first, not over-correcting the details to maintain a more natural look to them. It’s important to note that I usually draw my lines, panels, and text all on different layers–it’ll make life easier later. Also, any elements that I plan on moving will need to be on separate layers, so I can shuffle them on and off in order to simulate animation.

Once I get the basic idea drawn out, I finish my lines and correct anything that was looking weird. This is just about taking the time and getting lines that I’m happy with.

Step 3: Colors & Shadows

I’m showing it here without the lines on top, but this step is simple enough. Just color the damn thing! Really, the only “trick” to this step is that usually after I’m finished (if I’m doing what I consider to be a “full color” piece, ie not like the Earthbound print where I only used five or six colors), I’ll usually drop in a new folder in my layers palette on top of everything but the text/panels layers (because I want them to stay a pure black/white) that I call “Adjustments.” In that folder I’ll place all my adjustment layers which I use to create a more unified feeling to the colors (ie warm, cold, etc).

The adjustment step can get out of hand really quickly…I’ve been known to spend a lot of time trying to get this exactly right…but lately, I’ve been trying to get better with color selection right off the bat, so that I don’t have to spend as much time with this step (or end up altering the finished product so much that I don’t recognize it anymore).

Some of my go to Adjustment Layers are Color Balance, Hue/Sat., Selective Color and Exposure. I used to use a lot of Photo Filter, until I realized that it’s really ends up washing out your drawings and making them look kinda cheap. Try Color Balance and Selective Color instead. I find that you can use those to still build a more unified color temperature without destroying your initial color choices.

And for the second part of this process, I laid down some shadows. I have a tendency to go with purple shadows if I’m doing a warmer color palette–orange tones/purple shadows…I just like the way that looks, but experiment and find whatever you like best. Unless you’re doing black and white art though, I’d try to avoid doing pure black shadows, since it tends to flatten everything out. Do what feels right though, obviously.

Step 4: Animation

To do my animations, I start by choosing every piece that I want to move–here it was a lot of them. Here’s a frame of everything I ended up animating with the background stuff removed (keep in mind that I ALWAYS keep animated pieces on their own layers).

Above every layer that I want to move I create a second layer with the second “frame” of the animation in it. Sometimes, it’s as simple as just shifting or redrawing the thing in “frame 1.” When you turn these layers on and off, you’ll see them “move.” I also take the time to label them as something like “speedlines1” and “speedlines2.”

Next, I open up the Animation palette in Photoshop. Open it up and you’ll see Frame 1 that has a thumbnail of your work inside it. Click the New Frame button which looks identical to the New Layer button underneath the Layers palette. A second one appears! It is an exact duplicate of the first.

Now, select frame two in the animations palette. With that selected, go over to your layers palette and turn off “speedlines1” and turn on “speedlines2.” Go back up to the Animations palette and press the play button and you’ll see your frames cycling on and off, which gives you a movement effect if you’ve done it correctly. You can also change the speed at which the frames move. I tend to favor 0.1 for things like this comics and 0.2 for something like flickering fire (see the Zelda three-parter).

Step 5: DONE!

Finally, I Save For Web as a .gif and I’m done!