Dave Gibbons, the man who co-created Watchmen in 1986 with the writer Alan Moore, is in demand. Interest in the world's best graphic novel – described as the Citizen Kane of comic books – has been given a fresh boost by the appearance of a movie adaptation directed by Zack Snyder, and by Watching the Watchmen, Gibbons's new book about its creation.

Gibbons also co-created Rogue Trooper for the comic 2000 AD, and in a 30-year career, his credits include Superman, Batman, Doctor Who, Dan Dare and Green Lantern, to name but a few. Time magazine called him "a genius – one of the major comic book artists of the 21st century, or the 20th, or really any other century you care to name".

I joke with him about his superstar status, but he's well aware of the limitations of his fame. "I've just got back from being a superstar at Comic-Con in San Diego," he says. "Then I went down the gaming end [of the convention] to sign something I'd done for a games company, and people were walking right past and ignoring me.

"At a convention in Australia, I was talking to some of the voiceover people, who did the voices for anime and computer games. They, in their field, were as much superstars as us, but we'd never heard of them, and they'd never heard of any of us. So it's quite a localised kind of fame, but it's nice, because if I feel like being famous, I know where to go, and if I don't, I just don't go there!"

Force for good



Gibbons is now using his fame to help raise the profile of what is, after all, one of the UK's core creative industries: he's promoting the Digital Artist 2009 awards, backed by Intel and Future Publishing. Gibbons is a judge in the competition to find the digital artist of the year, and has contributed a masterclass video on how he uses digital media.

"There are 13 categories, but the thing that I'm most excited about is called Intel Stars of Tomorrow. There are two awards, one for people aged 16 and younger, and one for 17-25. The hardest thing [for young graphic artists] is to just to get the ball rolling, and it's a way for young people to get their work seen," says Gibbons. "And if they're lucky, exhibited."

Traditionally, graphic artists crafted things by hand and were extremely fussy about pens, pencils, papers and so on, but Gibbons says: "I'm known for being very enthusiastic about using technology. A lot of the attraction is the way that it streamlines the process and takes a lot of the drudgery out of it.

"You can draw on different layers, move things around, scale them, rotate them … it becomes very fluid. With lettering, you can input it on a keyboard, and then at the end of the day, rather than having to parcel up a lot of fragile artwork, you can send it electronically almost anywhere in the world, instantaneously. It's made it extremely simple to collaborate with people in other countries. When I was doing Watchmen, the writer used to send me pages of script in a taxi at £50 a time!"

Gibbons uses Photoshop software on his Mac, and Manga Studio, from Japan: "It's tailor-made for doing comics: it's got some wonderful drawing tools in it. I use a Wacom Cintiq tablet, which has an LCD so you're drawing on what you're drawing, not looking away at a screen. That's my weapon of choice, now, for professional work. You can get different nibs for the pens, with different degrees of resistance. You can also swivel it round, and so on."

I apologise in advance for asking Gibbons what he thinks of Comic Sans, a Microsoft typeface partly derived from his Watchmen lettering. It was only intended for Microsoft's cartoon dog, Rover. However, as a free Windows 95 font, it has been used everywhere from product packaging to vehicles to official notices. It's the only thing that, temporarily, clouds his blokey geniality.

"It's just a shame they couldn't have used just the original font, because it's a real mess. I think it's a particularly ugly letter form," he says. "The other thing that really bugs me that they've used an upper case I with bars on it: it looks completely wrong to the comic eye. And when you see store fronts done in it, it's horrible.

"There are people who specialise in lettering, and I've had my hand lettering made into a digital font. I picked up a copy of the Dandy the other week, and I was amazed to see that it was completely lettered in my hand-lettering font. It was quite a thrill, really, having been a Dandy reader years and years ago."

Virtual library

One of the less obvious but very powerful effects of computers on graphic arts is that it provides vast amounts of reference material. Growing up in England, Gibbons had been an avid reader of US comics – his grandad bought him his first Superman comic when he was seven – and was fascinated by things that were boringly ordinary to Americans but strange to him.

"When I first came to New York City, what I was thrilled about was not the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty, it was the fireplugs in the street. These things that Jack Kirby had drawn. Or these cylindrical water towers on top of buildings that Steve Ditko's Spider-Man fights used to happen in and around. So it's always been this kind of exotic Babylon," he told Time magazine.

He says: "One of the things you have to be able to do, as a comic strip artist, is to draw things repeatedly from a variety of angles, so you need references, and you find the best picture you can. Nowadays you can go on the internet and find several million pictures of New York City, you can use Google Street View, you can use Google Earth and have a three-dimensional model of New York … to me, there's an enhanced richness with comics, because artists can get their hands on reference and give it that texture that relates to reality."

It shows how computers are now used throughout the cartoon's process, from research and execution to delivery.

"The problem used to be that the people who knew how to do computer graphics were techies, and artists didn't know how to do computer graphics. Now that isn't the case," says Gibbons. "Computers have become much more artist-friendly in terms of software, and artists have become much more familiar with computers in their everyday life. So it is really turning into a tool that depends on the talent of the user, rather than the technological knowledge of the user.

"Now when I look back at my work, I can't always tell what I drew with what: your style overrides it. If you're using a computer as an artist and expressing your personal vision, I think your personal vision comes through."