Slave to technology

Sometimes you don't miss something until it's gone.

Needless to say, I couldn't make the weekly Gamecreature comic without the use of scanners and computers. However, it may surprise you to learn that each comic starts out with pencil on paper, in much the same way that I created comics decades ago. Here's an example from a recent comic:



I've darkened it a bit so you can see what's going on - I prefer keeping it light so I can tell the difference between the pencils and inks. The pencils are scanned into the computer and then I apply the "inks" in Adobe Illustrator. (Back in the old days, we used real pens and bottles of ink to add dark lines to the pencils. I suspect there'll be a time in the future when all comics are done digitally - and we'll still call it inking. You heard it here, first!) Here's how the comic looks after I'm done with the inks:



As you can see, it's awfully white! Time to add some color. I use Photoshop to color the comics. The inks are kept on one layer while the color is added to a lower layer. This is so the color can overlap the ink lines and avoid any little white gaps in the coloring. Here's the finished result.

And that's the short version of how I make my comics. What do you think?