The second part of a two part presentation about the art of creating comics. Topics include materials, process, and tools. This presentation was given by Becca Hillburn and Heidi Black at Anime South East as part of a three panel series.

1. Starting with a script
& a script will keep you on track with your story
& a script can be very simple such as bullet points
and actions, or very complex
& scripts are also much easier to revise than art

2. Other decisions
& what size/format do you want your comic?
(standard size in the us for digest/print is a 2:3 ratio,
generally drawn 10” by 15”. Standard
european/japanese sizes are based on a4 paper)
& web comics can be any size, shape, and color
& printing a comic? (we'll do a panel on this later)

3. thumbnails
& thumbnails are your first draft – they help you
visualize what you want on the page without
committing too much time/effort
& thumbnails can be very simple (stick figures)
& making multiple thumbnails using different camera
angles can help you create more visually interesting
pages

4. roughs
& a tight rough is usually page size
& refining what you worked out in your thumbnails
& this is the place to work on things like perspective

5. Pencils and inks
& some artists will make another pass at the pencils
before inking
& if you mess up, you can use white paint or a white
gel pen to “erase” mistakes.
& or photoshop.

6. screentones
& screen tones are often used in manga
& tones can be bought and pasted on original art, or
applied digitally
& other ways to make grey values include
hatching/cross hatching, dry brush, watercolor/ink
wash, and copic markers

7. Colored comics
& various techniques to make colored comics – digital
media, markers, paints, colored pencil, mixed media
& its your comic, do what makes you happy!

8. So what's the secret to being
an awesome comic artist?
Practice.
A lot.
Read comics.
A lot of them.
A huge variety of them.