My usual process is to pencil and ink on Bristol board, then I scan the line drawings to my computer. I used to work on 11x14" or 11x17" Bristol, but I found the large size of the paper to be cumbersome to me. Recently, I cut all my 11x14" Bristol in half. Now I'm drawing on 7x11" board, which I find to be much more comfortable and manageable. I usually get one or two pictures on each piece. Since I'm publishing ROADFROGS in mostly one-or-two panel segments, that works out great!
When I scan the pictures, I adjust my scanner settings to 1200 dpi. I end up with HUGE pictures (and files) that way, but it makes it very easy to clean up smeared ink and other stray marks on the page. In fact the picture above was originally 13139x8147 pixels and 5.10MB as a JPEG (23.3MB as a PNG image). I had to reduce its size to 6451x4000 to get the file size small enough to upload to this blog. All the color shots below have been reduced even further, so that I could use them here.
Next I clean up the pictures and color them
in GIMP (it’s a lot like Adobe Photoshop, but FREEEEEE).
In order to do this without making a mess of the original (and without having a bunch of distracting white pixels at the edges of each shape), I create a blank white layer, place it below the original and make the white in the original layer transparent (this is referred to as changing a color to alpha). With the original layer on top and the new layer to be colored selected as the active layer, I can color the picture and hide the edges of each color under the inked lines. Later, when I have the picture(s) completely colored I reduce them to 1500x???. The above picture is 1500x831. A little later in the process I decided to cut it down to 1500x800.
You may have noticed that some of the elements in these pictures have been moved slightly as we go from one version of the strip to the next (Froggie on the phone in the second panel slides down the page a little). Some of this movement is necessitated by the decisions I make in sizing the episode and some are dictated by the need to accommodate the dialog.
Part of how I decide what size to make a picture is based on my planned layout of the comic when it is converted to a standard comic book page format, which I eventually intend to do once I have finished "Froggie Went a-Courtin'". Dialog is the other factor there also. As I get closer to adding the word balloons, I am constantly checking and editing the dialog to make sure that (a) the flow of the dialog works well with the layout of the picture(s) and (b) there is enough room for the dialog as written. Today's strip was one of those where both of those factors proved challenging.
After I scale the finished episode down to fit the 1600pixel wide header I’ve created for the strip, I add the word balloons. This process is very similar to the process I use in the coloring, but there are many more layers involved. I have to create each word balloon from scratch (if anyone knows of any word balloon templates that I might try, please let me know. I have not yet found any that work well for me.), so that means - at the very least - a text layer, a layer holding the white balloon, another layer containing a slightly larger black balloon (the fastest way I've found so far to create a border for the white word balloon) and, of course, the original colored picture.
Finally, I add the header, the black border and the indicia along the bottom of the border.
I also ought to note that I have a Wacom Intuos 3 graphic tablet which makes a lot of the more tedious tasks on the computer much easier than if I try to do them with a mouse or the touchpad on my notebook. Before I got the Intuos, I did very little computer art, because it was so time-consuming and because I often was less than pleased with the results. I still do very little drawing with the graphics tablet, but for touch-up work, coloring, etc. it's great!
I hope everyone is enjoying ROADFROGS. As I've said before, here and elsewhere, I'm having a blast working with Froggie and all the other cast members. And learning a lot in the process. If you like ROADFROGS, please use the link to Top Web Comics on the ROADFROGS website to vote for the strip. And you can like us on Facebook. Also, I'd love to read your comments here, at the ROADFROGS site or on Facebook. And, most especially, PLEASE tell your friends about it!
