*Ahem*
Where was I? Ah yes, the process. How is my comic strip created, what steps go into forging the hilarity (or at least, relative mirth) of QTMC? Well, my friend, in case you are interested, let me walk you through it. If you're not, I don't blame you. Just go. There are probably several cute kittens on the internet you haven't seen yet.
Still here? Sweet
- Step the first
It all starts with a pen, and a sketch pad. I do have a decent tablet, but after trying it for a while, I found that I missed the tactile feedback of a good, old-fashioned ink-filled sylinder against paper. I am self-taught, meaning I don't really have a process for getting the proportions of my models right, which again leads to more trial and error than neccesary. But that's the way it is.
- Step the second
With the ink sketch done, the analogue part of the process is over. From this point on, everything happens on my computer. I start by scanning the sketch into Photoshop Elements. (I don't have the cash for the proper one, but I make due) This scan is usually pretty rough, and need alot of cleaning up, as the example below shows. Notice how I missed the shoulder, and had to draw over it to get the proper proportions on Marston's body.
- Step the third
I now go to work cleaning up the model, making sure to remove any lines that do not belong, and completing those who are not long enough. In this case, I realised that I hadn't drawn enough of Marston's legs, so I had to extent them in PS.
- Step the fourth
At this point, I'm ready to start colouring. I do this by selecting the parts of the model that fit together, and create one or more seperate layers for each of them giving me the chance to create the shadow effects. The vest, for example had two, the hat had two, and the skin had three. Using this technique makes the colouring process prett easy, but it also makes it easy for the shadows to become disjointed from each other, because I deal with such isolated areas in the model.
- Step the fifth
With the colouring done, I move onto the home stretch. I very rarely draw more than one model on the same page, unless they are directly interacting. Instead, I do each one seperately, and compose them together in PS. The backgrounds are screengrabs from the games my comics depict, since I'm not a good enough "draw-man", (I'm afraid I can't use the word artist) to do it properly myself. I apply filters to both the charactes models and the backgrounds to make the aliasing between them appear less stark, and I finish the whole thing off by adding captions and speech bubbles. Then I repeat the process for all the panels.
The logos I use for each of the strips are meant to ape the logo of each individual game. This means, I have to hunt down the font used in the games logo, and find a way to ape the layout, to create a familiarity. I find that having named my comic Quick Time Moral Choice, I get alot of lee-way, when doing this, because has enough letters to fit most the names of the games I've done so far. God help me if I ever do one for Rage or SiN or any other game with few letters in the title.
So there you have it. Simple really. I wouldn't recommend this process to anyone else, because it is highly personalised to the way that makes me feel comfortable. But I hope you've gotten something out of this post at least.
Stay tuned for 7.
