When I first started on this odyssey I happen to discover this video of Dave Kellett going through the process on his comic strip “Sheldon” having read and listened to Dave for years (back on the Blank Label Comics Podcast days) I was curious as to how he does it. I am not creating my comic the exact way he does, but I have modeled my process after his.
How the Comic Strip “Sheldon” is Created from Sheldon Comics on Vimeo.
As I start working on next week’s strips I figured I should take a few minutes and go over the process. First, of course, comes an idea… sometimes this is just something I saw that I thought was amusing, sometimes it is a commentary on the day, sometimes it is an idea that I’ve had for a long time. This gets drawn out in pencil- I use Prismacolor Verithin non-photo blue. I have created a template to draw on that has been copied onto card stock. It consists of the rectangle and the type. I use a ruler to draw the lines needed for text using the top third of the rectangle keeping this a more traditional comic strip for now. After drawing out what I want I ink it all in. I am presently using a set of Copic pens with a varied with including a brush. I’m still working on my inking which I hope will improve as I continue. Once the comic is inked and the text and speech bubbles have been drawn I scan this into my laptop to finish it all. I start with a 600 dpi scan and clean up anything I need to (erase the lines so that the individual panels are defined) I tweak the brightness and contrast and then save the file for my archives. I then go back and resize the stripe to 850 pixels wide at 100 dpi and then save it for the web as a .gif file. From there I upload that file to the website using the Comic Press plug-in in Word Press and type a short message telling the story in a little more depth. I hope you are enjoying the journey and as I continue to grow as a cartoonist I am hoping that not only my artwork but also my storytelling will improve.
I may be back from England but I still have a bunch of observations during that portion of the trip along with other ideas that need to be published. I’ve even been asked to chat about the trip next week at our local MINI dealership (Dreyer & Reinbold MINI) and show some of the photos I took (that alone should make an interesting strip).