Making of Page 119

I'm often asked about my working process, so here's page 119, start to finish. I don't advocate any part of this system as the "right way" of making comics: the right way is whatever works for you, your editors, and everyone else who's involved along the way. This is just what works for me.

01: Script



There is no a standardized format for writing a graphic novel. I typically write my scripts in a style similar to a movie script, with no indication of page breaks or panels. This gives me a lot more room to play with the story and makes the editing process less painful than it otherwise might be.

Unlike many (or possibly most) cartoonists, I'm more comfortable writing comics than drawing them, and I write my entire story without drawing more than the odd character sketch. I'm a visual thinker, though, and often stage scenes in my head while I'm writing. When it's time for me draw, which can as much as a year later, I'm always surprised by how clearly those mental sketches come back to me.

After I finish a draft of the script I work with friends and editors to polish it up. When we all agree that the script is finished, or at least mostly finished, I go through and break it down into pages. My script for Chiggers was a 34 pages long and expanded into a 171-page graphic novel. That's about 5 comic pages for every page of script.

02: Thumbnail



It's important to see how pages will lie next to each other in the finished book, so I always try to thumbnail in spreads. A spread is two facing pages in a book. In the example above, page 119 is on the right. Believe it or not, the thumbnail can be the most thought-intensive part of drawing a comic page. This is where I plan the layout, action beats, placement of word balloons and sound effects. Each thumbnail is a tiny puzzle.

I draw my thumbs very fast and loose with a felt-tipped pen. Index cards are exactly the right size for this, so I always keep a stack in my desk. I also find it helpful to color in the word balloons with a highlighter.

03: Pencils



I begin by laying out my panels and inking the borders with a ruler and a 0.7 felt-tip pen (like a Micron, or my favorite, the Staedtler pigment liner). I draw on 11" x 14" smooth bristol board, with a half-inch border ruled around the edge, so my drawing area is 10" x 13".

After my ink lines have dried, I do a rough sketch with a non-photo blue Colerase pencil. I tighten that sketch with a pink or orange Colerase pencil. I go through a LOT of blue and orange pencils, so whenever I'm in an art store I buy them by the handful.

You can see in this drawing that I pencil my characters tightly, but background details like trees are often just scribbles. It's just as easy to draw those straight to ink.

04: Inks



Inking is fun, but also a little bit scary. I ink right on top of my pencils and . . . what if I mess up?! I try not to ink when I'm very tired or after drinking a lot of coffee, because my hand will shake and mess up my line. But even on my best days, a lot of white-out goes into my pages.

I inked Chiggers with a combination of tools: a #2 Raphael Kolinsky brush (I now use a #3), a Japanese G-Pen dip nib (favored by shonen manga artists), and a variety of felt-tips for details. I also used a bunch of Japanese white ink, but since then I've switched to the more durable Golden fluid acrylics white paint. I don't recommend white ink to anyone because it tends to smear or, if applied really thickly, flake off the page.

After I finish inking I don't erase my pencils; I scan that sucker right in and edit out the pencil lines with Photoshop. If you want to learn about correcting artwork for print, I suggest checking out the Reproguide by Jordan Crane and many others. This PDF was an invaluable resource when I was starting out.

Start to finish, it takes me about a day to complete one comic page.