I recently updated my process! I lay out a page worth of panels in blue ink in photoshop:
Then print it out onto 9×12 smooth bristol. I have a big printer that lets me do such things! I then head to my drawing board and pencil everything out with a mechanical blue pencil. Then I ink on top, usually using Faber-Castell pens XS, S, F, M (for borders) and B (a brush pen, for style!). I use rulers to go over my borders rather than doing them in Photoshop, because it feels more “real” than perfect, computer-generated boxes. Y’know?
When that’s done, I scan it into Photoshop in black & white at 600dpi, clean it up, and use the Threshold tool to make all my edges sharp. I usually set it to about 180. Then, a series of actions – I make the b/w image into a layer, delete all the white (leaving just outlines), create a background layer that I fill with white, leave a blank middle layer for colouring, and lock the transparency of my top layer. Got it?
(There is a separate layer here for Catbug’s spots.)
I colour in that Flat Colours layer by using the Fill tool, set to Contiguous and All Layers but NOT Anti-Alias (which creates smooth/feathered edges, and I like mine sharp). It’s pretty straightforward from there. I lock the transparency on that top layer because it allows me to colour the inks just by loosely going over them with the Brush tool. It won’t colour anything BUT the lines. Are you annoyed that I spell “colour” with a U yet?
There’s lots of fiddling from here, and you can make dozens of layers for backgrounds, gradients, effects, etc. This is just the basic 101 of how I do, and it is in no way professional or even recommended?
When it’s all done, I save a high-res TIFF file and a low-res 700px wide PNG for web use.
THE END
