2024-04-22 1:03:43 ¶ ●

Page (4/14)

I wanted to share my process for my 14 page Nona comic, This got pretty long so the rest is under the cut!

First, I start by making a script, as I’m weeding through Nona I’m drawing immediate reactions. This way I don’t have to keep track of action as well as dialogue. This is the most dialogue heavy page of the comic so this one has the most detailed panel break ups.

In this scene Alecto’s inner thoughts are my favorite part so I dedicated a lot of time figuring how to add them naturally. I especially love “The old man, Crux—the child Crux, barely one hundred years old”

Once I have a rough, and I mean ROUGH thumbnail for the page I move on to creating a digital sketch.

Side note, you’ll notice I go back and forth from traditional to digital back to traditional. Having to fully redraw poses multiple times makes me really think about the action and what I want to include.

Thumbnailing is for figuring out panels. Sketching is for action and dialogue. I tend to show action and emotion over following all the rules of comic making. If you notice i break the 180 rule, but at the end of the day character interactions are more important to me.

I redraw the sketch on comic paper in mechanical pencil. Again I don’t trace the digital work because I want the linework to stay loose. I just focus on lineweight and contrast at this step. The dialogue is written out first then I line everything else with my felt tip pen.

I clean up the comic and replace the handwritten dialogue with a font I made out of my handwriting. This part is tedious but I really don’t know how to skip it. My handwriting is too hard to read but I also need to make sure all the dialogue fits naturally, so that means doing it twice.

My coloring process is really chaotic and can’t be summed up in screenshots.

Crazy right? I am constantly adjusting, changing, and generally making a mess and then cleaning it up when I color. Often when my colors look off to me it’s because I have a contrast problem, so I check it in greyscale.

If you want to know more I can share my brushes and techniques.

And with that I’m done! And then I move on to the next page.