Your Tools and Process!

[Rob]

It's got some pretty tough... hurdles to overcome. If you are just using it for lineart and nothing else it "might" be ok but that's a comment that must be taken on a case by case basis.

Let's just say it isn't perfect and a lot of baby is usually chucked out with the bathwater. If you play with it long enough you might find settings you like though.

[Gar]

a lot of baby is usually chucked out with the bathwater.

...and now I've got a mental image of a modular baby with parts of it going down the drain. It's kind of horrific now I describe it, but it made me giggle.

[Edit: OK I tried drawing in Illustrator using the brush tool. Yep, it's awesome and I'm getting it. Thanks to Yamino for the tutorial on your site, it was really helpful!]

[JayFantastico]

I'lll chip in our process. 

For the writing, I sit down and turn on my iTunes and listen to some music and think of something funny and write it down.  Then I text it to him since he's usually at work and then he preplans the art while at work.

As for the art, since I'm not the artist I can't say any specifics but I can say what I know about it.  Chris usually takes a toothbrush dipped in ink to make the panels.  He lets it dry for half an hour or so.  He takes out his note pad and translates his pre-plans to really tight pencils.  Then, he uses 3 different sized horsehair brushes (sized 1, 3, and 5) and india ink.  Once the art is done he takes out a steak knife for the lettering to the right of the comic and the "©Louder Than Bombs" on the bottom.  After that, it's just he final touches and the ink wash.

We scan at 600dpi and use photoshop to up the contrast and brightness a bit.  Done!

[Gar]

Steak knife and toothbrush?! AWESOME!!

[Travis Surber]

Strathmore Bristol Pads,Pencils from the Dollar Tree,Eraser from the dollar tree,Sharpie for coloring and panels,gel ink pen for lettering,precision pens of various sizes for inking,drawn either on a table at work in between loading trucks or my kitchen table after work.Scanned on a 30 dollar refurbished Lexmark scanner/printer/copier into Manga Studio Debut 4.0
I'm about as low cost and maintainence as it gets but if you want to see the results hit www.haintedholler and tell me it doesn't look good.

[ran]

I generally open a new template file on Photoshop, and then, in separate windows, draw characters in the poses I want. i then copy those images, and paste them into the panels I have set up in my template, and resize them with transform so they're standing where I want and there is enough room for word bubbles. I so the same when i draw out my backgrounds, but in a different colour.

Then I print those out two panels at a time, so they match the size of my strip cardstock, which I'll have added panels to, in advance. I use my light-board to re-sketch and make changes to the picture for each panel, and generally I'll draw in more details here that I skipped over with my doodles. In this step, I use blue col-erase.

I then ink everything using Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Brush pens, except larger black spaces, which i try to do on the computer.

I scan in greyscale at 300dpi, and mess with the levels to make sure that my blue lines are eliminated from the clean inks. I clean it up and prep it, and make any last minute changes at this point. Then I colour, letter, add word balloons and redo the frames to make sure that they're completely black and thicker than the lineart they encase.

And that's pretty much it.   

[Rob]

Someday I will tell you all my artistic process... but why hasten the day when you lose all respect for me. It will happen naturally over time. And then, when it does, I'll come clean on my artistic process... and by then you will still be horrified... but not surprised. 

[operationremie]

i use to just make up images based on the script i got from my friend.

but now that i'm doing it on my own, i gotta redo how i do all the comics. right now, i'm scripting things out and then i'm gonna use photoshop and my intuos4 tablet to do all my drawing.

[mcfadyn]

Jay kind of touched on this, but I'll go over it again.  I usually have a couple of crappy little lined notepads I use at work to scribble down some poses I like and all that.  Then I get home and use an old tooth brush to make the borders for the frames and while that dries I plan what to do for realzzz.  Once it's dry I use a pretty standard mechanical pencil to pencil out some quick drawings.  Then on to inking.   While most artists, not to mention almost ALL webcartoonists, use tablets to draw and ink... I like to ink by hand.  I used to use an old steak knife for the line work, but for the last 6 months or so I've been using these Artists' Water Colour Sable ~ pointed round Windsor & Newton brushes (I know that way long, but that's what's on the brush ) I've got sizes 0, 1, 3 and 5.  But most work is done with the size 1.  Ink wise, I use Speedball Super Black India Ink and store it in a small spice jar (just for travel purposes). I ink everything by hand including the speech balloons.  The words in the frames are usually made by my size 8 Micron Pigma pen.  The words on the right side, including the (c)Louderthanbombs, is made with a steak knife.  After that I use this cup that I use to store the steak knife, a cheese knife, tooth brush and small brush for ink washing to ink wash with.  I never make any new ink water... if I gets low i just at more water to it.  The deeper go, the darker the inkwash that comes out.  Then we let it dry and that's that.  Sorry to ramble on, but people ask alot about my tools.

[Gar]

One of the nice things about using more traditional media to do your art is that you end up with Original Artwork you can sell later (and I'd say your originals look even better than the web iterations)

[mcfadyn]

Yeah, we don't really sell them, but they DO look alot better than the web stuff.  I like the look of it more than anything.  I get really sick of slick lines all drawn in flash or whatever.  Sometimes you just gotta get back to the basics and DRAW. 

[Pixel]

While I certainly don't stand a chance at topping THAT process, as a fellow artist I'll post mine anyway.

First I write the page's script [as in literal dialogue and such] in Microsoft Word. Using that as a reference, I draw the roughs with regular ol' #2 pencil on regular ol' 8x11 paper, trying my best to eyeball enough space for text bubbles, but I don't actually draw them. I then scan the page onto my computer and use Photoshop for the rest.

I mess around with the roughs, changing the sizes of things, making more or less room in panels if need be, etc. After that, I make a new white-filled layer with an Inside Stroke on top of everything and just cut out boxes for panels. From there I use the Brush tool, standard shape usually around 7 px size, and ink the drawings. I make new layers for every little thing because I'm paranoid. After that I color it [if the page is in color] and then make bubbles using shapes and selections, type in the text, and then down a glass of lemonade.

Really basic, but that last step will make or break you.

[plughead]

Hey everyone

My art process is kinda weird, and its evolved greatly since I first started years ago. Here's a brief history:

2003: 8.5x11 crap paper, pencils, markers and pencil crayons. Scanned in, and type and borders added with Illustrator and PhotoChop™

2005: 11x13 bristol, markers, ink pens and pencil crayons. No more pencils. Scanned in and stuff added in with Illustrator and Photoshop

2007: 11x13 bristol, lightboxing final inks onto bristol over ballpoint pen roughs. Scanned in and nearly everything done in Photoshop, with some bits here and there created in Illustrator. 3D sets (Download Spiral exterior and interior) and props (SarPlus), modeled in Hexagon and rendered in Bryce. Occasional use of photographed items (DVD case and hands, fishing lure, Sarah's guitar on occasion, walnuts, cassette tape).

2010: Full digital workflow. No more paper or scanning. Still use 3D models and Illustrator and I use Photoshop for final comping. Intensified use of photorealistic (earth) and vector (busted television) elements, though trying harder to improve their integration with other art. Some props, such as 6SUX, RASBOT and the grenade have all been created in real life from plastic and various bits and pieces. Nearly every instance of the '70 AAR 'Cuda is a vector tracing over photos taken of an actual model kit I built.

I hope that wasn't TMI, sorry!

[operationremie]

i don't think i've posted on here (or in the forum in a while)

i use to draw on paper and scan it in and then draw with my crappy little wacom tablet. recently, i redid my entire computer and added a new screen. i also went and bought a new intuos4 medium tablet and started actually drawing everything on the photoshops instead of paper. it's actually going really well. i then do all my coloring and stuff there.

[jeffa]

Good news, everyone! I haven't been able to hang out here for a while, but I'm trying to drop by more frequently.

I just finished making a lightbox for inking and posted a blog entry about it.

I have a blog entry http://galacticbeacon.com/blog/tools_of_the_trade and a page http://galacticbeacon.com/galacticbeacon/page/index/GettingALightboxTheHardWay with more details and lots of pictures.

Wood working is another of my hobbies and I especially like working with older hand tools.

One of the reasons I've been away from here is that I published an anthology of my science fiction and fantasy short stories with some comics as an app for the Palm WebOS phones and for the Kindle. You can read more about that on my blog as well if you are interested.