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Quick stick figure sketch
Tools of the trade. Note the foam wrap around the technical pencil. By increasing your grip size on your instruments you greatly reduce tendon strain in your hand, wrist and forearm. It's a little awkward at first but you quickly get used to it.
Pentalic Paper for Pens. I love this stuff. It takes an ink line well, it's thin enough to use a light table with and it cost about $12.00 per 50 sheets.
Macromedia's Fontographer. Keywords: Comic Strip Tutorial, Best Inking Methods for Comic Strips, Inking Tools for Comic Books, Pens, Brushes, Paper, Comic Book Lettering |
So, how do you create these cartoons? First I capture my ideas down in a quick stick figure sketch
on typing paper. Speed is the key here as a great idea can quickly fade.
I'm not kidding...this is how I put my ideas down. First I grab a sheet of 11" x 14" Pentalic Paper for Pens and create a box 9 1/2" x 9 1/2" with a technical pencil (HB lead) and a T -square. Then I create a 1/2" strip along the top for the headline. Next I divide the remaining space into four equal sections. I draw directly with pencil in the first panel and begin blocking out my basic characters, scenery and dialog. Once it looks right I'll make a tracing of the first panel on a piece of typing paper using my light table. This will be my template for the other three panels. Using the light table I then move my template from panel to panel and loosely block in the scene. I know there will be changes in facial expressions and body language later so I focus mainly on dimensions and continuity. Now it's time for the details. I add the nuances and additional dialog. I leave little to chance, so my pencils are well fleshed out before I start inking. Personally I want to make very few decisions during the inking process. The time for experimenting is during the sketching process. I ink with a Reform Refograph by Alvin ( nib size .70) filled with Rapidograph Ultradraw ink. Unfortunately the Reform Refograph is no longer made and they're very hard to find. I feel the Reform is far superior to the Rapidograph. Large areas are filled in with a cheap watercolor brush. After the ink is dry I begin clean up with one of those kneaded puddy erasers. Last, I strip in my bi-line that I cut from a master sheet. After all this I go to the copy store and make a copy at 80% to fit on a sheet of 8 1/2" x 11"paper that already has my contact info copied on it ( I make a big stack of sheets that only have contact info to use as my copy stock ) Then I do any additional touch ups( paste up lines, drop outs etc.) before making copies for distribution from this new "master". New Method (2000 to Present) My biggest influences on my inking were illustrators and cartoonists that were using a brush. I didn't know this so I attempted to create a "brush look" by using an ink pen. This involved going over an ink line meticulously to create the thicks and thins that naturally occur with a single brushstroke. Later on, I discovered that all these artists I admired used a brush. But I didn't like brushes, I liked pens and pencils. I had resigned myself to continued years of finger, hand, and tendon pain until Nina Paley turned me on to a the Kuretake Japanese "brush pen". It has soft nylon bristles and comes with a set of disposable ink cartidges. Don't use them though. Ditch the cartidges and buy a Lamy refillable cartridge Model Z26. I fill it with the same Ultradraw ink that I used in my Reform Refograph. It's changed my life. I can now ink an entire cartoon in a fourth of the time, and without any pain. Unfortunately, lettering my strip still took a long time and created a lot of hand pain because I was still using an ink pen to do the lettering. To speed up my lettering I scanned the best examples of my hand lettering and converted them to a font using Macromedia's Fontographer. I was now able to type in my lettering in Illustrator (using a template as a guide for placement) print it out, and paste it above the characters. That's how I do my strip now and I have no intentions of ever going back. Cartoonist Nina
Paley turned me on to this amazing Japanese "brush pen".
They cost about $35.00 but they're priceless as far as I'm concerned. |
