BGSG St Patrick's Day Comic Process (Patreon)

(3-17-23) NO update! Just thought those who are new here would like seeing the process post for this past St. Patrick's Day comic. Enjoy! 🍀☢️
__

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

As promised, here's a bit of the process for the Batgirl Supergirl comic I posted a couple of days ago. If you read my last process post, there's not a whole lot new here. You might gleam a few new things if you wanted to read through it though.

Above is a sped-up 60-second time-lapse of everything I'm going to show you below. If you really have the time to spare, you can also check out this eighteen-minute one I also uploaded for you. In both, you might notice that certain steps I'm sharing below are a bit out of order. That's only because of how I was able to save the files.

And with that, let's get to it!

STEP 1

The first step with any of these comics is simply getting the idea out of my head. This is the only step I doodle on actual paper. As you can see above, there wasn't exactly a lot of doodling for this one. Just some circles for head placement and some loose dialog written beside each panel.

It's been a while since I've used a basic six-panel grid for these BGSG comics. It's how they originally started after-all and I was eager to see if I was still capable of telling a quick story in this format. That's how this one was formed and I guess y'all will have to let me know if I succeeded or not!

STEP 2

Most of my preliminary work and panel borders used to be done in Photoshop. A couple of years ago, in my desire to escape having to switch between two different programs, I started drawing all of my comics entirely in Clip Studio Paint. It's not all sunshine and peaches, but so far I like it sooooo much better than Ps. For one, I can start my grid like the above. Those are just guides I can "ink" over later. That way I can move and resize them if necessary as I draw the comic. Useful for more complex layouts, not that big a deal for this current one. The most usual feature here is I could automatically divide my page into equal horizontal and vertical panels. So making this grid took about 3 seconds.

For the purpose of this tutorial though, I'm going to show those panel borders after I've drawn over them. Since my CSP guides aren't visible when saving files, you wouldn't be able to see them otherwise.

STEP 3

Before I do any drawing, I always type (or paste) all of my dialog in first. It doesn't always stay the same  (and if you watch either of the time-lapses, you'll see that it didn't), but it gives me a good idea of how much room I have for the art and how to place my characters. I know it's the industry norm, but I can't imagine trying to draw comics without this crucial step in place first.

STEP 4

With my type out of the way I can begin figuring out the layout for my characters. This is what I've done here, quickly scribbling in the general placement and expressions that I feel best capture the little joke I'm trying to tell. I'm not trying to go into much detail here. Mostly just making sure the pacing and composition works.

STEP 5

This is what I would call the "penciling" stage. Going over the loose layouts with more detailed drawings. These pencils are on on an above layer (kinda like tracing paper) and you can see the layouts are at a reduced opacity below them.

These pencils are actually a bit more detailed than normal, primarily because I hadn't quite decided on exactly how Kara's new costume was going to look. Usually, my pencils are much looser, somewhere between steps 4 and 5.

I use a blue line because that's basically what I got used to for with these "under-drawings" when I worked traditionally. I'm just used to working that way even though I'm entirely digital now. It's also easier to "ink" a black line over them.

In the middle of such inking, I realized the side-profile I had for Batgirl in panel 5 wasn't working for the expression I wanted to give her. That's okay. That's why it's nice working digitally! So I redrew a couple of alternate options here, ultimately deciding the one on the right worked best.

STEP 6

Inking! This is my favorite step. All the hard work of trying to figure out where everything goes and how it looks is out of thew way and now it's just further refining the artwork. Relaxing.

All my word bubbles are drawn on a separate layer so I can easily draw underneath them. I also kept going back and forth between breaking the panel borders in a few places. Glad I decided to since aesthetically I think the whole comic is better for it. Everything feels more open.

STEP 7

I don't usually flat my entire comic pages these days, which is what you see here with no shading or lighting. Lately, I've been doing all my flatting simultaneously with the rendering. But I did this time! Why? I have no idea. But least you get to see this extra step.

STEP 8

I do, however, usually render my characters before any background shading. Which is what you see here. I don't concern myself too much with accurate lighting unless it's crucial to the storytelling. Mainly I just want the characters to stand out well.

STEP 9

Now it's time to shade those backgrounds! I choose a reddish sky not because I usually color Gotham skies red (although nice that it worked out that way) but because it helped Kara pop out in her fancy green outfit. Only exception is panel three which I rendered green to emphasize her gamma radiation.

STEP 10

Lastly, I color up some of the artwork and rework the curves and levels a touch to give everything more of a softer look. It's also the reason I eliminated the panel borders but I kept going back and forth on this. I could have gone either way.

Recently I noticed that Derek Laufman (terrific illustrator-- consider following him on Patreon if you aren't already) adds a little bit of a texture overlay to his comics. I started playing around with this too. Again, it's almost unnoticeable but it's a little thing that helps the colors set a little more organically on our eyes. Especially with the vivid retina and OLED screens a lot of us are using these days.

Anyhoo, there you go! Finished comic. After all this it's just uploading it for everyone to read and hoping it wasn't a giant unproductive use of my time. Haha.