When you’re drawing a comic – and even more so if you’re writing it
too – you’re building a world. Not only do you want to tell a story in
that world, but ideally you want to control how your reader feels
about that story too. In that, colour is your best friend. “I like vibrant
colours,” says Mako Fufu. “So if it’s a page of my webcomic or a
random single-page story, I generally go for it (I need more white
backgrounds to visually compensate, though). On longer stories, it
usually depends on the mood I want to convey; what the story is
about. If it’s a more dramatic story, I would go for more sober tones,
for example. An extreme variation in colour from one panel to
another may indicate something that happened in the past, a dream,
a fantasy, another dimension and so on. That stylistic device may also
be applied to the borders or the page background, so the reader
would perceive the difference without having any colouring change
on the panels themselves.”For comic artists who work on kids’ titles, the picture search is a tough challenge.
Jamie Smart (www.fumboo.com) worked on some called Find Chaffy. “I drew each
search on an A2 sheet,” he says, “filling every bit of space with characters. In the end I
did about 20 of those, then went on to do a similar process for my picture search pages
in Doctor Who Adventures magazine, and there have been over 50 of those. I loved doing
it; there’s something very absorbing about getting lost in the details of a really big piece
of artwork, but I don’t know if I’d want to repeat it. For all the fun, it made me a bit
cross-eyed by the end.”
Keeping characters consistent across pages is a challenge, as Smart explains: “Most
characters are made up of basic shapes, and that varies for every artist. My basic
shapes are circles for the heads, then a small lump for the body, and around that
framework I can add limbs and faces and whatever else. Once you’ve found the shapes
you like using, it only takes a bit of practice to ingrain that into your brain, and once it’s
there it just becomes habit.” For Smart, the first step in a picture search image is to
draw lots of “little scenes, certain characters doing certain things, randomly all over the
page. Then slowly add more activity around each of those scenes, which then begins to
connect the picture together. This one took about seven days,” adds Smart, “but I’ve
done so many now I’ve got it down to three (rather long) days.”© Jamie Smart/www.findchaffy.com© Mako Fufu- SEARCH FOR CHARACTER
- FIND YOUR
OWN PROCESS - CONTROL MOOD WITH COLOUR
01
PLAN THE LAYOUT
Once Ward has read the script, his first
step is to use Photoshop to design basic panel
structure and layout. “I find that your own style is
largely invisible to yourself,” says Ward. “It simply
is the way you draw, and it’s easier to see
mistakes or areas of improvement where other
people see style.”02
SCANNING AND PENCILLING
Based on the digital rough, Ward will
produce rough pencils. Character consistency is
important, but Ward thinks “character acting” is even
more so: “I spend many hours staring at myself in
Photo Booth pulling all sorts of faces. I think if you
can nail a character’s personality through evoking
their emotions then the inconsistencies matter less.
Once readers are connected emotionally with a
character, they’ll forgive the odd wonky nose.”03
ANOTHER PASS, COLOUR PASS
Ward uses a light box to create a pass
with tight and more finished pencils. After that, it’s
time to colour the image, which is almost all done
in Photoshop. However, Ward notes: “I have a bank
of watercolour paintings and textures that I cut up
and layer onto gradients of colour to give the final
pages more tension.”TIPS FOR COMIC ARTISTS