Once in a while people ask me about how the comic is made. I could do a complete step by step thing, but too many people take those as tutorials (they’re not) and my process changes way too often for it to be good for very long. Instead, here are some shots of recent things in progress so you can see a little bit of how I work.

Thoughts on Materials:

I am not terribly picky about the materials I use. Most pages are made with Prismacolor/alcohol-based markers, watercolors, Speedball ink, or whatever else happens to be around when I’m working. I use a lot of cheap kids’ watercolors because the colors are just so bright and vibrant, although I prefer the texture and quality of “real” tube watercolors and work them in where they fit. It’s a constantly changing process, and I tend to use whatever is currently at hand when I’m making pages.

This is what happens:

To make a comic, I first check my notes and think about what needs to happen next. I don’t really have a script; I tried that a few years ago and while it was nice to have everything written down it was too structured and didn’t leave me any room to change things if I had a new idea. I do have an outline for the entire story and a bunch of notes for ideas, and that seems to work for me. I scribble out a quick page layout for all the panels, word balloons, and stick people to roughly show what is going on.

I come back and ink with whatever I feel like at the time: sometimes with ink and a brush and sometimes with a ballpoint pen. Sometimes ink is overkill and sometimes a pen isn’t emotive enough. Next, I color everything in using marker or watercolor, depending on what’s going on and what I feel like doing at the time. Whatever.

Last, I scan it in at high-resolution and clean it up in Photoshop. I sometimes adjust colors if I don’t like the final results, but most of the time there isn’t much that needs to be changed. I throw in any special effects or sound effect text before lettering the word balloons. I use a font that I made myself based somewhat on my own handwriting called Bughand. (The Messenger logo and other titles are set in Armor Piercing from Blambot.) I adjust the size for the web before saving and uploading where you are able to read comics to your heart’s content.

In general, I try to keep the process pretty loose and malleable because I’d rather spend my time making pages and actually getting the story told than agonizing about the details. Sometimes that happens anyway.

Process Videos

To see video on how the pages are made, visit Messenger’s Youtube channel!