I wanted to do a cutaway showing the different phases. Alas, my Photoshop skills were not up to the task, but I got close to my desired result, and a little bit of fudging made it acceptable to me.
I “ink” the final lines over my sketch layer: These lines are the lines you see in the final product. When complete, this layer gets copied to a layer I name “paint” and moved below the ink layer. I can use the paint bucket and other sloppy tools, since any poor edges will be hidden under the unmolested inks. For some smaller stuff (eyes, for example) I use the select tools to contain the paint bucket. This is analogous to animation painters painting on the back of cels: The linework remains sharp, and paint edges remain hidden.
The nice thing about Photoshop is I get unlimited layers, not two. So, Shading is done on a layer between ink and paint. That way, I can make changes without disturbing my paint layer. If I don`t like the result, I can always just delete the shading and still have a good product ready to go. Animation painters would have killed for that — They had to shade THEN paint, and it was not easy to “undo”.
Text is annoying, because in Photoshop Elements 3.0 every text box is its own layer, or at least that`s true with my skill level. This creates a lot of unecessary layers, but that`s only relevant when I`m working. There`s no evidence of that in the finished product. I put them over the balloons, and the balloons go over the matte. This way, dialog can go into the gutters. I have a bunch of ovals and draw in the leaders as necessary. I have some stock circle for thought bubbles, too.
The matte is painted white outside the panels. This hides all my sketch, ink, paint, etc. that falls outside the panels. This is like using drafting tape to make sharp edges, except I don`t lose the original work, I only hide it. Clearly, I did not cover up the work here: I did that for illustrative purposes.
I have a tag that`s part of my layout, which I usually finish first, and then I save the whole thing. I do my work at 3200×1400. This gives me plenty of resolution to work with, and I can resample in even multiples for common sizes which maintains image fidelity. For reference, my standard comic size is now 800×350. I package that in a nice .png form and it`s ready for popular consumption. Well, consumption at least.
I hope you enjoyed this session of “How It`s Made”. I wanted to do a how-to page, and figured, what the heck, might as well do it right. It was fun doing it, and made me think a lot about how I developed my processes. Coming soon: A new story line!