I posted this some two years ago as I had just started working on Brooklyn Blood with Paul Levitz in the pages of Dark Horse Presents. As the graphic novel collection was just released (to a comic shop near you!) and it is in the news, I thought I would repost it today. For those who are process junkies or just curious, this is how I usually illustrate a comic! Way too many steps if you ask me! 

Step A: After I read the script I draw several thumbnails with a black marker. I throw most of them away in disgust. You see here the thumbnail I settled on. Then I scan this winning thumbnail into the computer and place it in page template (the template being the correct proportions that it will be when printed).

Step B: I draw the rough pencils on a Cintiq (if you don’t know what a Cintiq is just hit the Googles). If you don’t have a Cintiq, many people use a light box to draw finished pencils on top of the blown up thumbnail which you can enlarge on a copy machine or computer.

Step C: Then I get back out of the computer by printing out a blue line version of the pencils on Bristol board. Blue line because I can now ink it in the real world with black ink, and when I scan it back into Photoshop, the blue line will not show up in the scan, only the black lines show up.

Step D: You can ink using a Cintiq also, but I still like using messy ink and brush or pen or wooden sticks. I personally like making marks on real paper. Too much work in the computer ends up putting me to sleep.

Step E: I scan the final black and white art back into the computer and on a separate layer from the black art in Photoshop, I add the colors! I also add the word balloons early on in the process because that does affect where the reader’s eye goes, but for this brief art example, I left that bit out! And there you have it. The exciting, amazing secrets of an illustrator! I just now see that I wrote “step A” in the text, and “Part A” on the art. That’s called a mistake. I make many of those! It’s part of the process.