Brian Anderson

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Making the Comic

Since I'm a bit more comfortable with how I'm making this comic, thought I'd share my process. And it is now a process. A changing one, but far from the muddled series of penciling and ink wash methods it started out as. Right, here a pic of the scanned in art:Comic processNow the original page is actually a piece of heavy bond, gray printer paper. Kind of starts you off with a nice tone. On top of that I pencil in the art. Smudge some of the pencil. Add some watercolor washes on top to build up some volume. Sometimes I add ink to some parts, usually things I want to have stand out. I'll do some finishes with white paint or a few more texture washes. Then I scan the whole mess in. Truthfully, I am forcing myself to stay loose and keep it messy.Once I have it scanned in, I duplicate the original art. This new layer becomes my smudge painting. In essence, via the magic of photoshop, I use the pencil, ink and watercolors as an underpainting. And after smushing things about I get this:page21_process_smudgeAnd that's where I am on this page right now. I'll post the next few steps once I get them done.