Today I thought I would walk you through how I make a page of Adamsville. Don’t want to give away much of the context of this page, gotta keep my spoilers low, but here we go!
First things first, I go through my script and do a pretty standard thumbnail of the page I will be doing. Then I do a very loose pencil rough of that page, which is above. I draw these roughs on a sheet of 8.5×11 paper that has a template on it for each page. Which you can find HERE.
After I am done with the rough I scan that in and resize it to fit the final page size within the program, Manga Studio EX. I then go to town, inking the mess out of that page! I started inking all digitally about six months ago when I got frustrated with the flexibility of the analog brushes and tools I was working with. I highly recommend this program. This page was a challenge because of the space the characters are in. Lots of perspective lines and all.
After that I do a process called color flatting, in Photoshop. It’s a fairly analog process, but it sets the page up to be colored more easily. If you are interested in learning this process more, you can see a great tutorial from Kazu Kibuishi on his blog, right HERE
Lastly I color the piece in Photoshop. I use a number of custom brush settings I have aquired over the years or learning how to do this better. BUt I aim to add mood, atmospheric lighting and texture to help the space feel as real as a make believe place in a comic can be!
Hope you’ve enjoyed this walkthrough. Right now I am right on track to be finished with this book by August. So close I can taste it!