Tools of the Trade

Webcomics can take many forms and with every story comes a unique and creative style. We have talked about naming your comics, the themes one can incorporate and how you developed your own style over time. This week, we’re getting technical. This week we break out the tools!

Back in the days of old (and by that I mean when I started my first webcomic at 13), the process usually involved busting out my pencils and pens and drawing everything on paper. I have an entire sketch book packed away that was full of pages for an old webcomic of mine, Puppets and Strings, each done by hand and entirely with a 2B mechanical pencil. It suited the comic really well as it left it with a weighty sense of suspense, each page heavy and dark.

These pages were then scanned in, cleaned up and typeset before being released online and at the time, this was the general process many creators used.

I also played with good, ole paint; gouache to be exact as it was thicker and more vibrant than watercolour, (honestly my colouring style has changed a little over the years but it’s clear I like my colour blindingly stark). It’s lost now, but one of my other projects, Flirtatious, was done entirely in ink and gouache. But my experimentation didn’t end there!

During this time I also managed to wrangle myself a graphics tablet and a bootleg copy of Photoshop and it was here that the game really changed. This has become my preferred way to producing comics these days. I moved through three graphics tablets before finally landing on the one I had lusted over since my university days; the Cintiq! Oh Cintiq! How I love thee. It is all the tactile benefits of drawing straight onto paper but on the screen! Talking about speeding up my workflow!

What tools do you use to create your webcomics? Are you a pen and paper traditionalist or are you comic page slinging digital master? Let us know in the comments below! And join us on Sunday evening for our Quackchat at 5:30PM(EST) where we’ll be talking about this topic!

Till next week lovelies!