I’ve always thought it was interesting to see how web cartoonists make their comic strips. I always hoped I could glean some new trick off their walkthroughs or get some new ideas about how to improve my own comic. Well now I think I’m finally at a point where I can create my own page detailing exactly how I create a George comic strip. If your computer chair happens to have…some kind of weird seatbelt installed on it…fasten it now!

I think the majority of cartoonists start out with a rough sketch of the strip and go from there. Not me. With all the improvement in drawing technology these days, I can sort of both sketch and ink my comic at the same time. Everything about the creation of a George comic is digital–no pen, no paper. Well, not in a traditional sense. I use a Wacom Intuos3 drawing tablet to do all my drawing. If I do something I don’t like, I just undo it–sort of the cleaner, faster way of erasing something. So first off, I open up Macromedia Flash and start drawing.

I use Flash because it’s an easy to use vector-based program–it only stores data about lines and color, making the file sizes very small overall. I draw all the characters separately and save them as their own graphic files so that they’re easier to position in the final stages. I open up a new Flash document and use the pencil tool on a large canvas (or “stage”) area and begin drawing. Most of the time I just sort of have a general idea of what I want–hence the idea that I’m sort of sketching and inking the comic at the same time. Both the initial idea and the final form take place right along with each other.

At the left is the finished line art for the character of George that appears in the first panel of the comic. You might notice I thought his eyes needed to be a little bigger than they are above. I tend to make little changes like that as necessary.

Before I finish each individual character, I like to place the line art on a cell template so I can make sure the size is right. If it’s a little too big or too small, I can change the size as necessary so I won’t have the headache of working with mismatched characters in the later stages.

Here’s the line art for Greg in this particular panel. When I finish drawing a character in Flash, I export the line art as a .PNG file, a great lossless format that supports transparency, and save it for later.

After I’ve finished all the characters and exported them all as .PNG graphic files, I open them in Adobe Photoshop to add color. To get the right skin tones and hair color for all the characters, I open up a previously-done comic to grab those colors from.

Same thing with Greg here.

When I’m finished coloring the characters in, I place them into a cell template approximately where I want them to be in the final product. Then I add a black stroke, or outline, around them and a very slight bevel/emboss effect to help them stand out a little more. Oddly enough, I usually do the background last and put it behind the characters after they’ve all been added.

I keep doing the steps on the previous page for every character in every panel of the strip. I place them where I want them to be on the comic panel layout and get to work on the background.

The background in this particular comic is simple–presumably a den or spare room with a simple window and floor lamp. I’ll add lighting effects later to make it look a little more dynamic.

Now the comic is really starting to take shape. Notice the lighting effects on the background make it look kind of dark with light coming from the lamp. I’ll add similar lighting effects to the characters themselves next.

Now the comic is darn near finished. All that’s left is to add the words and talk bubbles.

And there you have it! Once the words and talk bubbles are put on, I get my e-mail address, copyright info and web address on there. Originally, the comics are drawn at 3840 pixels by 1200 pixels, which is pretty darn big, and then resized to 741 pixels wide for web viewing. I save them as .gif files and finally take a breather.

So in case you didn’t guess, creating a George comic strip can sometimes be a pretty long affair. I’m getting faster at it all the time though, and I think the quality is improving, too. Hopefully a long time from now I’ll look back on this walkthrough and think about how much better my stuff is now. Whoa…deep.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed the trip.