My Comic Process Part 1

Since I've received some good feedback from my "Produce Your Own Mini Comic" tutorial blog entry, I figured I might as well blog my thought process when creating a comic from scratch. Currently, I am working on an eight page mini comic for the Comic Projects group on Facebook. The challenge is called "Monster Mini," and the rules are pretty straight forward. The mini comic must be done by August 1st, it must at least be eight pages, and it must contain a monster. With those basic rules to ground me, I started brain storming at the beginning of the month. At that time, I also had been watching several kung fu movies, particularly 36th Chamber of Shaolin and The Five Deadly Venoms. I decided to have a Shaolin monk be the hero, and an ogre type monster as the villain (mostly based on Japanese oni from mythology). Sketching and letting my mind wander helps me think things out in detail, so this is what I started doing:

Shaolin Monk, "Brother Zhao." You can see his six dots on his forehad “香疤 (xiāng bā).

Meng the Ogre. I really like his big upper body, and big arms. He has a Japanese tetsubo weapon. I know, I'm mixing Chinese and Japanese stuff, but it's my fun little mini comic.

This is Meng's head. As you can see the light sketch under his chin, I'm planning a double braided beard. He looks a little plain without one, and it's symmetrical to his horns.

Lastly, after fleshing out the story, I realized I had a few extras that needed to be drawn. This is a villager and a fisherman.



The other thing that helps get the brain pumping with ideas is going some photo reference hunting! Here are some pics I found that were inspiring:

While coming up with the story, I called my friend Aaron for a sounding board to bounce ideas off of. My main thoughts were having an ogre and a Shaolin monk, but I wanted the monk not to resort to Kung-Fu in this tale. I also wanted it to feel like an old myth or fable, so the end of the tale has to resolve with a lesson or moral. With those things in mind, I wrote up a simple synopsis of the story:

5/08/2012
A villager runs to the top of a mountain where a Shaolin monastery resides. He finds a monk, and begs that they send an army of monks to defend his village from an ogre. He wishes them to protect his people, because everybody knows that their Chinese boxing and sword skills are legendary. But only the one monk, Zhao comes down to the town to investigate.
When he arrives, he follows the path of destruction to an ogre eating cakes in a bakery. The monk gently taps the ogre's shoulder, and asks him why he has destroyed the town. The ogre claims he has the hunger of fifty men, and takes what he wants. The monk then suggests, "If I can feed you enough to satisfy your hunger, will you leave this village? If I fail at this task, you may eat me instead."
The ogre agrees, and the two set towards a lake. The monk boards a small sailing boat, and sets a large net into the water. He then asks the ogre to blow as hard as he can into the sail. The ogre blows, and the boat whizzes across the lake. At the other side, the monk unboards the board, and draws the net with the help of the ogre. Hundreds of fish have filled the net, and the ogre laughs pleasingly. The monk suggests, "if you help these fisherman of the village, you will be able to catch enough for yourself and for the village." The ogre vows to become a peaceful member of the community. The monk says his goodbyes, and returns to his monastery.
What do you think of this? Any suggestions? Once you think it sounds decent, I'm going to do a page breakdown of this for the eight pages. I'm also going to start doing some character sketches, and maybe nab some photo references of a Shaolin monastery.

From here, I look over the story, and share it again with my friend. Once we felt it was okay to move forward, I wrote up the page breakdowns. Essentially I write a key moment, idea, or scene that will appear on each page. The dialogue doesn't have to be fully realized, but if I come up with any dialogue, I make sure to write it down for future reference:

5/19/2012
Pg 1: Villager(female) climbs up mountain to the monastery, and finds Brother Zhao at the gate sweeping.

Pg 2: The villager requests an army of monks to defeat a monk that is terrorizing the village. Zhao says that his brothers are visiting another monastery and won't be back for a week. Zhao starts heading down the mountain and says, "I'll see what I can do." last panel shot of the frightened and exasperated villager yelling "aren't you at least going to bring a sword?!"

Pg 3: The monk follows path of destruction to the ogre sitting Indian-style in a bakery, eating whole cakes in one bite.

Page 4:  Zhao asks, "Could you at least pay for your food and be more careful in the village?" The ogre responds, "Pay? Who would offer me a job, if it meant feeding a hungry ogre? I have the appetite of 50 men. Bother me and you'll be my supper! The monk makes an offer that if he can feed the ogre, the ogre will not terrorize the village. If the monk fails, he will offer himself as food. The ogre agrees.

Pg 5: Zhao leads the ogre to a lake where two fishermen are sitting by a dock. Zhao asks them to tie their nets together and to borrow their boat.

Pg 6: Zhao boards the boat, and casts the net. Then asks the ogre to blow as hard as he can towards the sail. The ogre huffs and the boat whizzes across the lake.

Pg 7: The ogre and Zhao pull up the net to reveal a giant catch of fish and sea life. The ogre laughs and says he couldn't possibly eat that much fish.

Pg 8: The monk suggests he helps the fishermen to fish, and he and the village would have plenty of food. The ogre bear hugs Zhao, and the monk starts his journey towards the monastery and says goodbye.

I think this step is one of the most important, because this is my blueprint for the construction of the comic. From here, I can begin work on my thumbnails. From my thumbnails, I can start actual pages.
Sometimes, during the creation of the final pages, I might not be in the mood to draw a certain scene or even panel, so I can use my thumbnails to skip around to somewhere that I can work on at the moment. This really keeps me busy, instead of spinning my wheels on a panel I'm not getting anywhere on for hours. I don't have much free time between work and my busy life, so I have to maximize the usage out of all my free moments .

I currently have three out of the eight pages thumbnailed, and I should have them all completed by tomorrow. I'll scan them in when I get a chance next, and update this process soon. I've also started penciling the first two pages, just because I've been visualizing the opening pages for some time now.

Spokane Comicon 2012 Photos

Well Spokane Comicon 2012 came and went again, and it was a blast. I always say this because it's true, Comicons are like family reunions. It was awesome! Here are some photos from this year:

 Batman and Rorschach

My girlfriend, reading King City

Batman and Ramona Flowers

 Batman and Catwoman

Giving Cape Tips

Me and my booth

Me and my table mate Josh. My brother-in law Chuy is playing with the iPad

Lars Brown and Matt Brazee

 Matt Nelson of Catbeard the Pirate

DeLoreon

 My friend Aaron showed up!

The Crowds

 Zephan and Stevie!

 Me and my girlfriend!

 Crowds

 From Lars to Me!

Fem-Riddler?

Josh and I doing what we do!

 Snake Eyes snuck up on me at one point, a little startling

Mario and Luigi

Is that Creature from the Black Lagoon on the bottom?

 Zephan

 Rabbid Force, a webcomic

 Dead Supergirl... Unsettling.

 This girl has some cool art, kept meaning to say hi but didn't get a chance.

 Heroines of Spokane Comicon

Build Your Own Mini Comic!

Hello! I thought today I would cover the basics of making a comic, since so many people were curious about how I created such a fancy looking comic. The first thing I say is that it's cheaper than you think!

Here's my book that I put together earlier this month:

My book is an 8 paged fantasy adventure tale, with a color cover. The book is a typical manga size of 5" wide and 7.25" tall. I really enjoy this format because it's large enough for legibility, while still being a cost effective comic. If you're interested in buying this book, it's available on my Etsy Shop: https://www.etsy.com/listing/99298010/clashing-swords-fantasy-mini-comic


Let's begin with the steps on how this book was made:


Step 1: Tools
Besides your art supplies, you'll need two tools in particular. First is a long armed stapler. This guy is like your regular stapler, but it has an extended arm. This way you can staple your comic spine without having to fold a cover to get the stapler's mouth near the spine. It can be found at any office supply store. I think mine was $20 when I bought it about five years ago. I'd also suggest getting premium staples. You might want to make a fat zine or mini comic with tons of pages, so a better staple would be ideal.

The infamous long armed stapler

The second important tool to have is a guillotine paper cutter. You don't have to "own" one, but you must have access to one to make any odd sized comics. I used to sit at Staples and use theirs after printing comics, but it sucked. I also used to bum the community college's paper cutter. I much prefer the home atmosphere. I just put on an audiobook or a movie, and cut away all night long. I have a Premiere guillotine paper cutter. I bought it from Amazon, and it has been a great asset to me.

Guillotine Paper Cutter. Be safe folks!

You'll also need a computer, scanner, and a completed comic book. I won't go to detail on these parts, as many people have covered the actual art of drawing comics, and using computers to produce them.


Step Two: Size Matters
Contrary to popular belief, size does matter. Well, at least in comics. You need to know two sizes, the size you'd like your comic to be, and the size of various papers that you can get your comic printed on. Knowing these two things will save you a headache.

For Clashing Swords, I like that manga sized format. A typical manga format is 5"x7.25", and two of those pages side by side (remember, you'll be folding pages to make the comic) will fit on 8.5"x11" letter sized typical printer paper in the US:

Now that we know we will be working on 8.5"x11" paper, and making 5"x7.25" comics, we need to draw comic pages that are proportionate to 5"x7.25"

Step 3: Proportions

This comic has to fit on a 5"x7.25" page when we are done. We could do this easily by drawing at that scale, but then it can be a cramped drawing space. Drawing larger always makes your art look sharper when it is shrunk down, it a comic artist's secret to the trade! So what I did was make a template at the manga page size, and enlarged it to fit on 8.5"x11" letter size paper, and then printed the template in non photo blue (cyan 6%) on bristol board.

This is my template, feel free to use it, just turn the opacity down to 6%

There are some key things to understand on my template: Safe Zone, Full Page, and Bleed. The "Full page" is really simple to understand. That area will fill the entire final page when we are done. The "Safe Zone" is where you want to keep your text and important part of the illustrations. Safe zone is essentially the wiggle room around the edge of the page. This prevents any lost information when you finally cut the comics. A page may be printed slightly off, or you may cut it slightly off, but all the important info is still in tact. The last part is the "bleed." If you want art to extend to the very edge of the page, draw all the way to the bleed. Again, this gives us some wiggle room from the edge of the page outward, just in case anything happens in printing or cutting. To make match simple, I made a .25" safe zone, and a .25" bleed on my template. When your art is finally drawn and scaled down to fit the final pages, it will be .25" bigger than the final comic. This will be trimmed off in the final steps.

Page one of Clashing Swords with template overlay

So you can see how my comic page lined up. I actually decided not to do any bleeds for this comic for a more "traditional" aesthetic appeal. I didn't find any real reason to get too extreme with the art. This is a really good choice for your first mini comic, that way you don't have to worry about dealing with bleeds, and your art will be protected within the safe zone.

Step Four: Art and Prep
At this point, it's time to make some comics. When you're done, scan in your work, and resize them to fit within the original size of the comic you will be working in. In photoshop, I make a blank page PSD, that has guides laid out for the full page, bleed, and safe zone. If you make the file 5.5" x 7.75" at 600 dpi, that would be perfect. Then bring in .25" in on all sides for your "full page." Next bring in another set of guides all around at .5" from the edges of the page. This will be your safe zone. Copy your scanned art, paste it in this document, then scale it, having your art line up. Do this for your comic pages, and cover. Now you're ready to lay out pages.


Step 5: Layout and Pagination
This is the hardest step I believe, but it's not like calculus. Chill out, and just breathe. Now, if you look at a comic book, you'll realize that it's folded, and each actual sheets of paper don't number 1, 2, 3, and 4. They jump around, and this is called pagination. Take three pieces of scratch paper, and fold them together like a book. On each page, write: Cover Outside, Cover Inside, Page One, Page Two, Page Three, Page Four, Page Five, Page Six, Page Seven, Page Eight, Back Inside, Back Outside on the appropriate pages. This dummy book will be your guide to how to lay out an eight page comic.

 These three examples should be how your dummy book ended up. The light grey text is what the opposite side of that page should be. This is how we will have to print out books. Page Eight and Page One will butt up against each other on the paper, and the reverse side should be Page Seven and Page Two. Remember one key thing, you know that bleed wrapping around the comic page? It's not needed wherever two pages but up against each other (the dark lines in the center, splitting the pages above). So when you line these pages up, remember to crop those off in Photoshop. In the end, you'll have six files for each side of the three pages. You'll need to rotate the pages 90° clockwise, so it fits on your paper when you print it. Your final files should look like this:

 

Inside Cover

Outside Cover

If you take your files to a print shop, print just one book first. Make sure that both sides of the paper are lined up right. I've had printers reverse the back side, so one side was upside down. That's a bummer, so check before printing a bunch.

I suggest checking for deals at your office supply shops like Staples and Office Depot. Sometimes they have newspaper coupons for a percentage off black and white copies. Also, many have bulk discounts. If you print 100+ pages, you can get a percentage off. These shops are sometimes a little expensive to print color though. I suggest checking your local print shop for that. I can get my covers printed at .20 a sheet. Another thing to also look into is paper sizes. You can fit two covers on an 11x17 sheet of paper, and cut it in two. Sometimes this can save you some cash.

Your pages should look like the above two examples, and after printing, we are ready for the final step.

Step Six: Fold, Staple, Cut, repeat.
What I do is fold every page individually. If you try to fold all your pages at once, you won't get a nice crease down the center, and it might be a pain to fold. So I sit down, and just fold every page individually. When I'm done, I put the cover on top, and slip in the two interior pages. Then, when I know the pages are all even together,  I use the long arm stapler. I put two staples in the spine, about two inches in from each end. Your books just need some trimming. and you'll be done!

 

What I like to do is an assembly line cut process. First I cut the side of the comics off, then after all the books are cut, I do the top and bottom. Lay down your comic in the trimmer, and you'll be cutting .5" off the side, top, and bottom. Take your time, cut precisely, and push in towards the paper cutter.

Congratulations!

You should now be a proud owner of some mini comics! Send them off to friends all over, trade them, sell them on Etsy, then make more!

I hope I answered some questions for you all. If I didn't cover something, or I was too vague, please let me know. I will expand on anything that I can help you with.

Some sketching

So, this weekend was pretty fun, though I had to work. I stopped by a local comic shop, met up with some friends and fellow artists, and shared my mini comic. Then I got home, and packed a lot of giveaways of my comic. I was glad to end up with eight people interested in the book! Can't wait to mail them out tomorrow morning. It's been nice to have the Clashing Swords mini comic (see previous blog entry) put to bed. I'm probably going to wait a week before starting any new projects.

The first person who chimed in for a book also got a free sketch. He says Master Chief is his favorite character, so this is what he got! I hope he's pleased.

 Master Tenzin from Avatar: Legend of Korra. I actually tossed this one up in my Etsy shop. Loving the show so much right now!

Clashing Swords Mini Comic Give Away!

Hello everyone! I've been working away at this mini comic for about two months total, and today my precious creation is finally complete! This is an eight page story about a group of fantasy adventurers who are seeking a mad mage who has stolen a magical item that could unbalance the forces of good and evil! The story is very all ages, though I feel old school roleplayers will especially get a kick out of this book.

Well, I've got something very special for you! Tomorrow, in honor of Free Comic Book Day (May 5th, 2012), I am going to give away free copies of my comic to the first ten who email me first for the offer! My email is jesse.acosta AT gmail.com. This is totally free, I have stamps, and packages ready to go. If you are one of the first ten, I'll ask for your address, and send it out Monday morning.

Here are some preview pics below!

The cover! 

A pile of my books, waiting to be read!

Page One

For those not quick enough for this offer, my book will be available in my Etsy Shop by Monday. Excelsior!

Commissions and Mini Comics

Hello all! I'm still alive, doing a few commissions as they come in, but mostly I've been focusing on prepping for Spokane Comicon 2012. Right now, I'm finishing up on a new mini-comic called "Clashing Swords." I believe this comic will be a hit among roleplayers, and old school gamers especially. It's definitely Dungeons and Dragons inspired. When it's ready, it will be for sale on Etsy. I'm expecting to be done within the week, and the book will be printed within two.

Clashing Swords logo

I was able to squeak out this commission recently. DJ Lance Rock from Yo Gabba Gabba. I've been told that the child who received this couldn't stop smiling once then opened the package. I love hearing these stories!

DJ Lance Rock from Yo Gabba Gabba