This has been Sunrise, Issue 10: Don’t Do Drugs. Normal programming will resume next week.

The first step is a rough “thumbnail” version of the page. This establishes the panels, basic character placement, and first draft of the dialogue.

Moving to the Bristol board on which the comic will be inked, I draw the inking guidelines in pencil. This includes all the artwork and the lettering. At this stage I also make the final decisions about the artwork and finalize the dialogue. I draw the lines for lettering using an Ames Lettering Guide, a tool which I would highly encourage other cartoonists to check out.

In the inking stage, I first go over the panel borders with a simple Sharpie pen. Next the lettering and balloon borders are traced with fine-line art markers (0.3mm for the letters and 0.7mm for the balloons). The artwork is then inked with a Hunt 100 crowquill pen and sumi ink. I also put in some of the spot blacks at this point, using permanent markers.

Now it’s time for the tedious part. The inked artwork is scanned in and edited in Photoshop. At this stage I remove blemishes and mistakes, add spot blacks as needed, and paint in the gray tones. Once it’s finished, it goes up here for you to look at.

I started working this way beginning with Issue 8 (although for that issue I wasn’t using the painted gray tones yet). Prior to that issue the artwork was penciled on paper but inked digitally. I switched to physical inking in part to reduce the amount of computer time required for each page–and then, of course, started doing this digitally-painted graytone thing that takes almost as long. Oh well.

So that’s how it’s done, buoys and gulls.

Getting a little weird now.

Sorry this is so late. I had no heat in my work room, and it was getting pretty cold. Now it is back, and hopefully soon the update schedule will pick up.

Plenty of easter eggs this page. I won’t detail them all now because I’m curious to see how many you guys can spot. Not all the paintings are eggs, but a lot of them are. Have at it.

This page was a real chore… practically no story content but lots of boring things to draw over and over again. I should have edited it better.

Oh, and a note about Albee’s presence: Albee didn’t transfer to the Nefertiti, she’s just there for the shakedown cruise to make sure the ship gets off to a good start. After it’s over she’ll return to the Akhenaten. I’ll try to find somewhere in the comic itself to clarify that.

A couple story reminders: Why they’re visiting Lanour. Lanour’s previous appearance (WARNING: This link will take you to Issue 7).

Villains are really, really fun to work with. It’s too bad they have to be used sparingly.

Sorry this page is so much later than I intended. I blame pinstripes.

“Venetian blind closing” is a very difficult action to convey without motion. I don’t think this works. Incidentally, you’ll also notice a mistake between the last page and this one: on the previous page the blind was closed.

I’m going to try to put up next Tuesday’s page on Christmas instead as a little treat for all of you. It will have villains! In the event it’s not ready in time, I will post something else. See you then!

Soundtrack for Panel 2: