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.

Sorry this published late.  I made a mistake in the scheduler.

~~~

I’m not sure if Blanchard actually has a doctorate,  but people tend to call him Doctor.  It just comes naturally.

When I was little,  I wrote a story titled “The Foyer.”  It was about an eccentric rich guy (hmm,  I seem to be hung up on eccentric rich guys) who receives a painting of a tiger,  which he doesn’t like,  so he hangs it in an unused foyer which gets very cold.  The tiger in the painting doesn’t like the cold,  so it leaves the painting and prowls around his house,  attacking the servants.  I mention this mostly because it was one of the first stories I ever wrote which I was really proud of,  and the title of this page is intended to pay homage to that old story.

In this article we will be following the creation of the cover for Issue 6.

The first step in the creation of the cover is usually to do some rudimentary sketches.  For Issue 6 I skipped that step,  something you should never, ever do.  Really.  Don’t do that.  Always sketch first.  What I did here is known as being a “bad role model.”

Here’s what I did do first:  I did what should have been the second step,  which is to draw a pencil version of the cover at my drawing table.

To the left you can see my sketchbook,  which is open to the page with concepts for Mr. Ashbroch.  Normally I draw my pencils at 100% size (that is,  8.5×11) but for the covers I use a scaled-up size.  This is because I want to be able to draw the details more easily.  The reason I don’t draw all pages at the larger size is that my scanner is fairly small and I’d have to scan them in multiple sections.  I’ll do it for the cover,  but it’s a real hassle,  and it would cut my productivity considerably if I had to do it for every page.  It’s just an efficiency thing.

Once the penciled lines are complete,  I scan the image in at 300 DPI and piece together the sections.  I adjust the contrast and then turn the pencil lines blue so that I will be able to see them easily while inking.  (More recently I’ve begun experimenting with other colors instead.)

The “Background” layer is just an empty white field.  “Layer 1″ is the rough linework.  “Layer 2″ is where I am about to begin drawing. Hereafter the layers will be named,  which should make it more clear what’s going on.  I always name the layers on the covers,  because there are a lot of them by the end.  This is less true of the regular pages,  so I don’t  always name those layers.

The first inking I do is usually the straight lines and curves.  I often don’t freehand the architectural lines (although sometimes I do,  it’s a case-by-case thing).  Straight lines are drawn using the straight line tool,  and curved lines are drawn with the pen tool and stroked (there are no curves in this image).

In the next screenshot the linework will appear as if by magic,  which doesn’t do justice to the process,  as drawing the linework is one of the longest steps.  I do all the linework for Sunrise on a 4×6 Wacom Graphire tablet.  Yes,  those are the tiny,  (relatively) cheap ones.  I’d like to upgrade but the bigger models are much more expensive.  The little one does get the job done,  though,  so if you’re in the market for a tablet,  don’t let some salesman guilt you into buying one that’s more expensive than you actually need.

Anyway,  back to the linework:

The linework is,  as you can see,  on a layer called “Linework.” The linework for the portrait,  though,  is on its own layer.  This is because I’d originally toyed with the idea of making the lines on the portrait be a different color,  and I wanted to be able to adjust them easily later.  Also note that I added a layer mask to the architecture layer.   This is so that I could “erase” small parts of that layer without actually losing the image data.

Now I put down the flat colors.  This step makes everything look really bad,  but the flat colors ultimately get broken up in the steps which follow.

The colors are dumped in with the Paint Bucket tool.  Generally it doesn’t fill up to the edges,  though,  and leaves a fringe.  Here’s how I solve that problem.  I use the magic wand tool to choose the color block I’ve just dumped,  then I enlarge the selection by one pixel and fill it again with Ctrl+Backspace (or alt+backspace,  one fills with background color and one fills with foreground color,  and I can never remember which is which so I just try both until I get the result I want).  This eliminates the fringe.

You may also notice that the color layer is below the linework.  This is my own preference.  The linework layer is set to “Multiply” to these ends.  You can also set the color layer to “Multiply” and put it above the linework.  It’s the same in the long run.  Which you do depends largely on workflow and preferences.

The next step is to add some large areas of shadow.  They’re just flat black blobs,  and I adjust the opacity until they’re the intensity I want.  The shadow layer also includes the sunbeams cast on the floor,  which are actually just holes in the shadow layer.

With this next step you’ll see a lot of layers appear.  I don’t actually add all these layers at once,  but these steps tend to occur more or less simultaneously after a point,  so these screenshots were taken after the image was completely finished.  I’ve tried,  though,  to set these up in roughly the order I began working on them.

The next layer I add is what I call the “Highlight Colors” layer.  I originally called it this because I used it to add lighter versions of the flat colors.  However,  it’s become a bad name because I use the same layer to add darker versions of the flat colors as well.  I continue calling it this because I’ve become used to it.  This image shows the effect of the Highlight Colors layer:

Lighting effects:  sunbeams and reflections:

Various cool details  including reflections,  wallpaper,  and marble tiles:

And that’s all for the cover art.

All that’s left to do is to add the text,  which is also accomplished in Photoshop:

And the cover is done!  But wait…why does it look slightly different on the website?  Well,  I finished the cover a good month before it appeared,  and in that time I became more and more irritated by the fact that the windows did not have a wood frame separating them from the wall.  Literally hours before the image appeared online,  I finally got fed up with it,  slapped on the missing detail,  and uploaded a new version,  which is the version you can see today.

And that is how a typical Sunrise cover is made.  I hope someone finds this useful or interesting.

For Issue 5,  I wanted to make sure I captured the correct “look” of an old movie,  especially where the fashions of the day are involved.  I knew from the start that I wanted to include that bizarre slicked-back hair that was so popular at the time.  The obvious way to accomplish this was to go to the ideal source:  an old Marx Brothers movie. I remembered that the hero of The Big Store had the look I wanted,  so I collected a number of reference images from that and used them to design the appearance of Walter Casey.

Last night,  when preparing to write this post,  I realized that I couldn’t remember the name of this actor, so (wanting to have a thorough post) I looked him up.  His name is Tony Martin,  and,  to my utmost astonishment,  he is still alive and still performing.  He is,  at age 96,  the last of the Hollywood singer-actors who is still alive.  This is the hazard of doing visual research but not factual research.  If I’d looked into his identity ahead of time,  I would not have based the appearance of this obnoxious character (Walter Casey) on the one guy who’s still alive.  Somehow that just seems wrong.  Mr. Martin,  you have my utmost apologies.  I’m sure you are a very nice person,  unlike Mr. Casey,  and you can be assured that the main element I’m borrowing from you is the hair.

I also collected some images of other characters in the movie (the female lead and the Mustachioed Villain) but I don’t know if I’ll get the opportunity to show them.   I hope I do,  as I really want to draw the Mustachioed Villain.

The image depicts Mr. Martin as he appears in The Big Store,  on the sheet music for the featured song,  “If It’s You.” His character, Tommy Rogers,  is a singer who,  in addition to singing “If It’s You,” sings the “Tenement Symphony,” considered by some to be the worst musical number of any Marx Brothers film.  This is not,  however,  the fault of Mr. Martin.

I’m responsible for the existence of these characters,  and as such I try to treat them well.  I like all of them,  but that is not to say that I love them equally.  That’s right–I’m playing favorites.

There are a few characters I like better than others,  and there are a few that I like less than others.

Raven is one of the latter.  Raven is the one character for whom I’m beginning to develop an actual dislike.  I’m not even sure why I don’t like him.  I think he’s just not a very interesting character to me.   Sure,  he’s got a little bit of backstory,  he’s got a personality,  and I know how he’s going to react in most scenarios,  but there just seems to be less of him somehow.  He’s also the most archetypical of all the characters.  He’s your Jim Kirk,  he’s your Han Solo,  he’s that character who’s always ready to jump into action.  I’ve tried to break this mold somewhat by occasionally referencing his softer side,  but this has done little to help matters.  No matter how I cut it,  he’s still little better than being a typical Action Dude.  This wouldn’t be too bad,  except that Raven has a tendency of being an integral part of the storyline.  That’s how he’s managed to get onto the front cover of all four issues.  The Captain’s place is on the bridge,  so when something important needs to be done,  Raven does it.  As a result,  my ambivalence toward him has begun to evolve into some sort of antipathy simply because I have to work with him more than I’d like.  If he was a less important character,  I could just sideline him for awhile whenever I got tired of him.   I can’t do that,  though,  because he’s too important.  I wish I liked him better,  but he’s just not my favorite.  Sorry,  Raven.

So,  it follows that I must have favorite characters as well.  I do.  My favorite character right now is Candace Albee.  Why I’m not sure.   She hasn’t been a member of the cast for very long,  and yet I really like working with her.  I can’t say much without unearthing potential spoilers,  but she’s a complex character.  She’s conflicted in ways that even she herself doesn’t realize.  At some point I hope to work more of her backstory into the comic.  It’s been suggested that she had a hand in designing the ship,  even,  although the specifics have never been revealed.  (I also might like her just because she replaced Aaron Blanchard,  who was pretty depressing to work with because he was so miserable all the time.)  I have yet to work with Albee as much as I want to.  She fascinates me.

I also like Kindler and Ritchie.  I like them because they’re both just plain fun to work with.  Kindler’s fun because he’s so abrasive and because he flies off the handle so easily.  He’s fun to draw when he’s angry,  and I like playing off his prejudices (which are many).  Ritchie I like for similar reasons.  He’s an idiot but he doesn’t know it.  He’s despised but he doesn’t know it.  He thinks everyone loves him.  He’s fun to work with for those reasons.  I love to insert him into scenarios where he thinks he’s in charge,  but in reality everyone is studiously ignoring him.  He’s kind of an archetype,  too,  in a way,  but I like him anyway.  I know I would hate Ritchie in real life–and that’s why I have so much fun working with him,  I think.

And there’s that one character who I simply haven’t had time to explore yet:  Nigel Kuruschov.  It’s a shame,  too,  because I think I’d like him.  He’s a fun guy.  The trouble is that there hasn’t been a storyline so far that’s really needed a doctor.  I still hope to incorporate him eventually,  though…so stay tuned!

Even though it’s presented as a comic,  it’s becoming more and more clear to me that Sunrise is some sort of play.  Look at this.  The panels are barely changing at all,  and the story would play out almost exactly the same if it was a script.  Now,  I subscribe to a theory that any story should take full advantage of the medium it’s using.  No story should be attached to any medium arbitrarily.  And yet that’s what’s happening with Sunrise.  This is partly the bad influence of Star Trek,  as I have imitated its formatting faithfully while writing Sunrise.  I’ve copied the format of TV and made it into a comic.  So I now say to myself:  bad cartoonist!  I’ve got to shake things up a little.  Stay tuned (or not,  as it were–that’s another TV metaphor).

On a similar note,  I really don’t like conjoined balloons such as we have in the first row here.  They can be a big problem,  especially when people try to use them in conversational dialog (see today’s installment of JumpLeads,  for example.  I really like JumpLeads,  but they have a bad tendency to do these confusing conjoined-balloon dialogs).  For this multi-panel monologue,  however,  I thought they were the best solution.  Interesting facts.

So anyway,  the secret of the plot is out now.  Wooden you know it?  Ha ha…right.  Sorry.

Here’s my pencil rough for Page Three of the current issue.  I draw these out in pencil first,  then scan them in at 300 DPI and ink them digitally in Photoshop.  The page is then lettered digitally in Illustrator.  I work from a loose script which states basically what is supposed to happen on each page (although it tends to change over the course of the issue),  but all dialog is written at the drafting table.

Here’s my complete working script for Yucateca:

A famous archaeologist,  Frances Lenard,  comes aboard to travel to the Yucatan to explore a rumored new ruin.  Upon arriving in the general vicinity of the ruin,  they happen upon Gregor Lokennor,  a man stranded in the jungle,  claiming to be a missionary.  When questioned about the logic of doing missionary work in a deserted jungle,  he is evasive and insists that he has simply lost his way.  Blanchard experiences a flare-up.  The crew tracks down what seems to be part of a deserted temple and Frances Lenard sets to work with her investigations,  Aaron volunteering as an assistant while simultaneously nursing his father to the best of his abilities.  His desire for adventure and his reluctant devotion to his father causes stress.  Meanwhile Gregor is spending a lot of time examining the canopy with a telescope and poring over charts,  but refusing to to explain his motives.  Robinson catches him in the act of attempting to rob one of the ship’s (empty) ammunition depots.  Growing suspicious,  Robinson pressures him into giving a sermon,  which he botches absolutely.  Sensing the crew’s growing distrust,  Gregor seeks out Aaron alone and reveals to him his true intent:  he is not a missionary at all,  but rather a private treasure-seeker who desires to find immense amounts of Maya gold which he imagines to exist in the area.  Unable to resist this siren call of adventure,  Aaron readily agrees to accompany him,  abandoning the ship by night and providing Gregor with a weapon (personally owned).  They parachute-jump into the canopy,   but the drop was too short and the parachutes are not really effective.  Both are somewhat injured by the incident.  On the ship,  Blanchard grows worse,  and there is no one on board with the knowledge of how to care for him.  Desperate,  the crew begins a search for Aaron,  who has been having adventures of his own with Gregor,  who is obviously extremely unethical and untrustworthy,  and is clearly using Aaron to his own ends.  Finally they are able to track him down with Frances Lenard’s help,  leading to an uncomfortable climax:  Raven and Frances Lenard confront Aaron,  telling him that his father is dying and he has to return to the ship.  Gregor threatens to shoot him if he attempts to leave.  Aaron strikes him across the chin and they escape,  abandoning Gregor to the jungle.  Later,  Blanchard is feeling better with his son’s aid,  and Frances Lenard tells Aaron that her research has clearly shown that the area possesses no treasures.  She gives him a small Maya dagger from their excavations,  though,  and encourages him to consider a career in legitimate archaeology.
1. Raven is cooking breakfast for everyone (terrible as usual).  Blanchard is walking with a cane again.  Aaron talks excitedly about the mission and the (presumed male) archaeologist.
2. Frances arrives on board.
3. Title.  Plans to explore the jungle commence.
4. Aaron and Frances begin exploring the jungle.
5. Aaron wanders off by himself a little and happens upon Gregor.
6. Gregor is brought back to the ship and the crew attempt to glean information about him.
7. Gregor tries to help Frances but appears careless.   Frances orders him off the site.
8. Gregor begins to spend a lot of time using a telescope.  Robinson requests that Aaron try to spend a little more time on board the ship.
9. Gregor again tries to gain access to the archaeological sites.  Robinson orders him to stay on board the ship.
10. Up late one night,  Robinson discovers Gregor trying to break into the ammunition depot.  Growing suspicious,  he goads him into giving a sermon.
11. Gregor attempts his sermon.
12. Gregor pulls Aaron aside for a little talk.
13. Blanchard isn’t looking good.  Aaron wants to help Frances,  but he needs to stay in the engine room and run an adjustment procedure.
14. Aaron and Gregor join forces.
15. Aaron and Gregor crash-land in the jungle.
16. Robinson is searching for Aaron when he discovers the unconscious Blanchard.
17. Robinson and Frances attempt to help Robinson without success.   Aaron and Gregor are confirmed missing.  Ship cannot be started because Aaron shut down and disassembled the engines during the checkup.
18. A meeting is called to discuss the predicament.  Only Aaron and Blanchard understand the Akhenaten-class.  Blanchard is dying and needs medical attention,  which he can only get if they can find Aaron to fix the ship.  Frances volunteers to head the search,  since she knows the jungle and Aaron.  Raven accompanies her.
19. Aaron and Gregor in the jungle.
20. The away team progresses toward Aaron
21. Climax–The away team finds Aaron and tells him that he’s needed back on the ship.  Gregor threatens to shoot him if he attempts to leave.  Aaron punches him and runs.
22. Return to the ship.  Aaron administers medicines to Blanchard,  who becomes visibly better.  Aaron goes to bed.
23.  Robinson sits Aaron down for a chat,  intending to severely chastise him,  but Aaron instead reveals his intention to resign.  Robinson sees that he is making the correct decision and congratulates him.
24. Aaron,  in civilian clothes,  meets Frances at the dig site.  She explains the truth about Gregor’s delusion.  Aaron asks her if he could join her on her expeditions (possibly not shown?).
25.  Back in the US,  the mission is finally over.  Aaron and H. Blanchard part,  Aaron and Frances leaving together.

First,  as you can see here,  I write a synopsis of the story as a fat block of text.  Then I break it down page-by-page.  As you can also see,  after a point I stop revising the original block-of-text version.  This one has my original ending,  in which Aaron does not leave,  and Gregor’s original meaningless surname,  Lokennor.  Another fun fact:  Frances Lenard was originally going to be a male character.

So these should give you some idea of my process.