Index
The Making of...Kid Hype! 2. Inking 3. Coloring 4. Lettering 5. Getting it online All Pages

Welcome, and I hope you enjoyed reading the first installment of "Kid Hype!".

If you didn't read it yet, click this link to go check it out, then head right back here.

Anyway, I learned a lot of things in creating these 8 pages of work, and I thought I would share the trials and tribulations for posterity, or at least as some sort of therapy to heal my mental anguish(!)

There's a lot more that goes into making a comic than people would think, assuming they thought about it at all. Most "mainstream" comic books are essentially an assembly line product, and it goes something like this:

1. Writer comes up with the story. This writer may or may not be creating the actual dialogue. Sometimes another writer may help with that. Either way, if the story passes muster, the editor approves it, and the story is sent off to the penciler to illustrate.
   
2. Penciller. The bulk of the work is here, hands down. The penciller must now bring to life the words on the page. They have to interpret the plot/script in an engaging and exciting way. 
   
   Not all writers supply their stories in the same way. Some writers hand over a completely detailed, panel by panel outline. Other writers will give an artist nothing but the plot on 1 single page. 
   
   The penciller has to be ready and able to pull off anything, all while making sure to leave enough space for word balloons and narration that they can't see yet.
3. Once this is done, the inker now must add depth and contrast to the pencil by going over it with dark ink. Most of the time pencil isn't good enough to reproduce very well, so stark, harsh ink is needed to spot dark areas to be filled with black and emphasize foreground vs. background and other enhancements.
   
   This can really take a while depending on how detailed the art is. Of course, not as long as the penciling.
4. Next this art has to be scanned in (or photographed) and colored. Photoshop is the way to color most comics these days. This can be very time consuming, especially if your machine is not as high-powered as it could be.
   
5. Finally, after all this work is done, the letterer must somehow cram in all the text that is supposed to go along with the story. Hopefully the penciller has left room for this.
   

As you can see, it's quite a bit of work, and if you're only one person, then you have to do ALLLLLL of it.

Anyway, that's the way it is with most web comics. You're a one-man show, and it's all on you.

So, with that said...let's start at the beginning.

I've had the story in my head for a long time, and since I'm my own editor, it didn't have to be approved by anyone but me. I still wanted to tighten it up somewhat, so instead of just jumping into the drawing, I wrote out the plot and the script, breaking it down panel by panel.

To help with this process, I drew out thumbnail images of each panel on 8.5 x 11 paper. It really helped to map out everything and make sure I could fit all the dialogue in.

Once I had my panel by panel script, it was time to move on to the drawing.

Originally, I had planned on making this comic for DC's Zudacomics webcomics site. I figured that even if I lost, then at least some people would see it and maybe follow it back to my site here.

As I worked on the pencilling, I read more and more about user questions regarding the Zuda submission agreement. After reading up on it, and checking what others had to say, it didn't seem to me that I could completely regain all the rights to my property once I relinquished any to Zuda.

To me, that was unacceptable. I'm not a lawyer, and it may be in fact that you can completely terminate your relationship with Zuda, but the fact that there is so much room for interpretation raised a red-flag for me, and I decided against submitting to Zuda.

Now, what does this mean for this article? Well, Zuda submissions are meant to be shown in a 4:3 horizontal aspect ratio, much like a tv or our computer screens, while a regular comic book is in a vertical aspect ratio. That means that I created Kid Hype! in a horizontal aspect, instead of the regular more universal comic format.

This could cause issues with printing down the line, but I decided that I liked the format and I'm going to stick with it. Kid Hype! will be primarily a web comic, so I think it will display better that way.

Anyway, I wanted tons of detail in this, so I decided to draw bigger. Normally comic format is 11 x 17 bristol paper, with a live area of about 10 x 15. Instead, I drew on 18 x 24 sheets of bristol. Actually they were 19 x 24 sheets, but I chopped off an inch at the top so I could keep the correct aspect ratio.

Now it was time to attack the drawing part. When I'm drawing for comics, I usually start with a non-photo blue pencil. This originally was used to allow the penciller to layout the page without fear of mistakes showing up when the shot the artwork with a stat camera. 

Of course they don't do that now, but the non-photo is still useful since it allows you to really work out your ideas and then solidify them with pencil. The best part is that if you scan in your work using a "line-work" mode (or whatever is the equivalent in your scanner software), the blue pencil will not be scanned. Of course, if you press really hard with the blue, then it might be picked up somewhat.

Once I've got it down in blue, then I'll go over it with a 2B pencil. Everyone has their own preference for pencil strength. I find the "H" strengths to be too hard and light, while getting down to the "7B's" is way too soft and dark.  I do use those strengths for other work, but for comics, I stick with 2B.

Instead of a pencil, I use a lead holder , and I buy the leads to go along with it. This way the lead gets shorter, but not the holder. A lead holder is different from a mechanical pencil in that I can get more than one line weight out of the lead in a lead holder. I can turn it to the side and do some shading, if necessary, or I can let it go blunt and get a thicker line that way.

I have non-photo blue leads and 2B leads. You can always switch them out, but it gets annoying so it's best to just have two lead holders. To sharpen them, you'll need a sharpener, which is called a lead pointer. To use this, you insert the lead holder (with the lead pulled out slightly), then you rotate the lead around in a circle over and over again until the lead is sharp. This gets annoying, as well, but there's not much to be done about it, since as far as I know there are no electric lead pointers available.

Speaking of electric, it's critical to have an electric eraser. Your arm and wrist will be tired as hell if you have to rely on manual power to erase, and you probably won't erase as well as an electric. The one I have now is a Helix battery powered , but the only screwed up thing about it is that you have to HOLD DOWN THE BUTTON to power it on. So essentially you trade arm, shoulder and wrist pain for finger/joint pain. It's a worthwhile trade-off, but I'm still looking to see if there is a cordless electric eraser out there with a simple "on/off" switch!

The penciling on this first installment took forever, mostly because I was drawing so big. It's not really necessary at all, so I'm hoping future installments go a lot quicker since I'll be drawing smaller.

Usually when I work on something, I like to preserve my pencil work, if possible. Often times I go overboard in the penciling and add detail and shading that I know damn well will just have to be erased later. Usually I can just scan it in and continue. But with something this large, how to do it?

If I just took it to Kinko's, they could probably reduce it for me enough to scan, but in the process they will lose the subtlety of the pencil work and turn it into a muddy black & white. Instead, since I work at a photo studio, I decided to try to sneak my work in during some down time to take some hi-res photos.

Well, with our hectic schedule at work, I was informed that there was only one hole in the workload for the next couple of weeks. So that stalled out things for a while, and yet I felt I had to do it. I hate losing the pencil work if I don't have to. Besides, if I were to pay for hi-res photos of that size it would be beyond my ability to write-off as a hobby expense.

So the day came, and they shot the seven pages (I hadn't yet finished the 8th page) for me in hi-res format (click images to open larger).

I burned the dvd, and secure in the knowledge that most of my work wasn't lost, I moved on to the inking phase.