From sketch to final product

Some of you have asked me about my illustration process, so I thought I'd do a post on it. The following is a step-by-step description of my process, which I mostly figured out by doing what amateurs do best - looking things up on the internet.

You may have gotten a glimpse of some pages from the book - like the page with the castle - in the video from our first post. Here is how it was made:

1) The pencil sketch

When we first started, Phu sent me the text of his story along with ideas for the illustrations. This page is about halfway through the book, and represents a turning point in the story. I wanted to draw a castle under a foreboding sky with dramatic clouds. When drawing things that I have a hard time imagining, I turn to the the same resource I use for literature searches and advice on whether garlic cloves are safe to eat after they've been in my fridge for so long they start sprouting: Google. 

Google, please google "clouds perspective."

2) Scan in pencils

I scan the pencil into my computer, then make the sketch blue in Photoshop. I do this so that when I ink the pencils and rescan them, the blue lines should theoretically disappear more easily than grey/black pencil lines. I learned there are a few ways to do this in Photoshop. Here is is one way, here is another.

One could also ink directly over the pencils. However, I'm (a) afraid I'll mess up 

with inking and ruin the original sketch, and (b) can't be bothered to erase pencil lines.

3) Ink
Next, I print out the blue copy onto bristol board, and ink over it with a brush pen. This is my favourite part. It's the kind of activity that is relaxing because it's a thoughtless motor task. I usually do this while listening to Jian Ghomeshi ask pop culture icons leading questions.

I did these clouds in a style inspired by a beautifully intricate drawing I saw at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art in NYC. It was so awesome, I took a photo of it:

4) Scan in ink drawing

With some tweaking of the contrast in Photoshop, the blue lines disappear faster than a fart in a fan factory.

5) Digital colouring

I thought this step would be easy, but I was quickly humbled. I won't bore you with the details, but basically, I inverted the black and white drawing and added colour and shadows in Photoshop. (If you're interested in the details, I learned from this excellent tutorial.)

And there you have it! That's the basic process for each page. Before starting this project, I don't think I quite appreciated how much time goes into each step. For example, I thought I was slow when I spent 2-3 hours inking this page, but then I watched this guy explain how it usually takes him about 24 hours to ink one page of his comic book, and realized how much more time and care goes into doing really top notch job.

Anyway, thanks for reading! Send us your comments/questions/suggestions and we'll compile some for a future post!