The evolution/revulsion of my comics

Since around 2004 I’ve been publishing some very crudely-drawn comics on the web (hence the term ‘webcomics’ that most people use to describe them).

Before that time I was making paper comics that were neither clever, funny or disgusting. Nevertheless these were important learning opportunities for me in drawing and storytelling. They were a novelty in school to pass around and beyond that my own way of exorcising the weird thoughts bouncing around my head in a creative way.

With the advancement of computer technology (i.e. I got one) and the arrival of the internet with all of its dial-up pain-in-the-arse unreliability I now had a means of getting my comics to more people (in theory). Not willing to let go completely of the  paper format I still created them with paper and pencil as the first stage of a long and laborious process.

First up would be the rough idea for the comic story in my mind and I’d jot this down as a series of short descriptions of key images. From here I’d draw each image using a pencil (2B pencils were always my favourite and still are) with one image per sheet.

I hold a pencil/pen very close to the tip and so my hand rubbing across the paper would eventually smudge the pencil as I moved back and forth across the page. Next I needed a clearer image to scan in (remember scanners?); to achieve this I used tracing paper and a pen. Unfortunately I was too impatient to wait for the ink to dry on one part of the drawing before dragging the side of my hand across it so I still ended up with smudges here too (all the more apparent when scanned in and magnified on the screen).

Using basic computer paint tools I’d then go through all the images using the ‘eraser’ to remove my dirty marks. After this I’d use the paint bucket/fill tool to replace my pen lines with black pixels and then I could begin to add colour. As the ‘fill’ tool would do just that I always had to make sure every part of the drawing had clear boundaries or EVERYTHING would become one colour.

All of the above sounds as tedious as it was so imagine my joy when I eventually realised I could – poorly – draw straight onto the computer. At first I used the mouse which required a steady hand and many uses of the ‘Undo’ option so this didn’t really save much time in the grand scheme of things.

Years later I was able to purchase my first drawing tablet (made by Wacom) and combine the comfort and familiarity of drawing by hand with a ‘pen’ and the time-saving of not having to scan it in and tidy it up. These days I’m still creating most of my artwork using a tablet and with the added bonus that I now have a tablet where it appears on the same screen I actually put the pen to; before it appeared on a different one which wasn’t always easy.