Yoshiko's Comic Drawing Stage Breakdown!

Step 1: Beat Boarding

Above you can see my page-by-page map for chapter eight of Wake of the Clash(spoilers I guess). I've already got an idea of how the whole of Wake of the Clash goes, but here I'm planning out exactly how many pages each beat of the story should take for the specific chapter. I've started percolating ideas for action and dialogue but nothing is solid yet. I try to time it out in my head what scenes need more time and prioritize important story beats.

Step 2: Layouts

Page compositions get drafted out for the first time. This takes a surprising amount of time... It is at this point that we find out whether or not the beat boards are timed very accurately. Sometimes I will have to remove less important concepts from the story, but other times I'll find myself with extra pages and get to add them back in! As for the look of the layouts, characters may still lack recognition, but this is the time to make acting choices.

I am also the one who writes Wake so I am able to do my scripting in tandem with the art. It is at this point I will write out the dialogue script and any action notes I'm worried will be lost in the simplicity of the drawings. I make sure to leave room for speech balloons in the relevant panels by the way. It saves a HECK OF A LOT of headache down the line. Young artists, take note! Don't draw everything and then find you're going to have to cover something important with words... It just won't work out!

Step 3: Pencils

The "sketch" phase. This is also where I lay in my text BEFORE DRAWING ANYTHING!! If the dialogue is simply too wordy, then things have to be edited down for efficency. Sabre and Cirrus are the common offenders here. They use SO many words.

After wrangling that its time to make sketches for how the inks should look. The level of polish also isn't important here if the penciler is also the inker. In a rush a skilled artist can save time by skimping on details as well, though the tighter the sketch is, the easier it will be to get the final lines just so.

I think it's more important, however, to make sure compositions and posing is solid, and that characters and objects are drawn proportionally and to scale. This is the last step to make major adjustments before it becomes annoying to go back and fix things.

Step 4: Inks!

By far my favorite part. Head empty. Put down lines. Focus on energy and line weight and cleanliness. I also like to add spot-blacks, or the large dark sections of inks that imply shadow, but how this is handled is often a stylistic choice.

Step 5: Colors

the final look of the page. Flats, shading, and effects! It's often hard to remember to color any lines that need it...