This week should be interesting and helpful for some of you…I hope. I get emails from readers asking me what steps do I take to create the comics. So I thought I would take this week to show the steps. For the next five days, I will update the same comic from start to finish.

Step 1: Sketch
Step 2: Inking

There are two ways you can ink a comic. You can either ink by hand or on the computer. If you choose to ink by hand, I recommend the Pigma Micron pens and brush. If you really want to go old school, get some black india ink and pen nibs. It will require a lot of practice to get the hang of inking with pen nibs.

I like to go back and forth when I ink. Sometime I ink by hand, but most of the time I ink directly in the computer. When it comes to inking in the computer, I like to use Flash. The lines are clean and sharp. Other words, the lineart will be all vector.

How do I ink in Flash…

I open Flash. Then I import my sketch into Flash, which is now on the first layer, first keyframe, of the timeline. I lock that layer and create a new timeline layer on top of the first one. I use the Brush tool to trace the sketch. I also make sure “Use Pressure” is turned on for the Brush.

After I’m done inking, I delete the sketch layer and I’m left with a clean line art. Finally, I go to File->Export Image…. I export the image as a 300dpi jpg.

That’s it for inking. If you have any questions about the steps, feel free to ask them here.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 24th, 2006 at 4:54 am and is filed under Rant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.