Clattertron

[dc]A[/dc]s I mentioned in the notes for yesterday’s comic, I sketched the comic on paper, snapped a photo with my phone, and traced (more or less) the photo in Manga Studio on my Surface Pro 3.

It’s an idea I decided to give a try after using a similar method for a couple of new designs in my Society6 shop (here and here). I wanted to recreate a pair of watercolor cartoons in Manga Studio, so I decided to try tracing a photo to see how it went.

The process went really well, actually.

I felt a bit weird about tracing my art digitally, but as one of my illustrator friends told me: any time you can save yourself work, do it.

I decided, why not try it for a comic? It really isn’t much different from how I used to make comics: I drew and inked the comic on paper, then scanned it. It’s the same amount of steps, just in a different order (and better, because I end up with a higher quality digital image instead of just a scan).

Here’s the original sketch for this week’s comic, Upgrade.

Here it is with the sketches I did in Manga Studio on top (in blue).

And here’s the final inks.

As you can see, I didn’t just do a straight trace like I did for the Society6 designs.

Why?

The Society6 designs were traces of finished ink drawings. I didn’t have to make any (major) changes.

The photo of this week’s comic was meant as a rough sketch I planned to tweak inside Manga Studio, as you can see in the second image. It gave me a basic idea of layout and what I wanted to do.

There are several big changes though.

• I moved No Filter Fox so the phone looked more “towering” above him. I did this by tracing No Filter Fox on his own layer and moving him. Hooray for layers!
  
• I changed No Filter Fox’s expression (I originally had him yelling different dialogue).
• The Phone Zone employee wasn’t really sketched out/designed. I also changed her mouth.
  
• I tweaked the look of the phone.
• I added a window in the background to make a light source for the shadow covering No Filter Fox in the finished comic. You can see in the second image I briefly had a set of doors where the window ended up being.
  

Behold the finished, colored, comic.

I’m still figuring out how I want to do this process, but I like it so far. I feel I often get better sketches on paper than on my Surface—and I return to why I started making comics: getting away from a glowing screen.