Clattertron

[dc]I[/dc]n the comments for Monday’s strip, Rainbows, a reader asked me to show some before and after shots of my ‘in post’ edits.

I draw the strips on paper with a blue pencil, ink them with pens, and they are scanned. I do some minor clean up in Photoshop (mainly making the blue lead disappear), but some times I make big changes.

I kept the blue lead in so you can get an idea of my crazy sketching style. Once the scanned image is in Photoshop, I can pretty much do whatever I want.

For the Guy, I erased off part of his eyelids, because I wanted a more intense ‘WTF’ look. I felt the full eyes gave him a stoned look, which was not what I was going for in the original drawing (kids: Practice). I also erased the ‘S’ off BROS on his shirt. I liked the sound, and image balance, of SUP BRO better.

For the Rainbow, I flipped the eyes over and skewed them–it changes the expression. Little things like that can make a HUGE difference. I also erased my original ink line and (gasp) drew a new one in Photoshop.

As you can read in About, I draw/ink the comics on paper as a ‘non-digital’ creative exercise. I spend a lot of time looking at glowing screens, and drawing the comics that way is a nice break. This doesn’t mean I won’t go 100% digital at some
point.

Never say never. Just ask Sean Connery.