How to Draw Comic 101: Preparation

You have drawn your comic and satisfied with the result but it is full with pencil marks, smears, extra lines and all sorts of other things that dirty up your hard work. Not too mentioned it may not be on the ideal piece of paper to ink on. What you need to do is get a paper that suits your inking, a light table and a non-photo blue pencil. Lines drawn by non-photo blue pencil will not show when photocopied. When you get comfortable with drawing your comic you can start from this step. If not you will make too many mistakes and you will find that it becomes difficult to ink your comic.

Clip your comic and the fresh paper of your choosing together and place them on the light table. Now use the non-photo blue pencil and trace your comic with the help of the light. This will be your template for inking, so try to keep the lines as clean as possible so you do not make any mistakes when inking.

I normally go left right top bottom, so I do not miss anything. It is good to keep to something systematic because you will be doing lots and lots of this. Peak through as needed. If you are into animations, the process is similar but you do not trace but draw the next key frame using the reference frame, if you draw enough of this you can flip the pages and watch your animation. I must admit I like animation more than comics but it is too time consuming and CG are more popular now days. Enough sidetrack, once finished you are ready for inking. Next instalment of ‘How to draw comic 101’ is inking. Please look forward to it. Thank you.