Process of Making a Comic

In this post I'll go through the process of making the comic I produced while in Leiden.

One of the more difficult things (for me anyway) is to come up with a concise enough story which doesn't turn into a 300 page epic that I have no hope of finishing. In this instance, that rocky path was curbed by two things: the time constraint of having only two and a half days worth of drawing, and the task at hand.

We each picked a museum at random and were sent to find one object that resonated with us. It was this object that we would create a story from, linking it somehow to the future in the process.

Naturally, out of all of the elegant, ancient and beautifully crafted items in the Oudheden, I pick a bashed up skeleton.

It was tucked away behind this slick and modern looking display wall, kind of as an afterthought to the rest of the iron age exhibit. Granted, when I first saw it I was still thinking about the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Roman statues, but over lunch in the museum it was this photo that got my brain working.

I began with a mind map, coming up with ways (rather morbidly) in which this poor soul had died all those thousands of years ago. It occurred to me that the story could literally take any shape, and so, to navigate away from the grim nature of the skeleton, I knew I wanted it to be funny.

The evening before, the tutors had mentioned that there should be a minimum of 5 pages. Keeping that in mind, I began planning out 6-7 pages trying to stretch out the story. However, as the sketching progressed, I realised that the story fits neatly into the 5.

Character design was very hasty. The initial roughs had no research behind them and the tutors picked up on that, having had a disapproving look cast my way I did some quick research into the iron age. To my relief, I was already rather familiar with their environment and attire (having come from a place with strong Celtic ties) and could quickly sketch out some more informed designs.

Now was just a case of scaling the story up to A5 and watercolouring it. At least, that was my plan. No sooner had I drawn out all the panels ready to be rendered, did my tutor peer over my shoulder and advise me to change the margins and panel layout!

It was no problem though, it meant a trip to the art shop and boy that was fun! They had everything any artist could possibly dream of. With my new A4 sketchbook, I repeated the process of drawing the panels and set to work drawing out the story.

Once that was all taken care of it was just a matter of slapping on some colour and BAM! ready for digitising and small edits. The edits are still taking place, and a title is still being mulled over, but isn't it amazing what you can achieve if you're pushed for time and have no internet access!

I hope you found this interesting! I will include photos of the uneditted, 'raw' images that I actually produced on the boat, below. There is one panel that needed redrawing which will be dropped onto the page in photoshop, so don't be confused by the rogue panel which has a page to itself.

See you again,

Mort