How I created The Classroom Curses

I recently created an 8-page story for the Illopond‘s Halloween-themed anthology Boo!: Spooky Tales for Kids, and thought I would document my process along the way.

First: Character Creation
I knew I wanted my story to be about a witch who terrorizes a classroom full of kids; kind of like a Sideways Stories from Wayside School meets Drag Me to Hell kind of thing. The Illopond forums are a great place to get feedback from one’s fellow creators. I got the suggestion to really play up the big weird eye on the witch and make it gross. That gave me the idea to make it the source of her power and thus the climax of the story to boot! Once I had my characters, I moved on to…

Second: Thumbnails

Thumbnails are done in a sketchbook where I can plan out the story in its entirety. Feedback from the other illoponders was a big help in this stage as well. Once I’m happy with the story and how it’s laid out, I’m free to move on to…

Step 3: Pencils

Most comic art is done on bristol board; cheapskates like me use 34 lb. weight copy paper from Office Depot with regular store-bought mechanical pencils! I had to make sure the size was right; the anthology was going to be printed magazine-sized. Fortunately, Ka-Blam, the print-on-demand company we are using, provides a nifty template to help size my work. Once pencils are complete, the next (and my favorite) step…

Step 4: Inks

I’ve mentioned previously my favorite tools for inking. This is the step where I can just plug in some music or podcasts and just go at it. I inked all 8 pages of this story over a couple days of vacation at my in-laws. It was pure heaven. 🙂

Once inks are complete, it’s time to go digital! Pages are scanned in in preparation for…

Step 5: Color flatting

Flatting is the process of preparing images for digital coloring. A good explanation plus the tutorial I used throughout the process was this one from Kazu Kibuishi, creator of the fantastic Amulet graphic novel series. It was an invaluable resource from a very talented guy! The tutorial is specific to Photoshop, but I was able to make it work just fine in GIMP. After the flats are done, it’s a quick adjustment to…

Step 6: Colors

Digital coloring is probably my greatest weakness, but something I’m trying to improve. I think I could have done a better job creating a palette that goes more with the mood of the story, but sometimes you just have to do your best and create! My coloring process is a subject for a whole future post all by itself, something I hope to tackle in the near future on this blog.

Rarely have cheapskate cartoonists on the web delved into the realm of printing their work; we mostly just stick to webcomics,  I think. However, print-on-demand companies like Ka-Blam are making it easier for us to get our books into print without having to come up with large amounts of money, risking the expense of printing out large batches of books and trying to sell them ourselves. I just uploaded the files on their website according to their technical specifications, and…

Sweet! Seeing my work in print is addicting, I’m just sayin’.

Boo!: Spooky Tales for Kids is on sale now, just in time for Halloween! The Classroom Curses is just one of several fun and colorful stories in the anthology, and is for sale right now on Indyplanet! Check it out!

Pic of the day: Rocketeer by Mike Maihack

Mike is a fantastic illustrator and creator of the awesome comic Cleopatra in Spaaace! His version of The Rocketeer knocked my socks off.

Coloring with GIMP

Any cartoonist who’s wanted to color their work digitally is familiar with programs like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. Cheapskates like us, though, sometimes find it hard to justify the purchase of such pricey software (maybe after we get a best-selling book deal, right?). Until then, the world has given us a nice little tool in the open-source software GIMP. Despite its un-PC name, I’ve found it to be a nimble tool for coloring my comics, and have been using it on my webcomic Cooties for the last several years. I initially was turned off by the fact that it doesn’t support working in CMYK, but that hangup has been overcome (I’ll go over that in a future post about printing comics). I’ll post my own comics-coloring process later, but for now, go and download this program if you want to start working in color.

Pic of the Day: Kid Vader by Skottie Young

I freaking love this drawing of the little kid from the Volkswagon commercial by Eisner-winning artist Skottie Young. And so should you.

Making Graphic Novels

I recently had my mind blown away when I was tipped off to a great series of posts by Jason Brubaker entitled Making Graphic Novels. He covers the whole process of comicking, from the steps you need to take before you even start putting pen to paper, to a wealth of information on the creation process itself, and then to marketing, promoting, and selling your work. These articles are worth the time it takes to study them. Now go, there’ll be a quiz on Monday!

Hand-drawing & pens

I’ll save the debate about hand-drawn vs. digital comics for a later post; generally speaking, though, the typical starving artist resorts to penciling and inking by hand. Heck, if it was good enough for Charles Schultz and Jack Kirby, it’s good enough for me! There’s just something about the crisply inked lines that have personified comics for the last century that even the best digital painting techniques will never replace.

Some of the best examples of pros hand-drawing their work for the web include Dave Kellett of the great humor comic Sheldon, Tara Tallan of the space-faring epic Galaxion, and the insane awesomeness of Doug TenNapel on Ratfist.

There are dozens of different tools you can use to ink your own work, but in my years of cartooning, my favorite discovery has been the brush pen. While arguably not as great as a sable hair brush, according to some (and not as expensive, either), I find them to be extremely versatile, and definitely more portable. Sadly, as my local stores began to be affected by our current economic woes, they became harder and harder for me to find. I luckily happened upon a post by the aforementioned Tara Tallan, who led me to a great place called jetpens.com. I have fallen in love with this site, and in particular with the Kuretake Brush Sign Pens I’ve ordered from it! They’re between $2-$3 apiece, and each one gives me a great range of line widths and a nice sharp line. I highly recommend them:

Speaking of inking, here is a great video regarding the subject by TenNapel as he shows his inking process for Ratfist:

‘Til next time, cheapskates!

Pic of the day – Dementor’s kiss

My favorite piece of artwork that I saw today comes from the insanely talented Katie Cook. Go check out her site and revel in her ability to make everything adorable!

Daily free affirmation – 3/5/11

Hey cheapskates! There are few things in life better than free advice, right? I’ll try and post these little tidbits as I find them. The first bit comes from Charles Dowd via Twitter:

“If you want to be a comic artist, then draw comics. Draw every single day and shove it down our throats. Nobody owes you a shot.”

Thanks, Charles!

Hello world!

Welcome, frugal creators!

I’ve been toying with the idea of creating this blog for quite a while, but today I got my kick in the pants. The remarkably talented Chris Oatley tweeted recently about one of his old artcasts in which he stated, “process is inherently interesting.” I agree with this. There are so many great artists out there who share their own individual artistic methods, whether it be through podcasting, video streaming, or online tutorials; I eat it all up! However, I’d never considered myself as being someone who had something to contribute to the great online discussion that is taking place regarding art in the 21st century. Chris made me realize that there IS room, even for a doofus like me, to give something back to the artistic community I’ve discovered on the web.

So, you can totally blame Chris if this whole thing turns out to be crap. I’m just sayin’.

Anyway, what is the purpose of this blog? Well,  it’s something I wish had existed when I was a dumb kid starting out in the art world; I want this to be a place where artists, who, for whatever reason, don’t have the means or option of going out and buying the latest software, hardware, training, etc., can still come to hone their artistic & cartooning skills to a professional level. And no, I’m not here to show you how to get pirated versions of Photoshop or how to swipe markers from your local art supply store. I’m here to show you that you just might be able to achieve success with a minimum of cost on your part.

So who do I think I am that I’m qualified to give anyone advice when there are so many out there better than me? Well, I have at least ten years’ experience publishing cartoons in various newspapers and magazines, and have spent the last several years creating my online comic, Cooties. I am not by any means someone who has or can fully support my family solely with my art, but I feel like I have to start somewhere when it comes to giving back to anyone who can find what I have to say to be of any use.

Besides, I don’t think I’ll devote most of the space on this blog to my own processes, anyway. I want to learn right along with anyone who frequents The Cheapskate Cartoonist, so I will devote a great chunk of this blog to directing you to tutorials and art processes of those whom I myself want to learn from. This blog will be as much for me as for my readers, so I know I’ve got at least someone reading it!

There’s a shift going on in the artistic world right now. Projects are the new resumé. There are talented people on the web who are only too happy to show the rest of us how they do what they do, and The Cheapskate Cartoonist is here to thankfully recognize them and spread the love of artistic expression to all who come here. Anything I think may be of interest to you, I’ll try and post it here. So let’s get ready to learn, share, and save!

–Nick Perkins