Basic Stages in the Process of making Comics

One day, a friend of mine asked me about the stages we should do during the comic process. So I gave her the steps:

1. Pencil. hand drawing remains on top of all. Though we can use pen tablet to draw an image, drawing on a computer just cannot beat out the flexibility and details of direct hand drawing on the paper.

2. Ink. Ink is used to make the outline of the pencil sketch so we can see the image clearer and will be easier to be scanned. In the United States comic industries, this inking process are even conducted by particular people which are called the Inker. But with the good quality of the scanner nowadays, many people choose to directly scan their artworks and control the sharpness level of the lines using software editors like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw.

image is taken from darkhorse.com

3. Coloring. The coloring process can be finished off either by hand directly or using computer. But today people prefer computer than manual coloring. Typically, the programs used to do the coloring are Adobe Photoshop and Corel Draw.

4. Lettering. In lettering process, we put appropriate balloon texts into the comic. Remember that comic is a bunch of images which tells strory, and not the other hand. "An image is worth a thousand words." So, put texts as few as possible.

5. Finishing. Usually to control the quality of the comic. Check the whole comic from the very beginning to the end, from the paneling, appropriate balloon texts, etc.

Well, those are the basic stages in the process of making comics. Hopefully this could help the beginners to start making their own comic.