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The Anders Loves Maria Process

I did a little post for Twitter followers, and I think this sort of thing really is better suited for Live Journal. So here you have a bit of my working process. All these are from when I did the comic by hand, which is such a rewarding process. I look forward to returning to it one day. Nowadays I do everything from thumbnails, layouts and finished work in Illustrator. This is much more fun:


Scripting/Ideas

Ideas for individual pages usually end up on anything that I happen to have at the moment. Usually these are not so much dialogue based but emotionally or visually based because the plot/script itself is already written, for the most part.












Thumbnails/Layouts

Then I'll do thumbnails or layouts on low grade printing paper. I outline these with any dark pen I happen to have so it will show through better on a lightboard.


























Inking

Then I ink on A4 illustration board, using a #2 sable brush. This, to me, is the perfect size for achieving varying size widths. If you can't afford sable (they aren't THAT expensive don't worry) then at least use natural hairs. Don't use synthetic brushes they hold very little ink and are just generally shitty.





Colouring

Then I colour with watercolours. This is a really fun and rewarding process but kind of scary. A nice tip is to make sure you wet the section you are about to paint with clean water. It prevents your colours from drying too fast.





Ta Da!