Comic Page Production Process

Each comic artist follows their own ways to make comics. While some go for the digital approach, some still use the traditional means when producing comic pages. It can also depend on the chosen style of what materials will be used. Here is my pipeline I have chosen to follow.

Stage 1: Sketches and Thumbnails

I usually begin with sketching out a brief layout of the comic page. Sometimes it is good to work on the smallest scale so that you can determine if it is can be read visually from a distance. Once a preliminary sketch has been made. I would revisit it later to apply further detail to it.
For the environments, I used screenshots of low poly 3D models created in Maya to suggest a three dimensional space. However I drew over these to make it look as if it it were drawn traditionally.

Stage 2: Lined Artwork

Here I  go over the refined sketches in cleaner lines. During this stage, I import the lined work over to Adobe Illustrator and basically, further refining it by "live tracing" the illustration. This approach makes the lines appear more smooth with cleaner edges.

Stage 3: Flat Colouring

Once the lines have been established, I would then apply colour to the illustration. I start off with flat colours to act as a base and then add extra layers to colour certain parts of the figure.To reduce the file size of my PSD files I would often merge these coloured layers into one. When it come to colouring characters, I usually give each one their own base layer so that I can colour the characters and backgrounds separately.

Stage 4: Lighting and Additional effects

Here I added an opaque layer and have it overlaying the main flat colour layer. Here I erased spots on the layer to suggest where the light is hitting.

Stage 5: Visual Style

Here I could include a  series of additional effects such as opaque layers of white colour to suggest atmospheric perspective. I decided to apply unique visual styles to the comic to suggest the past, present and future as shown below.

Past Flashback

I used a paper texture to suggest that these panels are being told in the protagonist's written account. In additional, I applied the panel borders with a cloudy bright brush to suggest that these panels are fragments of the protagonist's memories. 

Present

In this one, I have used cool and warm colours to establish a clear but atmospheric environment

Vision of the Future

I used hellish colours such as a red overlay to suggest what horrific events could happen in the future.

Problems

Pixelated Line Work

I have encountered a few issues when importing line work. Sometimes I would need to resize the line work to fit into the page .This can result in pixelated line work. Fortunately, this can be fixed by going over those points or by bringing the lines back into Adobe Illustrator and then reimporting it into Adobe Photoshop but keep it in its imported state without rasterizing the layer. This can lead to an iterative process.