My comic book creation process

When I create comic books, I have to say that I don't always know how things are going to turn out. I generally have an idea about a subject, or I just think of something I'd like to comment on and then there can be 1 of 2 ways I go from there:

1. I put pen to paper straight away and improvise everything: I make up the text as I go along and the drawing, and try to do the most logical and intuitive layout design. I cannot say I truly improvise everything, I simply start at the top left, just thinking about what space I need for the text, and then every new item laid out on the page is created considering what has come before, but not thinking about what will be coming next. These designs are generally the simplest and have an easier less calculated flow.

2. The premeditated comic book design is not the simplest, especially now that I'm working on letter format paper, and not A4. The designs born from this are very calculated: everything has its place and have been positioned in many different places before pen is put to paper. All be it, I don't do a physical draft of my comic book designs, I do everything in mentally, picturing how things would look in different places and how the design and layout can enhance the story, or how I can maximise the impact with a calculated and thought through design.

The saying "read if you want to write" works very well with comic design. After reading comics, the logic of design appears and the "rules and exceptions" of the logic of telling a comic book story seems to become second nature. Most of it is based on the easy logic that we read text right to left and top to bottom, so that's how a comic book is designed to be read, each part of the comic being like a different paragraph. The notorious exception to this deign logic involves putting arrows leading from one square to the next ordering the squares out of their natural reading chronology and guiding the reader. I have done all I can to avoid doing so; I like to work with the layout and design and make them so simple and logic that their cannot be ambiguity on where to read next, and therefore no need for arrows.

The tools I use for the simple black and white comic designs are simple: paper and black ink fountain pens. Nothing is brought through the computer. Making everything by hand stops making comics using ctrl+c and ctrl+v (copy and pasting). Comic books like Cyanide and Happiness tend to just copy and paste every character and their body parts onto each different comic. By doing so the comic book loses personality, clumsiness, and ultimately charm. Webcomics are not renown for the artistic prowess in their execution, they mainly play on good and simple design, and charm and character. I cannot deny that in my case charm and character means mistakes and imperfect lines.

My wokstation: