CARLOS MAL DRAWS "AL GRITO"

I don't think anybody has asked me to make a tutorial on how to draw comics, much less ask me about the process of creating the comic strips that I publish on a weekly basis at algrito.com, (the Spanish language webcomic that my pal J.C. Soto and I begun back in January), but I don't give a shit. Here I leave you all with a step by step review of the manner in which my creative juices congeal into art.

1. Everything starts with a pencil drawing on a regular piece of regular white paper. José Carlos produces the idea and I draw it grosso modo, just to know how is everything is going to be arranged in the final product and so we're sure that J.C. is going to like it, because, after all, Al Grito is all about teamwork.


2. The drawing is scanned and saved in .JPG format; I open it in Photoshop and I start drawing the lines, which I call "base lines". For this I use an oval-shaped brush, because the lines produced by it change in width with every different angle; the result gives the impression that I used a felt pen or marker. I should mention that the first strips were drawn using Photoshop's "pen tool", but for due to the time it consumed I decided to use that method for drawings that were more complex, like this one I made of my wife, Bérénice. In the sample that's at the right of this paragraph (click on it to expand its size) you can see how I start the process of "inking" the base lines.

3. This is the way the comic looks once I finished tracing all the base lines.

4. The dialogue is something that I often leave for the end, but when the comic has many speech balloons or extensive phrases in it I like to know in advance how much space is going to be occupied by the lettering and balloons before continuing with more difficult parts of the process; this way I will know what parts of the comic I can skip (because they will be hidden behind a speech balloon anyways).

5. Speaking of knowing what space is going to be occupied, the next step consists in adding an outer frame in order to separate the panels. Very simple, actually.

6. I use the "pen tool" to make the speech balloons instead of working with custom shapes, like many do. After I eliminate the base pencils one notices that the comic has taken shape. Some would say that it's practically ready to be published. What a miserable error. I am anal when it comes to my comics, that's why I hardly meet deadlines.

7. The most difficult part of the process (it's tedious!) is base-coloring. A software that's so intelligent as to know perfectly which shape goes in what color dos not exist yet. One must paint first with a big brush and then with a fucking microscope in order to respect the borders, so the colors are not wrongly mixed or overlapped, so there are no unpainted corners, etc. It is a delicate task and what is more irritating about it it's probably that it is the least artistic phase of the whole process.


8. The good thing is that the next step is my favorite: shadows and highlights. I achieve this using Photoshop's "burn" and "dodge" brushes; the first one darkens the base colors (i.e. it's not a black-colored brush, but a brush that "scorches" colors towards black) and the second one over-exposes the base colors until they get to white.

9. As it can be seen in the previous drawing, I colored the skin of the characters first. In the following steps I colored each element on a different layer. Photoshop layers are edited independently; the good thing about this is that the effects I add are not mixed up and the overall experience is more organized.

10. I use a technique that I discovered myself in order to shade in different layers: I duplicate the base-color layers and apply shadows on the upper layer. Then I use the eraser (soft or hard) so the shade appears to be interrupted (as it can be seen in the shadow of the Bible in the first panel of the image after this paragraph). Afterwards I merge the two layers into one and I repeat the procedure as many times as necessary. I do this to every color layer onto which I intend to apply shadows or highlights.

11. I finally add the background. In strips like this one the background is not complex, rather a solid-colored backdrop to which I add some shadows or light effects. In other comic strips I have added dramatic textures or intricate drawings. This time I got it easy; the result is as follows. The comic strip is ready to be published... almost.

12. The last step is basically post-production, for the product is actually ready. What happens is that I like to feature effects that give the drawing uniqueness. I almost always add a texture to it (in this case it was a "halftone color" effect) and one or more color filters. The cherry on top of the cake is the webcomic's ID at the lower left corner and my signature on the opposite side.

Once the comic is ready I reduce its size considerably. I save the original-sized file (for the purpose of using it for prints or further editing) and said reduced file is published on algrito.com.

This is how the magic goes down, dear readers. Don't miss the comic each week. If you want to subscribe to algrito.com so each strip arrives automatically to your feed reader click here.

See you people in the next post, in 2014. See you on Facebook as well, losers.

☞ Leer en español