A lot of you have asked me since I’ve started doing this series what my procedure is for creating an ADDANAC CITY comic strip. My simple reply of “magic” didn’t seem to suffice, so I’m featuring a step-by-step commentary about how I go about it.

The first thing I do is refer to my trusty AC comic strip template. I use this basic setup for each AC comic after I get an idea. I generally only have to shorten or widen the panels in order to accomodate the dialogue.

For dialogue, I prefer the font Anime Ace. It’s the closest I’ve come across that’s similar to my own lettering style. For those of you still hand-lettering, I’m tellin’ ya, it’s a lot quicker and easier to let the computer do it for you. I call it necessary cheating.

After I place the words where they need to be (and this can be kinda tricky and time-consuming at times because I have to allow room for the artwork and character placement), I print it out on 24 lb 8 1/2 X 11 copy paper.

Now I’m ready to start penciling. I use a 4H pencil because the lead produces relatively light lines. That comes in handy when I have to erase. When I pencil, I don’t get very heavy into detail. I like to get more in-depth during the inking stage. As you can also see, I don’t usually pencil the backgrounds either.

Penciling an ADDANAC CITY comic takes me about 10-15 minutes, depending on whatever else I’m doing at the time (talking on the phone, watching TV, cooking, or kickin’ it with the fam).

After I’m finished penciling, it’s time to break out the inks!

Inking is one of my favorite parts of comic creating because I can get into some detail. This is the stage where I add in the wrinkles in the clothes, the true facial expressions, some shading, and all of the backgrounds.

Inking takes more time than penciling (usually around 30 minutes), but I enjoy it more. After I finish this stage, I erase all of my pencil lines. Then I scan the inked page back into the computer so that I can use Adobe Photoshop to color it.

I currently work with Adobe Photoshop 6 to color. I know it’s an ancient edition, but it’s all I have at the moment and it works fine for what I need. I start out coloring Hank’s hair (if he’s in the strip), then I color the flesh, then move on to the backgrounds. I color the characters’ clothing last so I can ensure that they won’t clash with the background color scheme.

After a few tweaks and some highlights, I begin to color all of the bold words in the dialogue. Then…voila! I’ve just finished one ADDANAC CITY comic strip. Only 364 more to go for the year.

I hope you all enjoyed this little tutorial on the making of… If you have any more questions, feel free to hit me up. To see the final regular-size version of this comic, just click here.