After Inking, Cleaning Up the Inks, and a side step into Screentoning, It’s time to get on to the lettering phase of Incident at the Game Store. If you’re up to having a signed physical book of Game Store for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

In this step of my multipart tutorial, I’ll be talking about how to set up text and word balloons for comics!

Again, I’m making the pages with print in mind, so I need the images in as high of a resolution as possible. I often do my heavier text editing in Adobe Illustrator. Inkscape is a freeware alternative that is as good and better than Illustrator! For now, these next steps are in Illustrator. I make a new file with six art boards to the pixel size of the pages I plan to import.

Illustrator gives me more options to mess with my text than Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. I import or “Place” my images in Illustrator, so they’re all in one large file to look at!

I get myself started by dimming my art and typing down my general typing and lettering. If you have a script typed out in a word processer, you can copy and paste to your heart’s content! I’m not worrying about the exact font at the moment to start getting the words out.

I refer to my thumbnails for the bubble placement to the art and the original post image to the dialogue. Not only that, but I cleaned up the dialogue at the feedback of my mom, so it lacks teeth compared to the original post.

I’m not as confident with my ability to draw word balloons myself, so I generally do it separate from the artwork digitally. Most of what I know about making word balloons is from this tutorial by John Roshell.

I begin the real lettering by arranging the dialogue words in a centered diamond pattern. I take time to putting words on different lines until it looks more professional.

Next, I expand the balloon size and set it up to “anchor” to the top of the panel. I use the Rectangle tool to make a new shape and put it on top of the balloon shape. Then, in the Pathfinder Box’s Shape Modes (Shift+Ctrl+F9), select both of the shapes, select Unite. The paths of those shapes will merge into one new shape.

Time to create a balloon tail to point to Fatty. Using the pen tool, I can draw a rough tail shape and use the Direct Selection tool to work the shape to a pointed tail. The same steps to Unite the tail to the balloon to have a connected balloon.

Now make more rectangles and arrange to align to the borders of the panel. I get rid of the fill color for a short time, only seeing the lines. The rectangles must arrange over the round balloon. You can select Object>Arrange>Send to Front) or Ctrl+Shift+] to send objects above each other.

After that, select the rectangles and the word balloon. Next, select the Pathfinder’s Shape Modes, and select Minus Front. Cut out the balloon shape for the panel anchoring.

These steps work for most of the dialogue bubbles I did in this book. For one of them, I made a yelling balloon. Found this tutorial for making yelling dialogue balloons by Jim Campbell.

I go on Page 3 to do some work on this charging scream from the boyfriend character. I convert the text into an image and then re-arrange and resize the letters. The results are a nice, disjointed scream that emphasizes the dude’s rage well!

Now that my letters are in a good position, I can punch the screaming up with bold outlines! I used some tips from Comicscraft‘s book on making Emphasis Bubbles.

I make a new little speech bubble and move it to the middle white letter stroke color layer. Next, I manipulate the shape of the ellipse to make the stroke size 10 pt. Then, I adjust the bottom black letter stroke color layer to make it look seamless.

I use my previous balloon-making techniques to build up a new balloon shape.

I rearrange the bubble back in the proper place. Plus, I fiddle with a few more adjustments in my vector nodes, and I’ve completed a new screaming balloon for page 3!

Now I do a little to figure out what I can do for page 4 and the fat guy’s maniacal laughter. I try out a Blambot font called Torn Asunder. I created outlines out of the typed font, and edit each letter with the lasso tool to make it look pretty decent.

More progress on the laugh. I make it easier for myself to arrange the lettering in groups and manipulate them into sections.

Fore Page 5 Panel 1, I was laxer, and I stuck with using a Warp filter to the text.

Did some more work on some other panels. For the gross sound effect, I used Torn Asunder from Blambot again!

I didn’t plan enough for sound effects, but it will help to have them. I’m using the Damn Noisy Kids font from Blambot.

I’m very close to the wrap-up phase of lettering. I first started to use the Newsflash font from Blambot for my title and endings, but I still didn’t feel it was right.

But then, I looked up GameStop’s logo and learned something hilarious and pitiful. GameStop uses the Impact font, a terrible free font that’s in most computers and terrible image memes.

Now to start wrapping things up. First, I unlock full of my usable layers, making sure Overprint stroke is checked on all my balloons. Next, I Select all the letter stuff in the panel.

I go to Object>Rasterize and Set it to the Highest Print Res that I have.

That’ll make it easier to export the text back to Clip Studio or Photoshop as a transparent layer. I can overlay this on top of all my pages.

I did some last-minute stuff to add a new reaction bubble for Panel 1 of Page 2.

Now it’s time to export my stuff from Illustrator. The original digital file is at 600 dpi because it’s easier to shrink than to expand them. So I save to 72 dpi to keep space low.

So I export it as a transparent PNG so it will fit in the pages with the screentones that I’m still working on back in Clip Studio Paint.

After importing the rest of my lettering, I use my Layer Masks to clean up the text to fall behind the monster on the page.

I fiddle about with my Lasso, Magic Wand, and Hard Brush to work with my mask. The lettering is now behind the monster, as I need it to be.

So I do this for the other pages in the comic, fiddling with other lettering areas.

I’m not liking how straight one panel looks, so I curve it down a bit.

One sound effect kinda blends into the line art, so I did a bit of toning work to get it to pop out more.

I’m pretty much finished with the lettering now, I’m 90% finished with this story! This step was a large learning experience for me! I knew that lettering is an underappreciated art that’s very easy to mess up. I wanted to do my best with this comic, and that includes getting more familiar with lettering. There’s much to still learn, but now I can press forward with Game Store’s tutorial!

Screentoning was originally going to be in the digital touch ups step, but it was getting a bit long, so I broke screentoning into a separate section!

When I drew Incident at the Game Store, I didn’t plan to color the pages because I wanted to make a larger anthology. I’m keeping this step because I already put in the work for it. So it might be helpful for anyone who wants to take the option.

If you’re up to having a signed physical book of Game Store for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

It’s time to use Clip Studio to do something experimental. I’ll be adding screentones to give some of my art a gray tone with only black and white dots. I’m working on a tutorial on screentoning from Whyt Manga. Also check out his comic, Apple Black!

In Manga Studio 5 EX or Clip Studio Paint, there is a Material Tab. It would be in the default UI but if it is not, go to Window>Material>Material[Dot]. You’ll find a variety of textures and screentones from this tab, and you can make custom ones, but I’m making a basic dot pattern. 

I select one of the pre-made tones and edit them by clicking “Settings of Toning…” This will give you the Simple Tone Settings window. Next, set the number of lines for 70, which in this instance, determines the amount of dots in the pattern. Then set the Density(B) to 30, white, then determine how big and fat those dots are. After that, I set the Angle at 23 degrees, this is the rotated orientation of the texture. I made it at an angle that’s not an even number, giving it a tiny bit of flaw to the texture.

So now we can drag this texture to my comic and now the entire screen has screentoned! It’ll make a separate screentone layer with a mask of the texture, so this saves a ton of work than other programs.

Fill the layer masks with a transparent color to mask it out, a staple of digital image editing programs. I then edit my masks with a normal unaliased round brush.

You can also select with my lasso and magic wand tools to mask and unmask as needed. I usually start a panel by selecting an entire panel and filling the general screentone.

I also do some other screentone things, like adding a darker screen tone for the black girlfriend.

II continue these processes for the rest of the pages. I’m nailing down the rough spots I need.

I did more experimentation with screentoning. Trying to stack screentone layers on top of each other and masking with a soft brush to for a gradient look.

Again, I created this step before I decided to color the comic properly. The original idea was to keep the book black and white, so there are many steps before I colored.

Now that this all is done, it’s time to put some words to these pictures!

Onward from Part 4 of my Inking Section

After inking my comic, Incident at the Game Store, I make some touch ups to the pages to prepare for coloring! I split this section from my inking part, so it won’t stretch so long.

If you’re up to having a signed physical book for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

To start, I scan my pages in any scanner that can scan a Portable Document Format (PDF) at 600 dpi and I use Photoshop to import the PDF pages.

I scan it in Color, Greyscale and Black and White Modes for coverage. But I generally use the color scans, so I have more control over the gray before I work them down to black and white.

When you open the PDF in Photoshop, the image files separate. I prefer to pull them into one document, with each page in different layers. This will make it faster to resize and adjust for the print margins!

I use Multiply Layer mode to help me align my artwork, so it’s consistent to crop and align for lettering. 

All the layers are on the Multiply Layer style mode: meaning the lighter colors of the layer are clear while the darker ones are solid.

Next, I crop the page for coloring, adjusting to the comic paper’s trim line for later printing. Don’t fret too much about making it perfect, as it’s difficult to get them all aligned like that in the first place.

Here’s a page that’s now cropped.

From here, use Image>Adjustments>Hue and Saturation to clear the blue pencil sketches. Use the Cyan and Blue dropdown settings to only affect the blue pencil work. Push down the Saturation Bar, then push up the Brightness Bar. This will keep as much gray tone as possible to not destroy my blacks too much.

I then work with my Image>Adjustments> Levels to bring up the contrast of blacks and whites. Doing as little as I can to not destroy too much of the thinner lines.

More Level editing as I try to make my blacks deeper.

This is the panel of art so far. Now it’s time for more intricate edits.

This next process is simpler. Use the round brush and tools for a pressure sensitive, size changing brush tool with a white color to clean up stray lines and specks.

The scan caught my paper edits, so I need to clean them up. I use the Lasso tool to move parts of the background lettering to realign the sign letters.

I work on the mall kiosk line art to realign it to something normal.

Continue with my Brush tool to clean up mistakes I didn’t catch with in the ink drawings.

Here is the entire page so far! The same process is used for working with the rest of my scanned ink art. Time to prep this page for future coloring!

First, I adjust the art to be completely black and white with no gray by using Image>Adjustments>Threshold.

Adjustment to make sure thinner lines don’t disappear too much.

Select >Color Range, then select the white color anywhere.

This will select every pixel in the image with that white color.

I make a New Layer (Shift+Ctrl+N) and Fill (Shift+F5) in a Black color, making a layer with only the black line art. In general, I do this process with all the pages.  You can also get away with putting your line art Layer Blend Mode to Multiply. But you’d miss out on the flexibility of editing your lines, including the ability to color them without affecting your normal colors.

Here are all page comparisons, from initial scan to final touches!

The differences are minuscule, but this is the process I found to set up my comic pages to color. On Part 5, I will go through the process of adding gray tones with Clip Studio’s Screentoning Features.

I continue from Part 3 of my Pencil Art Section

It’s been smooth sailing so far, but now it’s onward to inking the pages in my comic story, Incident at the Game Store! If you’re up to having a signed physical book for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

Since I’m inking my own art, I drew my pages in Non-Photo Blue Pencil. It’s be faster for me to get to the inking! I want to ink this comic with the nibs that I have at hand!

I use a Speedball #513EF nib, Zebra Manga G nib, and a Speedball #101 Imperial nib with a holder from my old calligraphy nibs. No clue if holders make a huge difference other than holding certain sized nibs, but that’s what I use. The pens get dipped in Blick Black Cat Waterproof India Ink.

First, I start with lining up my panels. Here, I use a 24 inch Metal Staedtler ruler larger than my paper. Plus a 12×7 inch plastic T-Square as it’s transparent. I also use a metal 5x8inch T-Square for my other general straight line work. Finally, I use a 1.0 Black Copic Multiliner for thick lines with little variation on my panels. I’m not confident enough in my inking to go thinner, but I’ll hit that another time.

I mark dots in the panel corners to help me see when to stop my lines for the panel gutters. There are flaws and I overshoot some lines, but I can make the fixes with Artist Pro White later.

Starting with page 3, there’s a huge change up from the last time I made a comic. Now I’m working with manga inspired diagonal panels for action! Some new things I try are letting the panels bleed out the page. There are changes from my thumbnails of re-closing a few panels, it looks pretty nice. All this conveys the action of getting into a fight. It contrasts to the flat panels of the first and final pages. The first panel of page 3 is a good example of me getting out of my rut to something new. Even trying an open panel to work better for the explosive action on the page!

The next few pages are more straightforward line inking with a ruler and t-square. The sixth and final page in the story turned out cleaner despite my tiny flaws.  Now it’s time for actual inking!

To start Page 1’s inking, I began to use my tech pens to line the backgrounds. It’s a sloppy task that I have to fix at a later time. I’m not a fan of my French Curves, but it’s a necessity and better than working it by hand. Backgrounds in general are a slog to ink for me. But I do that first, so I have the easier task of character inking to look forward to.

I finally began inking my people. I’ve dabbled with nibs in some sketchbooks, but this time it’s do or die in my actual comic pages!

I begin some of my first brush work on the girl’s butt. Jumping between Round 2 and Round 1 brushes for my thick and thin lines. Sure, you could do that with one large brush, but my skills are not up to it at the moment.

First, close up of the Fat Man. Fiddling with my G Nib and 0.1 Multiliner Pen to add the tiny hairs and Cheeto dusted hands.

Thinking about this more, his hand should be larger on the panel. I see too much dead space in the original art. So I scan it, scale it up in Photoshop, print a black and white image. Next, I cut it with an X-Acto Knife. Finally, pasting it on top of the old panel with Rubber Cement and presto! Real Life Copy and Paste!

I spend time refining Page One with more detail in the backgrounds. Looking back at my references for good game box artwork to fill the shelves and thinking what reads well.

True, I could’ve done the inking simpler and faster, but how would I know if it looks good to me? The entire process of inking page one over two weeks of working. The little details might be good to fill it out the background. At points, I question if anyone would even pay attention?

Those thoughts come to me when I do art in general. Anyone who thinks making comics is a struggle is right. It isn’t digging ditches, but people claim they can’t draw a straight line despite rulers existing. The point is, the time will be worth it in the end. I’m telling you this as much as I tell myself that as I work on comics.

On to page two. At the start, I had an hour to complete one page, but I got quite far, all things considered. My inexperience with nibs and my perfectionism makes me see my crappy, unsteady hand in the lines. I regret not using a brush for the girl’s hair first. I have no clue how to use a ruler with a nib. So, like an idiot, I crosshatched with a nib. Stuff like that makes me never want to try crosshatching again because it never looks right to me!

Moving on to more line art inking. I’m never used to working so large, as I never have opportunities to settle down and draw. I’m usually doodle in small sketchbooks since I’m always out and about due to life obligations. Nibs continue to take getting used to. My lines aren’t as high quality as I want compared to the pros.

On a different day, I decided to ink the rest of the page with brush to block in some lines. Panel two is a case of me miss managing what my lighting should be. I wanted to use the thicker brush and show distance by thinning the lines going back into perspective. But it looks like crap, and I despise myself for it. I attempted a crosshatching gradient with panel 5, but that was an incredible letdown.

Doing the finishing touches on page two. Added background elements on panel two, adding continuity with page two. I added some finer details with Multiliners like finger nails and facial hair. To keep continuity with page one and three, I added the wristband for the boyfriend to the fist.

I go over to page three and start on my punch. I use a nib to try some more crosshatching and speed lines. In hindsight, I should’ve used a multiliner and a flexible curve ruler for the speed lines. But like a lazy idiot, I didn’t. Now I’m filled with preventable regrets.

Continue to page three, I add shirt designs to personalize the characters and more damned crosshatching for gradients.

I’m doing more work with ink. I’m using a bunch of spot blacks to show the darkness of the situation.

Working in some finishing touches and cross-hatching. At that time, I didn’t have a concrete idea of what the lighting was supposed to be. I was going over and over it with Pro-White to figure it out, especially with the hand.

I’ll also mention the few paper fixes I’ve done over my various panels and pages. It’s taking scraps of Bristol or printer paper and using rubber cement to paste over the mistakes.

The process of page three. I’ll pat myself on the back for making my first action sequence. Sure, it’s not Dragonball, but at least I’ve tried to establish that sense of impact.

Page four went pretty smooth. I managed to ink a majority of this page in 3 hours. It’s less time as I stood up often to stretch and use the bathroom, but still I’m making good time!

Some brushwork from my pocket brush and smaller normal brush. I’m getting a more natural line look that brushes can achieve. I still feel like my hair inking needs more practice, but I’m told drawing with a brush could take years. Despite this, there are some tricks I wanted to try out, such as dry-brush strokes to give it a soft look.

Added more blacks in the pages, reworking fat monster’s hand to keep continuity with page five. If I made a model sheet in the first place, I wouldn’t need to do these changes. I could’ve saved time and ink by leaving the paper blank and filling the blacks in Clip Studio. I guess I’m still in that traditional mindset.

A comparison of the entire process, inking page four. This page is the fasted page I’ve ever completed due to the page having characters and no background.

Page five These panels were my first pages to start. It’s nice to deviate from Shirley’s Day for something different. This time making wilder lines with the monster and chaos. I continue with the dry brush technique from page four to do that water spray effect.

This big panel is the last panel I worked on for the entirety of the comic. This page is also the one that gave me the biggest headache. I wanted to do this strange fish-eye perspective. I was struggling to make it work, sinking time into a shot that I wasn’t sure was working.

Working on detail work. I never feel like I’m creative when it comes to lettering store signs. It’s even more of a challenge with the outlandish perceptive I’m trying.

Continuing to add details to video game boxes and not thinking too much about what exactly the games are. The boxes are thumbnail illustrations that can read at a distance, but not too detailed. Doing all this is still tedious, but needed.

A comparison, inking all of page five. This page was the last and hardest ever page I worked on. I regret the weird perspective thing, as I should’ve made a normal background and not some dumb wave thing. Still, it got done, and I pulled through it. This can be the hardest thing to say to yourself when creating things. The biggest thing to remember is the layman won’t even notice your mistakes.

Page six is the first-ever page I worked on when I started inking this comic. I worked with 0.1 Copic Multiliners thinking I could thicken lines as I needed them. I made last-minute additions to the backgrounds by using Pro-White and paper pasting.

First, I ink the first half of this page in an hour because it’s character stuff. I try out Speedball Nibs to give me a nice thin line. After that, I try out my Imperial G nibs for the second half of the page; it seems to give me a thicker line.

I didn’t like the size of the eye in the second panel of page 6. So I did more real life copying and pasting. To reiterate, I printed, cut, and pasted an edited a scan of the panel in Photoshop.

Here is a comparison of the final panel. Top is the original, bottom is the new edit.

Doing the final bits of the page. The black guy having a t-shirt design actually have me the idea to give my protag a t-shirt design too. I was too wishy-washy about the shirt. The twist might be too obvious, but most people won’t know.

Now finishing up the rest of the pages with some hairy detailing with multiliners and nibs. Likewise, I get in some tiny white details with some of my white gel pens.

Here’s the final page process. Again, I worked on these pages out of order of which tasks I want to tackle at any given moment. I completed this entire inking process in 2 months!

This is one of the more involved sections I’ve written. If you try this yourself, you may be faster or slower than me, but don’t fret. This is a process that’s unique to everyone, and everyone goes at their own pace.

Next I’ll be doing some digital touch ups in Clip Studio!

I should have plenty of references, so now it’s time to get started laying out the comic in the big paper!

For this section, I’ll be penciling and drawing the large pages of my comic story, Incident at the Game Store! If you’re up to having a signed physical book for yourself, you can stop by my Etsy store and grab a copy!

I’m using Strathmore Smooth Bristol Board Paper. It’s lined for comic printing. These large binder clips to keep my paper on top of the rest of the pad for “cushion.”

At the start, I’m marking down the rough areas of composition with non-photo blue pencil. This part is a bit newer addition to my workflow, as I’m testing my ability to do this quick. I’ll admit it’s hard to see in a photo, but I’m doctoring the photo in these demonstrations to be easier to see.

This is where your thumbnail pages come in. I use a t-square to line up the panels. Other than that, I don’t worry about exact perspective. I’m making sure to draw light, so it’s easier to erase and make changes if needed.

I began to do some refining and detailing of Panels 1 and 2. Using my GameStop references to establish detail and break up the composition. I’m not used to blue line drawing, since it’s encouraging me to press my marks harder. Since I’m inking my own work, I don’t need to worry about this too much.

I did a few last-minute detail changes to page 1 to break up the pattern of games on the shelf. It’s minor, but it makes backgrounds more believable.

On to page 2, again it’s hard to get these photos from my phone because the drawings are in non-photo blue lead.

I did a few sketches to figure out the poses and sketches to figure out panel 2’s composition. When I was drawing the couple, I wasn’t thinking too hard about them being an interracial couple. I wanted to draw a girl with a good butt, and a black girl was the first in my mind because I’m a damn perv. The boyfriend is white because the fat guy is white, and it makes it easy to hide the twist for the monster.

Here, I’m refining the panel more.  I swapped the couple’s places to keep the continuity. I feel like I failed to capture the final expressions as well as my thumbnail.

The last panels of page 2 are really sloppy, especially the fist. I used my selfie reference and pictures of my own hand to catch the pose of a clenched fist.

On to page 3. I don’t do much action, so this is my first time drawing a character punching another. The punch needed to be impactful, from the large punch pose to the fat guy’s crumpling body from the impact. With that, I demonstrated a new maliciousness to Mr. Fats, so I got some reference for the old chin down, eyes up face.

For the fat guy’s face squished by the fist, I got inspiration from the Pokémon Origins miniseries. It was the part where Charzard uses Mega Punch on Blastoise. The expression and the folds of fat was exactly what I needed.

Next is page four! It’s a straight-forward page that went fast. The first panel is redundant from the last panel of the previous page. But I kept it, since I didn’t know what to do with that otherwise. Panel 4 is another one of those panels where I use diagonal panels to vary up my comic layouts.

On to page five! I wanted to rework my initial thumbnail to figure out the positions of the monster reveal. I did a some pose sketches of the foreground girl.

The girlfriend needed to run away out of the story since she’s finished with her part in this story. Likewise, I also had some trouble with a head angle, so I blew time on studies. That’s not a bad thing, but I was expecting to knock out this page faster.

I’m almost finished with page 5. Put too much detail to the left shelf that before realizing it didn’t go with the warped perspective. There’s trouble erasing the blue lines, so I’ll need to be careful with the inking.

Page six is the last stretch. This is a simple transition zoom out from page five. It’s a testament to my new skills that I was able to plan my layouts more for this kind of thing. I could’ve designed the now fat-ized boyfriend better but this gets the point across enough.

Now, back to drawing the store at a new angle, referring to the first page to keep continuity of the mall outside. Also, I inverted the couple from the first page to a white girl with a black guy to bookend the story. It was a surprising struggle to make the mouth right for the end to get the right amount of filthiness for the look. I dug through enough, creepy refs of someone licking their lips as well.

Compared to Shirley’s Day, my pencils are sloppier, but I got them done faster than the first time I made a comic. Penciling this took me roughly a month to finish. At the time in 2019, I had 4 hours a day available to me to work on these. The backgrounds taking the longest out of the time.

Onward to inking!