There are multiple ways to go about doing comics. They can be as simple as pencil or pen and ink comics, but I will be showing the way to create full color comics finalized and ready for print through digital methods.

The process, while having some variations from time to time, follows a fairly set overall pattern that I shall demonstrate.

Sketching and arrangement

The first step you will encounter will be sketching, which is pretty much a given. Even if you're only doing a simple drawing on notebook paper, you're going to do this. For a finished professional comic it's only the first step though. You need this step to lay the foundation for the rest of the work, and the more time you spend on designing the basics, the easier it will be to do the rest.

You should be not only sketching the pictures, but a lot of the time, working on the arrangement. As I will discuss later, some people like myself try and sketch the picture out in how it will be arranged on the paper, and some just draw individual scenes and do the arrangement later. I personally think it works better to have the finished arrangement in the sketch phase.

Inking

The inking method can be done with a couple different techniques. One depends on the tools you have, as I will describe in the next step. The basic method is to simply use inking pens to go over your line work and erase the original. You can also ink the comic on the computer. I'll go into that more later.

Adding frames

At this point, you will be working on the computer for the rest of the process. Like a lot of these steps, they can be done in different orders, but I just have found that this method works the best for me. It allows for arranging the speech bubbles later on easier as well as helping to line up and simplify the coloring process.

Text and speech bubbles

While this page isn't the best example of actual speech bubbles as there is only text with effects applied, this is the phase that you would be doing that none-the-less. In truth I often wait to do the actual speech bubbles until after the backgrounds are on, but it can be done at either time.

Coloring

With the line work in place, it's fairly easy to color. This step may involve a little more if you inked by a pen before scanning rather than inking on the computer though. In this step, you can either paint the colors on or actually just fill between the lines as I prefer, though the latter still requires some extra work to finish up.

Backgrounds

Adding the backgrounds next really will help to improve your overall image, especially with the shading coming next. You want to be able to establish the environment and tones of the scene to play off of. Of course, you should be making sure to have your actual backgrounds match one another too.

Shading and highlights

With the backgrounds done and your characters now on a dimensional plain, you can now focus on giving your characters shape as well. The shading process can be as simple or complicated as you like. There are tons of different ways to go about shading really, and I will try and detail a couple of them.

Effects and touch-ups

After everything else, you will want to add some final effects and touch-ups. Sometimes this stage can be fairly simple, and other time it may be a crucial part of your page like this example page for instance.

It's evident that there is a lot that goes into a comic, but it's not as hard as it looks once you get all the methods down. I hope I can do my best to simplify the process to those who feel it too daunting of a task, as some tricks make each part go a lot smoother.

I'll go into more detail on each section, but before I do that I will go over the basic tools that I use and some common alternatives.