I believe it’s time for another behind the scenes look at my cartooning process. This will be my third  behind the scenes look. Click here and here for other “behind the scenes” posts.

Poor musicianship is always something I always stumble into when meeting other musicians.

It’s like its contagious. Musicianship is both mindset and skill set. Musicians are always focusing on their music skills rather than their people skills. Music skills can get you the gig, but people skills will keep you there and get you more gigs.

I figured I should come up with a funny cartoon gag that relates to musicians in a humorous way. I choose the Poor Musicianship comic from a post I wrote awhile back. Click here.

As always these process is lengthy stemming from idea to finished cartoon.

Let’s begin.

The Idea: 1-2 days.

It’s important to obtained an environment that lends to your mind in a very creative way. If you stifle your creativity than ideas won’t come to mind. I was thinking of a way to represent poor musicianship in a humorous way. I was thinking of a concert situation that the musician can do that was considered proof musicianship.

I took a walk in my neighborhood trying to figure out how to make this funny in away. For some reason I recalled a U2 concert that I have on DVD. U2 hires musicians and places them backstage while Bono and the other members stay on stage while the hired musicians in the back perform all the external parts.

I thought to myself I could have one of the characters hire a musician put him back stage while the character fakes the part, while everybody is fooled that he is performing the parts. I figured I would run with this gag.

The Tools:

1. Mechanical Pencil
2. Gum Eraser
3. 8.5×11 paper
4. Pigma Micron Pens
5. Presto Pen whiteout
6. Black Sharpie Pen

References: 10-15 minutes.

The best artists today use picture references. Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, Todd Mcfarlane, Bill Watterson, Sean Murphy, all use references. I use google all the time but this time I didn’t use much reference only for the keyboard.

Light Pencils: 30 minutes.

Here I sketched out the character and the background very lightly because you never know, I’d probably have to erase. Did you know the great Jim Lee erases his sketches constantly trying to find perfect composition?

Line Work: 10-15 minutes.

Tightened up the sketch a bit more with darker pencils to give a more defined look.

Shadows: 30 minutes.

Adding shadows makes the sketch come to life and give it depth.

Scan: 5 minutes.

I use an small Canon Pixma MG6220 for scanning. The image is then imported into Manga Studio 4 EX.

Inks: 1-2 days.

I always use the Maru brush in Manga Studio 4 EX it has tons of flexibility and I can always erase.

Colors: 1-2 hours.

My color theory is getting better and my coloring skills is improving bit by bit, but this time I choose to color flats. In the future I’ll start adding more depth to the colors instead of just flats.

Cheers

I thought I’d create another behind the scenes look at my cartooning process. This will be my second behind the scenes look. Click here for my first behind the scenes post.

I figured I’d create this post based on the Guitar Samarai slicing the guitar in half with bits and pieces flying all over.

This image was for a tutorial I wrote awhile back on the “10 steps to cutting your guitar practice routine in half.”  Click here to read more.

Creating art is always a lengthy process, but I love every minute of it. When a comic is created there are always several folks involved. There’s the: writer, editor, penciller, inker, colorist and letterrer. One of these days I’ll be able to hire every single one.

For the meantime I’ll have to tackle the whole process myself. It’s a great learning experience.

Behind the Scenes: Creating the Guitar Samurai

Let’s begin.

The Idea: 1-2 days. This is the hardest part, because if the idea is executed correctly then everything else will follow. For the 10 steps to cutting your guitar practice routine in half, I literally talk walks around my neighborhood and let ideas just come to mind. If I stay home, ideas tend to not come very quickly for me.

Open environments give my mind some breathing room. My walks can take 30-60 minutes or more depending on the weather, it’s good exercise too. For this post I was looking for an image that had movement of something being cut in half. In this case I chose the guitar to be cut in half.

But who was gonna do the cutting?

Since I love martial arts, ninjas and samurais I figured I’ll have a samurai flying through the air slicing a guitar in two. It sounding like a cool image so I went for it.

The Tools: It’s important to have tools that work for your process. You don’t need super expensive tools to get the job done. Here is a list of my basic tools.

Mechanical Pencil
Gum Eraser
8.5 x 11 paper
Pigma Micron Pens
Presto Pen whiteout
Black Sharpie Pen

I’ve bought many mechanical pencils, some cheap and expensive. I’m always looking for a better mechanical pencil, but it seems this cheap pencil I bought at Target seems to work for me. Use what works for you.

References: 10-15 minutes. I believe it’s important to always have references for your artwork. Most artists don’t have great photographic memories. Sometimes you’ll have to draw an image you’re not familiar with and you have to gather references. All the great artists do it today. Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, Todd Mcfarlane, Bill Watterson, Sean Murphy, all use references. The internet is an abundant resource.

Use it.

Light Sketch/Thumbnails 10-15 minutes. I was experimenting with different poses but I thought having his legs kick up would make it more dramatic.

Light Pencils: 30 minutes. Here I defined the image a bit more and decided it would be cool to have the guitar strings flying all over the place.

Line Work: 10-15 minutes. Darkening the pencils a bit more made the piece more defined. I added action lines when the sword came thrusting down slicing the guitar. I also thought there has to be bits of wood exploding all over, so I added those as well.

Shadows: 30 minutes. I love adding the darks and lights of a piece, it brings it to life and creates that 3D effect. I wanted the light source to come from above so the shadows had to be filled in below the character. Looking good so far.

Scan: 5 minutes. I use an small Canon Pixma MG6220 for scanning. Once scanned, I open it in Manga Studio, a great software for cartoonists and coverted it into light blue for inking.

Inks: 1-2 hours. This part takes awhile but Manga Studio is great for inking your comic. Inking is basically tracing your pencil work, it does take a bit of practice to get it done correct. I used a Maru brush for this piece and it come out pretty well. I also added some extra action lines in the background. Now it looks cool.

Colors: 1-2 hours. I’m not a colorist so I chose just basic flats for the samurai. Orange is my favorite color so of course I added it to to the gee. I’m learning a lot more about color theory everyday and if you’re reading this in the future my coloring should’ve improved by now. For the time being this is the result and I believe it came out pretty cool.

I believe that’s it folks.

If you have any questions about my cartooning process feel free to leave a comment below. I appreciate you for reading this blog.

Cheers

As a kid I loved movies!

But what really fascinated me was watching behind the scenes of movies and cartoons. The process was very interesting to me. The way you can create something in your head and bring it to life was mind blowing.

I decided to create the behind the scenes of one of my comic gags.

Hope you enjoy it.

Ok, for starters I’m so unprofessional. I’ve been an artist since I was kid and wanted to be an animator for Disney, but the music bug got me. I’m still learning all the tools on what to use in my cartoons.  But here goes….

Step 1 The idea.

I’ll be talking about the process of my previous comic gag in the previouse blog. If you’ve missed it click here.

For starters I had to come up with a gag about Time. I used my usually characters, MD and Ham. These ideas don’t come easy it could take a day or two for me to come up with something that seems like it took me 5 minutes.

At my place I have a small garden with tomatoes and a potato plant growing. I was thinking of growing some herbs. So, I was thinking of: Rosemary, cilantro, basil, and thyme.

Then it hit me. Thyme! Rhymes with Time.

The two panel gag goes like this. MD is practicing on his bass and Ham walks in with a bag full of thyme that he got what he asked for. MD turns around and scolds Ham saying he meant we’re running out of Time, not Thyme!

Haha! Yes, I know corny. But, it’s funny corny.

Step 2 Tools

I need to up grade my tools and my process but this is what I use.

• Prismacolor Turqoise Pencils
• Pigma Micron Pens
• Black Sharpie Pen
• Creto Lead Holder for covering big areas
• Prismacolor Sharpener
• Gum eraser
• Presto Pen whiteout

• Mac PowerBook 17 inch
• Wacom Intuos 3 tablet and Wacom Pen
• Manga Studio EX4
• Canon Pixma MG6220 for scanning

I use very dinosaur equipment and I need an upgrade but it gets the job done for now. Any donations will be helpful.

Step 3 Referances. 5-10 minutes

I used my iPhone and took a few basic poses. I just mounted it on my keyboard and took several pics. These poses were basic I would usually use my imagination to create the poses depending the difficulty but this time I got lazy.

Step 4 Rough Sketch. 10-15 minutes.

I use a standard 8.5 x 11 piece of paper. One day I will upgrade to the standard comic Bristol  board of 11 x 17 and reason why I haven’t is because my scanner doesn’t fit that size. Here is a rough sketch of two panels.

Step 5 Line Work. 30 minutes

Here I’m actually drawing the character lines and then darkening them to stand out.

Step 6 Shadow and balloons. 1 hour or less

Adding the shadows gives the characters depth. The balloons and dialogue are also added.

Step 7 Scanning. 5-10 minutes

The drawing is now scanned into the computer and opened in Manga Studio and converted into photo blue line for inking.

Step 8 Inking. 1 hour or less

Manga is a great tool for comics especially for inking digitally. Here is the inked cartoon.

Step 9 Colors. 30 minutes

Colors make it all pop. I just started playing around with color with my characters. I’m going for simplicity just like in popular comics like, “The Peanuts and Calvin and Hobbes.” If I used more colors it would obviously take longer.

That’s pretty much it. My whole process from start to finish of a cartoon.

I hope you’ve enjoyed it and please share it with others. Onto next blog!

As always thanks and God Bless.

Roland