Questions about Comic making

[Ally_Santra]

Hey there,

I just thought I would ask a few questions here, since I am really impressed with all of the comics I have been reading here thus far (I can't wait until my PayPal is up and running so I can get fully caught up here ^^ ).
Anyhow, first question: About how long does it take you to complete a single page of your comic?

Second question: What do you use for toning? Markers, Pen and ink, Mangastudio, Photoshop, Open Canvas? I am just curious, because I am trying to figure out the easiest way. I have used Photoshop tones and they look fairly good, but they are definatly not the best ones (maybe I just need to find a better place to get them ^^; ).

Anyhow, any responses or advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Tacto]

Welcome here!!
Well, as for myself, I use Manga Studio debut and am very happy with it. I also use Photoshop mainly to resize or some special effects. MS help file is..well..could be better is how I am going to politely put it, but www.pencilkiller.com has a lot of great tips and tutorials to help you out.
Time for a page? around 6-7 hours, but it gets faster with time ^^;

[Ally_Santra]

Awesome!

Thanks so much for the response. I really will have to look in to using MS sometime. If only I had the money for it. ^^; Oh well, I will just have to save up! :3

Only 6-7 hours a page, eh? Wow.. I did a practise few pages for toning practise and it took me sooo long.. XD Then again, the tones I have don't have names or proper thumbnails (they technically are patterns) and I had to tone all three pages at once.. It sucked! XD

Oh yah, one more question, what size of paper do you typically draw on? A lot of people seem to use really big paper, but I don't even have a proper surface that I can use that on yet.

[Tacto]

I use the Deleter prelined B4 paper - it is the perfect size for me - not too small but not too big either
Only 6-7hours?? Lol! Well, don't worry, my first toning attempt in MS (page 1 of IE) - just the toning took me around 11hours of sweat straight - I was almost crying in the end ^^; But it does get better quickly, it really does.
MS debut costs 50 USD and is well sufficient to start of (so I would proabaly not invest in MS EX to start with)

[Mark Tholander]

...

[Cave]

6-7...8-9 HOURS for a page?

Wow... xD Uhm, for me its usually an average of 3 hours. I usually do extremely rough thumbnail sketches first and go straight to the page afterwards. I probably wouldn't recommend this, though, but its how I favor working. My thumbnails don't make sense to anyone but me. Then I write in all the dialogue and text outside... Actually, I think I'll scan in an example.

Yeah, after looking at this I definitely don't recommend it. XD Usually people do MUCH bigger sketches (and you probably should). For me, I think, "Well, I know what I want." I used to not even do thumbnails and just go directly on the page. (edit: you can also see that sometimes I don't even listen to the notes I have listed. I sometimes jot down a page and then go back and rework it.)

You can read the pages here first: http://community.livejournal.com/truepo ... c/692.html

And here's the sketches for the first few pages: http://img176.imageshack.us/img176/7610 ... ilsba1.png

For tones, I use them rather seldomly because I go the path of actual, real live comictones. Not digital tones. And since then can be a bit pricey sometimes, I don't have many. They can take a lot of practice to get used to and are very annoying sometimes, but they look great. Digital tones sadly always look fake. :( You can almost always tell a real tone from a digital tone easily (especially considering the factor that Japanese manga use real ones almost exclusively and OEL manga use digital tones almost exclusively.)

[Faye]

hmmm takes me average of 6-8 hours to finish one page (not inclusive of time spent planning/ thumbnailing the page).

Before I got my beloved *lovelove* tablet, I used to draw on A5 printer paper (stupid me, drawing at exact size), with a 0.5 black felt tip pen.

But now I do all my work in Photoshop. I'd recommend Computones CD-ROm series for digital tones. Its good enough for print. =) And does not cost a bomb....

[Si:Obra;Maestra]

It takes me 1 day to do drafts for 3-4 pages. About 2-3 hours for each. I also do a lot research of references in between. Once I'm done scanning my drafts and putting them up on photoshop, I first start inking/putting up the panel boxes, dialouge, speech bubbles. They help me figure out if I need to enlarge or shrink images or perhaps change the positions of the characters. They also tell me "oh yeah you don't have to worry about this space here coz there's a speech bubble on it!" *yeah I kinda talk to myself sometimes @__@....

I spend a day inking a page depending on my schedule (at the same time making a draft for another page). Most of the time it only takes 5-6 hours when I'm not distracted or procastinating =-=; Trust me, there's soooo many distractions!!! The next day I either do coloring or toning.

As for toning, I use Deleter Comic Works (English Version). It's a pretty cool program. You can ink on it too if you have a tablet. Photoshop tones are alright. I've been inking with Comicworks on my Black and white pages but since I bought some nib pens, I'm thinking of switching to them for inking and then just tone them at comicworks. Comic works is available at Akadotretail.com

[tally]

I use Comicworks to tone; Out of Place pages take me about 6 hours per page.

[Mangakawolf]

It depends on what type of page it is to how long it takes me to make a page of Enchanted. Spreads tend to take less that time then a page with more panels on it. ...which is why there are probably more spreads...^.^;; that's not a good example though! Don't be lazy like me! I pencil everything out on paper then scan it into photoshop, then import it to MangaStudio which for me is COMPLETELY worth the money.I started with Debut which was only $50.00 and made all of chapter one with it. I upgraded when I got my taxes back to the Full version which I also love, but sometimes I go back to debut when I need certain effects done.

[lordsyafiq]

Hmm...that's interesting. I used Photoshop and Manga Debut Studio for tones to make it better (but of course, haven't mastered it yet) and I work from 7 to 10 hours for complete work (Sketches, Inking and Details...not include colors) and if I do comic, it varies on the content of it and usually the same 7 to 10 hours, if colored more likely to take 1 1/2 days for completing it...@.@..Nyahahaaha~~!!