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MATERIALS |
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MATERIALS I USE:
FOR DAILY CARTOONS
For those who care about this sort of thing, I draw my cartoons with technical pens (tips ranging from .3 to .7) on smooth bristol board. I always pencil everything in first with a 2H pencil...I find it writes nice and light without the need to bear down. I erase with a kneaded eraser... it doesn't ruin the paper surface or leave those annoying crumbs. I cover up mistakes with ProWhite and brush, it doesn't crumble like Wite-Out. If I have a rather large area to blacken, I use Higgin's Black Magic ink and brush. Finally, with an Xacto knife, I cut, peel and stick Letratone screens and patterns to the cartoons...at least I used to. Now I'm adding the screens and patterns with the help of my computer. I scan my cartoons into Photoshop, fill with textures and patterns, and do some other tweaking. Now I shudder when I remember what a pain it was to fix a mistake without the computer.
PENCILING: I usually do a very rough sketch of the idea in my notebook. Then I go right to the bristol board and start pencilling. The bristol board I buy is 14"x17" and I draw my cartoons 5"x 6". I can conveniently fit 6 cartoons on one sheet. I started doing this just to be cheap and save paper, but now it works out well because once I finish a sheet, I know I've got a week's worth of dailies. Also, storage is easier. I draw and erase a few times till I get the look I want. Then I draw and erase some more. Once I am happy with the cartoon, I ink.
INKING: I use the thicker-tipped pens for outlining the main subjects in a cartoon. As I work my way into finer detail, I use thinner tips. I do all my word balloons and lettering by hand. I guess I'm old-fashioned that way. I don't really like the look of computer fonts. Even the "cartoony" fonts are easy to spot...too damn consistent, if you ask me.
SCANNING: I scan the drawing into Photoshop as a bitmap tiff file. After cleaning it up and fixing any mistakes, I save a pure version of the cartoon. Then I save a copy of it. With the copy, I convert it to grayscale, fill with the patterns and screens, then convert back to bitmap. This way I have two versions. One without the screens and patterns, and one with. If I ever have to color the cartoon, (for greeting cards, etc.) I use the version without the screen dots.
FOR SUNDAYS
Sunday cartoons are a different animal. Newspapers can buy just the dailies, just the Sundays, or both. I draw Sundays 4.25"x 9.25" and don't add screens and patterns because color will be added later. However, I don't physically color them myself. I am given a limited pallette of color choices by American Color (the company that colors the Sunday funnies), each color with a numerical designation. From there, I copy my cartoon and more or less color that copy "by number." I include the colored photocopy with the original cartoon and send them to American Color. They make the color separations and send them to the newspapers. Understand? I didn't think so.
Incidentally, any Sunday cartoons I display on the website, I color on the computer with Photoshop using a Netscape pallete.
If you still have a question, e-mail me and I'll do my best to answer it.
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