Comic book creation can be broken down into five steps. The script, thumbnail, lettering, layout, inks and colour.

Draw the thumbnail with a big black marker or digital brush. The size of the thumbnail should be an inch and a half at the max ( figure a). The purpose is to get a rough idea of the character’s position and the basic perspective of the scene.

Once you are happy with the thumbnail. You can clean it up a little (figure b) but only drawing big shaps, spend time on how the characters are acting in the panel with their body language.

I would copy past it onto the working file canvas and blow it up to the size you will be working at.

Put in the speech bubbles at this point. It will save you time not drawing stuff that will be covered up by the speech bubble.

Everything above is foundation work for the storytelling.

Now it will be time to treat it like a normal illustration. Pencils stuff out, ink it and then colour.

Focus on only one thing at a time at different steps.

• Thumbnail – composition and body language.
• Layout – Details and expressions
• Inking – Texture and lighting.
• Colouring – adding to the lighting and colours