The Re-run of Wahoo Morris is over and new pages begin this week.

I’ve got a good head start of close to 40 pages so the story should run through to the end with no more breaks.

Another page of digital pencils. This one was done in July. I’m currently working on page 159 but my productivity slowed to a crawl when I started my current storyboarding gig. I went from a page a day to a panel or two a week. But – unlike other ‘breaks’ I’m still plugging away. And my current schedule has a week off after every two boards, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to play catch up during the weeks off. I’m still hoping   to have the pencils complete early in the new year and inks done by mid-summer.

I’ve hit the part of the story where I really can’t show full pages without spoilers, so from now on it’ll be a panel here and there for show and tell.

And… here’s page 144, drawn in Manga Studio:

So, yesterday I showed a random page of pencils using my newish digital technique. I was thinking that to show my process I would live blog a step by step of each stage. I never quite got around to it, but I did take a screen cap every few steps so you can get the idea of the process.

So, first I start off with a blank template page with faint grid marks for a 6, 9, 8 and 12 panel grids. Then I start sketching out my thumbnails. This can involve moving panels around, shrinking them, blowing them up, or moving them to another page altogether to make room for what I need. sometimes I’ll do a few different angles of a panel saving each on a separate layer so I can pick my favorite later. This one turned out pretty straight forward.

Then I reduce the opacity of the ‘thumbnail’ so I can see better and start drawing, panel by panel.

When I’m done, I make any last minute adjustments You can see that I shifted the middle tier up a smidge to make room for the dialog in the bottom tier. Then I make the panel borders and we’re done and ready for lettering and inking.

There a few more steps in between, but they’re hard to show. I’ll often keep characters on separate levels so I can scribble and erase and transform one without affecting the other. But, that’s basically all there is to it.