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Scott McCloud

Scott McCloud (scottmccloud.com)

I thought that with all the hype around the Google Chrome Comic it might be nice to have a look at the Artist behind it all, Scott McCloud.

McClouds site scottmccloud.com offers links to online comics such as Zot and some great resources but for me the best part of the site is an indepth FAQ which features a background on his processes:

It would take many thousands of words and a couple of weeks to accurately record all the details of my working method but here it is in a nutshell:

1. Layout. For Zot!, I use sheets of fine graph paper, assembled into a big scroll and sketch in pencil. I still do these on paper but they’re getting sketchier all the time and I could see this part of the process migrating to digital in the near future.

2. Scan and Chop. I scan the layouts in sections and reassemble them into one big scrolling Photoshop document. Then I decide where to split the art into individual gifs and jpgs. Sometimes, a panel will need to be it’s own image file, sometimes I’ll keep several panels together in a single picture. Mostly this’ll be based on expected color depth, width, image type, etc… In Photoshop 6, you can use the “slice” tool to get this done without too much grief.

3. Rough to Art. Now I have a whole bunch of indivual Photoshop documents that consist of nothing more than a scan of a rough sketch. That sketch becomes a dim background layer on top of which, I can add several or even dozens of layers on which I can do the finished artwork. IMPORTANT: The act of doing the finished art at this point could be seen as analogous to “penciling”, “inking” and “coloring” but increasingly, the process has become a lot more organic than that. More a background-middleground-foreground approach, and more concerned with continually modifying color, helping to define planes and literally “painting with light.” Does that make any sense?? Basically, the longer I’ve been doing it, the less like traditional drawing it’s become.

4. Lettering. The lettering and balloons exists on the top layers. (I used Illustrator to do all the lettering for Reinventing Comics, but for Zot! I just did the balloons in Illustrator, rasterized a bunch of them, and then dragged-and-dropped as needed. The lettering I did directly in Photoshop (v6 having better text-handling.)

4. Conversion. Next, I convert each panel, or set of panels, into gifs and jpgs (no PNGs yet!) and stuff away the PS files for future reference if needed.

5. Build for Web. Finally, I use GoLive to assemble the images into big long tables, add the background pattern, check for errors and…

Lovely stuff Mr McCloud!  I have to get out there and find me a stylus pad and a scanner!