Deep Inside Bianca: From Script to Illustrations

A short article about the artistic process of making an episode of the ongoing web comic.



People have a pretty good understanding on how popular comics are drawn and coloured these days. Since Bianca is my own creation and I see myself more as a story teller than a part of a long lineage of craftsmen who have used to do thing in a certain way, I have created a way to do those same things in slightly different ways that suit my own goals and preferences.

Normally, when a comic book is drawn, it is done in a considerably larger scale than the final product will be seen - usually an A3 page if the normal comic book format is in question. I don't have an A3 -sized scanner and find those very big papers cumbersome to begin with, so instead of one portrait A3:s, I use multiple A4:s, usually in landscape mode, to create the pages out of smaller pieces.

It all starts with the script, of course. Since I have already drawn what I want the final page to look like, I can now measure the needed specs of every individual row or column of panels. Usually there is two or three for every page - splash pages are often just one A4 in portrait, so I try to be extra careful with those to get the detail right.

This is not such a big deal to me anyway, since I release these things to the internet and the whole size thing is rather relative anyway.

But; what I do is I split the page into appropriate sections that I just call pieces and measure out how big I can make those into one A4. I do the raw calculations directly to the script, as seen in the image on the right.

Then I start to draw the pages. I use normal office paper, since that is cheap and more than good enough for penciling and inking. I also use only mechanical pencils, since I have always hated sharpening normal ones. To me, the penciling process isn't really art in of itself, but a simple blue print for one.

If you have seen some of the detailed pencil work that the guys in Marvel or DC do, I really have no need or even artistic skill to do anything like that. Mine doesn't really have that much shading or even outlines for where the shadows should be. To me the finality of the page happens in the inking process, which is much more important to me. I don't even save my old pencil drawings, but rather reuse the pages as scrap paper.

Then it's time for the inking. Once again, instead of using the things that people usually do and that might maybe create the best result, I opt for the options that work best for me. I have done experimentation with pencils and other traditional ways of putting black on page, and I do agree the work could look nicer with them, but my style is rather peculiar anyway and since I hate working with slowly drying, bottled ink, I prefer the cheaper option of felt tip pens.

I buy them by the handful: usually of five different thickness, that are not set in stone. But I have one, very thin hair line one. The next is the "main one", that one sees most often and that is used to text the dialogue. Then there are three exponentially thicker for making black silhouettes or really thick outlines and such.

I always try to spend as little money on these as I can, although some really, really cheap ones are shit to use and I don't like that. They might crumble the page or leave it full of lint. Or dry really quickly making me buy even more of them.

To ink I, start with simple outlining using my light table. This I have build myself, and once again can only hold A4-sized papers. It's made of a very bright, LED-light, an old stool and the plexi glass of an ancient overhead projector. At this stage I also text the images.

When this is done I take the light table away for a while and just do all the black bits and the shadows at once. This is because it's easier to draw for a long period of time on a normal table than my rather high light table, so I try to minimize that as much as possible.

Then it's time to bring the light table back and start painting. While I'm finishing the inks I also take a crummy paper copy of each piece of a page so I can use it to paint the character colours without actually endangering the finished ink artwork.

These I cellotape into a split page of A3 pencil paper. The reason I buy A3:s for this is because when I have very thin, long pieces I also can split the page into three parts instead of two. I buy pencil paper because it's sturdy enough to not get twisted too much when the paints dry but thin enough to still see the copy line art through it with the light table.

So, using the copied, finished line art as guides I paint in the characters with their appropriate colours.

Then I go for the backgrounds. If you have seen enough Bianca I'm sure you have noticed I don't actually ink any of the backgrounds but just paint them in. This has to do with my obsession with contrasts: I love the fact that the character's are really crisp and cool, and all the black and white are purely that (which is why I leave Caucasian characters' skin as just white), but the backgrounds have all sorts of textures and smushyness in them.

Of course, I'm no painter and this has caused some problems. Sometimes, especially at the beginning, the backgrounds are pretty blurry and hard to figure out what is even going on. I do think I have improved a lot and that is something I try to avoid.

But I love the way how I can have even just a one hue backdrop without actually anything in it, but just because it's painted it's going to have myriad little patterns and pencil strokes in it. I feel that this keeps the pages from ever getting too boring and looks really pretty - this is the sole reason why I chose to do the colours with water colours in the first place. But I have honestly started to enjoy it more and more!

Since the ink work doesn't have any backgrounds in it, I use the original pencil sketches as the guide for the background paintings. I use the same pencil paper for those as well.

For the painting, once again, I use the cheapest instruments imaginable. I have no intention of being a schooled water colour artist or some such; to me it's just one more instrument to serve a bigger need. I don't bother mixing the colours together - unless I want to very clearly show that there are two colours getting tangled together - but I buy a large amounts of very cheap, children's painting sets and mix and mach those until I get all the appropriate hues I need.

The same goes for the pencils. Once again, I have various sizes, and the ones I use most often are a tad more expensive because they are nicer to use. But the large, one third of a page solid colour panels I just slather in with a huge paint brush house painters use. I also have white acrylic paint to paint on top of other stuff. This especially comes in handy since I usually start every background by painting it with one solid colour so that every space has it's own overall feel.

I always paint everything from the scratch that you see in any particular issue of Bianca. I could very easily start recycling the same bits and pieces, but I feel that one would start noticing if the same patterns and textures would appear multiple times. Well, at least I would!

So that's basically it! I always want to do as much with my hands as possible and leave just the final phase - the touch and go stuff, the finishing touches and putting it all together - to computers. What I have at the end is a large pile of papers all ready to be scanned.