Instead of writing lengthy tutorials on my webcomic creation technique, I thought I’d just record screencasts of the process. So I recorded my inking and coloring session for the latest strip. It doesn’t show the sketching phase because I had already drawn it for this strip. But the next time I do a batch of layouts/sketches I’ll record that too.

In this first video I didn’t add a soundtrack, cause I don’t really know all the copyright issues involved with that.

So, without further ado, here it is at approximately 5x speed:

Making of ZooDotCom #38 on Vimeo.

That was kinda fun. I think I may record a few more.

For all you twits… Er, twitter-ers? Twitterfolk? Hmm. Anyway, for those interested, ZdC has a twitter account now. Check it out!

It’s kind of experimental at this point. I’m not sure if it’ll be a place for supplemental content, announcing new strips, both, neither? What do you think? Leave a comment!

Which reminds me. Comments are back. I had to remove Haloscan comments because of the sluggishness of their servers. So the new, and quite possibly improved, comments are inline with the post instead of in a popup.

Also, I’ve picked a date for when ZdC will start going to biweekly updates. I want to build up a good buffer before then, so I’ll keep the date to myself for now… But don’t worry, it’s pretty soon.

At some point, I’ll go into detail on my creative process. Until then, here’s an overview.

I plot out story-arcs as bullet points. Each bullet is one strip. Then, I’ll script out each one. Here’s an example from this week’s strip.

Usually, I’ll write the scripts for several weeks at a time.

Then, when I’m ready to start drawing, I’ll open up Scribbles and start sketching. I’ll loosely rough out the strip, like this:

For the finished inks and dialog I use Illustrator. I’ll place the sketch, as a “template”, on the bottom layer and start the inking process.

Finally, I use Illustrator’s LivePaint to color it all in.

And now it’s done. I export it as a PNG and update the website! All in all, it takes a little over 2 hours to complete one strip.

So there you go! That’s a taste of How It’s Made: ZooDotCom.

When writing ZdC I like to take a ‘brainstorming’ approach; No idea is a bad idea. Anything I think of, I put on paper. Well, actually, I put it in Scrivener, but you know what I mean. This approach helps me get my idea factory into gear.

The truth of the matter is, however, that not all ideas are created equal. And sometimes you just don’t want to tell all the aspects of a story since, at one update per week, the storyline would last for months on end. This strip and other upcoming ‘sketch comedy’ strips are some of these loose story ideas I’ve had and trimmed.

Update: It’s been brought to my attention that this really makes no sense out of context. So, to provide said context, this was meant to be run sometime after strip 22. Sorry for the confusion.

For those of you interested, it’s drawn and (as you can tell by it’s uglyness) hand lettered in Scribbles, which is quite fun. These sketch strips go together fairly quickly, expect to see more in the following weeks.

Oh, and the time is coming when I’m gonna officially move to two updates per week… And that time is: soon.

Hah. You didn’t expect me to commit on a time to commit did you?

Not that I have commitment issues or anything… * ahem *