I illustrated Creaky Acres, written by Calista Brill. Continue scrolling to see the development process for the illustrations.
Publisher: Kokila/Penguin Random House
Editor: Namrata Tripathi
Designer: Jasmin Rubero
Colorist: Ellys "Elle" Pierre
Background Inker: Akem
Tools: Clip Studio Paint, graphite
Creaky Acres is 272 pages and was six years in the making. I did the layout thumbnailing, penciling, inking, and lettering. Akem assisted with inking backgrounds on several pages. Coloring was done by Ellys "Elle" Pierre.
My comic process starts with thumbnailing, which I like to do with pencil on paper. At this stage I'm laying the groundwork for character acting, but I'm mainly concerned with layout, ensuring that the focal point in each panel is clear and there's room for speech bubbles and special effects. Once thumbnails were done, I scanned in all the pages and set up the digital files in which I would pencil and then ink every page. The scanning and file setup were so tedious that I decided to do my next graphic novel entirely digitally, but I digress. The publisher provided me with the page template they wanted me to use for the book. I brought the thumbnail into the template file and lined it up. The thumbnails didn't line up perfectly with the template but that was okay as I'd be correcting those issues in the pencil stage.
I used Clip Studio Paint for building each comic page. I set up the panel boxes and the lettering at this stage. The thumbnail is on its own layer, which I set to a low opacity, and then on a new layer I draw directly over the thumbnail, bringing the characters and environment elements on model. I used blue for this stage knowing that I'd be using black at the inking stage. I wanted a different color so that it would stand out from the ink.
Next was the inking stage, which I also did digitally in Clip Studio Paint. At this point I was taking notes from the publisher and the author as well as my own decisions I'd made over the course of penciling and making any necessary revisions as I inked. You'll notice that Nora's mother's design has changed at every pass. I didn't settle on her look until this final stage of the project. I also turned mom's eye direction in the small inset panel inward toward the girls in the next panel.
Finished? Return to the illustration page.