The Teacher Toolbox

Today I was asked about the process I use when drawing my Stressbusters cartoons. So here is the process that I’ve developed over the last couple of months to give the strip a unique feel.

Check Out All the Stressbusters - to get an idea

1. My drawing tool of choice is my Wacom Tablet. I use it to draw all the lines as ‘Drawing with a mouse is like picking your nose with your elbow’

1a. I then use Inkscape’s calligraphy tool (freeware) set on a line thinkness of 1 and 2 to draw the characters. I find this creates line that gives the pics a nice feel.

2. I save each character, plant and background as an .eps file

3. I import each .eps file into Photoshop and colour it on a separate layer. I’ve been messing with the magic wand tool to select areas and then fill them with a gradient rather than straight colour.

4. I position all the characters and resize it all to about 400 pixels and save it as a high quality jpeg

5. Next I import the pic into Comic Life Deluxe Comic Life Deluxe $30 and add the text and speech bubbles. NB it is also available for the PC

From now on I’m still experimenting… I’m stuggling with file size verses clarity. When I export or save in Comic Life the pics turn out very blurry. So at the moment I do a screen dump of the Comic Life screen and optimise it for the web in Photoshop.

Stressbusters really are work in progress.

cheers

Adrian

PS Feel free to print them out and pin them on your notice boards.