How to Make a Comic Strip

Here's a visual tour of my comic-making process. If you are not already a syndicated cartoonist, just copy these steps.

Please excuse the random formatting of this post. I don't have time to tweak the HTML.

Click on the photos to enlarge them.

This is me at 4:59 AM, just before my BlackBerry alarm goes off.

5:02 AM, I put on some clothes and head downstairs to eat a banana.

Mmmm...good banana.

Put the flip-flops on and begin my commute.

Usually it's dark when I go to work. And I'm not smiling so much. Clearly these photos are staged.

47 seconds later (I timed it), I reach my office. I wave to the guy delivering newspapers. At that time of day, it's just him and me.

Upstairs to the office.

I head to the office fridge for the first of many Diet Cokes. My office cat, Sarah, hears the refrigerator open from the next room and will be waiting for me in her designated spot.

Sarah demands quality time on the rug or she literally won't let me work. She'll scream and start ripping my stuff to shreds unless she gets her quota of petting. This part of my routine has not varied in 17 years.

I take Sarah with me to get additional petting while I check blog comments and e-mails. She looks uncomfortable but she's actually totally relaxed. It's her favorite petting position.

After I write my blog post, I start the comic-making phase. In step one, I look at a Word document where I saved a bunch of suggestions from readers. I peruse the suggestions to see what inspires me.

Once I have a general idea, I use Photoshop to call up a blank comic format, 600 dpi. I draw directly on the computer screen using a stylus. The monitor is a Wacom 21UX. This is the equpment I've used for the past two years or so. Before that, it was all on paper.

I draw the first panel (in rough form) and type in the words using a font I created of my own handwriting.

When you draw on the computer at a "natural" size, the limit of the technology is that your lines will be jagged. That's fine for the rough draft. (If this were paper, the rough version would be in pencil.)

To finish the art in clean form, I change the rough lines to a light gray, then adjust the viewing size to 200% and "ink" over the rough art. I get a smooth line when I work at that size.

In Photoshop lingo, the rough draft is a "layer." To turn that layer into a light gray, I adjust its opacity. The layers are the digital equivalent of tracing paper. You can see the layer below, but your drawing only touches your current layer.

This is the size I use for the final clean lines. Any imperfections disappear when the image is shrunk to publishing size.

Sunday strips are a somewhat different process because of the color. It starts the same, with a black line art version. Then I copy the file and create a second version with color. The color version is then stripped of its black. That leaves me with two files. One is only black lines, the other is all the colors except black. Both files go to the printer, who combines them during the printing process. I assume this kludgy process has something to do with the legacy equipment used by the newspapers. I just prep the file the way I'm instructed by United Media.

This is where I sit for most of my work day. There's a huge amount of paperwork with this job. My desk is normally covered with contracts, tax stuff, accounting things, and  various projects.

Here's the view from my chair. I have the TV on when I do the mindless step of adding the final art. While working, I usually watch recordings of The Daily Show, tennis, Real Time, or Battlestar Galactica.

I keep my original art table in a corner for historical and sentimental reasons. I refinished that little table in 1988. I'm not what you would call a "craftsman," so it's poorly done. My original chair, also shown, was created when I was a teenager, using parts from two separate chairs. Originally it had legs. I attached it to the base of an old office chair and my mother gave it some upholstery. It is also poorly constructed. I love it.

Here are the art supplies I used before moving completely to the computer. That's a daily strip, so you can see its size as an original. About half of all Dilbert strips were drawn with the mechanical pencil shown. The green thing on the art is what I used to keep the lettering on a straight line. The pen was for the final art.

If you plan to become a syndicated cartoonist, here is a summary of the equipment you will need:

1. Banana

2. Diet Coke

3. Cat

4. Computer with Wacom 21UX monitor

Good luck.

Comments

[Outsourcedbert]

Hi Scott,

First time I read your blog, very good. I have more time on my hands now as most of the work here is transferring to eastern Europe to cut costs, (I'm in Ireland). I spend a lot of my work time now answering really stupid questions from the engineers over there such as "who manufactures the (Insert manufacturers name here) part?" Engineering equivalent of a child asking how much the penny sweets cost. I'd love if you could do some cartoons on this subject, I know you've done similar like the protototype sample in Elbonia a while back but could you do something closer to the bone so to speak i.e. quality products transferring and quality then going down the tubes with Dilberts head being wrecked in the process?

By the way one of our managers here has the worlds most ridiculous laugh, loud and like a jack ass who’s just sat on his own dangly bits, loves to laugh at his own jokes but then again he has no choice as no one else wants to encourage him, have you had a character like this?

P.S Please draw the stupid laugh guy with dark hair and checked shirt.

Slan go foill

[Jon]

I've said it for years. Scott Adams isn't a real person. That's just Rich McKay's secret identity.
http://images.google.com/images?q=rich%20mckay

More artist/designer workspaces:
http://www.on-my-desk.blogspot.com/

[Antonio Carlos Brito]

Scott,
Technology really quicks in: I remember (or I may be inventing it) the "tour" in 1997 or 1998 when everything was done manually. I think there was a couple of steps where you photocopied your first drawing or digitized it to send to your publisher, and THAT was all the technology you had.

47 is something related to STNG or Battlestar Gallactica?

All the best

[Gawell]

Oh no! All I've got is an apple, original coke, a dog, and the cheaper version of Wacom, the Wican DTZ-2100. Now I can never become a syndicated cartoonist...

[Clangnuts]

I'm always fascinated to see how other cartoonists construct their work. Thanks for sharing that with us all.

One question - my cat is a completely different colour to yours, will this affect my chances of success as a cartoonist?

[Melissa]

Ha! You even look like Dilbert, except for the hair.
I always knew once cartoonists had enough champagne moments they had a pretty easy life. Thanks for showing that's true. : )

[jloucks]

You live in a relatively normal looking house! I was expecting fancy marble floors, magnificent chandeliers and more exotic pets. I like you now even more then I did 15 minutes ago! =)

[Drew]

I also hate you because, based on your previous post, you survive on six hours of sleep a night.

You're EVIL!

[Drew]

I hate you because you're thin.

[grmrsan]

Whats up with everyone noticing the shadows in the pics not corresponding to 5:00 am, but NOT noticing the comment that says that these picures were staged?
Anyhow thanks for the look into your day, but if I ever managed to go professional, I'd be more the midnight worker instead of morning person. And REALLY thanks for the mnmiter tip, I'm planning on upgrading my comp. really soon and I was trying to figure out how to pick a great tablet. Yours is evactly what I want!

[George guy]

I understand now why I can't finish one of my strips in a day anymore. For my amateur webcomic my process used to be more or less as simple as yours, settling for the lower end of the technology (Wacom Graphire2 tablet, Paint Shop Pro)

Now for some reason I've taken to doing backgrounds in 3d, under the theory that it won't be so much work in the long run, but in practice it's rather a lot of work to model a new location, and it doesn't really pay for itself until after a dozen strips or so.

[Polymath]

Scott, in these pictures you look much fitter, handsomer, and happier than in previous photos I have seen of you. Apparently marriage agrees with you. Or else you're a really late bloomer.

[Good Point]

Thanks, I love to see how people work.

[Meow]

You look just like my uncle Craig!

Does your wife have a job? Is she ok with you getting up at 5:02 am?

[Kelsey H]

...You are my god.

[William]

Scott, that was some great information. Really helps to see pictures of your day. Nice Wacom monitor by the way. There's something interesting about seeing what someone else's day consists of.

[JEB]

WOW, if you had reddish bushy hair you'd look like Bozo the clown

[Ralph]

Where's the part of the day when you masturbate in your money bin?

[Nostok]

I was laughing when I was reading the text only, use your imagination, version and although this has destroyed some of my imagined funny moments it was quite an insight into your daily routine.

It was good to see Sarah the cat, you're so lucky to have one that likes her belly tickling, all the good soft fur is there. I was most interested in how you actually use that monitor of yours; I don't think Microsoft are ready for the host of lawsuits regarding using their Surface technology in the coffee table setting and the back and neck problems that will bring.

[Martin]

Moi,

thanks for the pictures!

Now I'm suffering from an interesting side effect.

I am a great fan of Scott Adams comics since many years.
(Only I think they are becoming too similar to Real Life (tm) -- because RL is catching up with Dilbert).

But (but?) I had no idea what Scott Adams looks like.
(Must have missed the pictures on the book backs).

Now I find he looks completely and utterly different from what I had expected.

Which leaves me confronted with several questions as nagging as they are profound.
(Not so much about Scott Adams' looks than rather about the workings of my brain or possibly spinal chord):

-- How could I expect _anything_ about his looks in the first place?

-- _What_ did I expect him to look like anyway?

-- And _why_ did I expect that?

-- _How_ differs what I unreasonably expected from what I now know to be his actual looks?

Very tricky! Almost epistemological!
(No, I am not at all sure what that means, but apparently it can give you ruptures, that's good enough for me.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemological_rupture

So I am now probably facing extensive Googling for portraits, building up a categorial system, and then mapping that a) onto my expectations, and b) onto Scott Adams actual looks.

(Like, "expected more of a New York Intellectual type, whatever that may be, instead of the actual Engineering type, whatever _that_ may be.")

Fascinating. [raises left eyebrow]
I'll probably end up in Gestalt Perception Theory or something.

Thanks again for the pictures. And the blog.
But most of all, for Dilbert & Friends & Foes!
(Why does it help the sufferer that others suffer the same?)

Cheers,
Happy Midsummer!

Martin
:-)
[No I do not look like that. But Sarah looks just like Oskari. 8:<) ]

[Matt Williams]

Aside from adding clear:both to your xhtml you would also need to swap round the order of photos and their corresponding comments, in which case it would look like this > www.revs.org/dilbert.html

I'll shut up now.

[Peter]

Thanks for the insight. Two things really surprised me:

1 - You appear to live in a run-of-the-mill condo instead of some palatial secluded mansion somewhere. I would of expected you wanted more privacy.

2 - It's surprising that you "just prep the file the way I'm instructed by United Media." I would have expected that a big-name cartoonist like you could just say "here's my art the way I want to produce it, YOU deal with it and make it ready for publication."

[a reader]

Photos? I have NEVER seen images in one of your blog entries. Now I see why...looking at the code to "display" them just makes my brain hurt.

[Uncle Mikey]

Real Time? Are you being punished for something?

[Matt Williams]

You might add this code to the xHTML of each of your images: ; clear: both

So for example:

...scott_sleeping_with_dilbert.jpg" width="100" border="0" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px"

becomes:

...scott_sleeping_with_dilbert.jpg" width="100" border="0" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 5px 5px 0px; clear: both"

Anyway, very inspiring post!