Drawing and Editing Comics: It's Harder Than It Looks

When I first was given the opportunity to join the online community that is Woodbury Patch, the initial reaction I had was excitement… and then that gradually turned into frustration, unfortunately enough.

The reason behind my little frustration was because, if you want to blog on something, you generally know what you want to write about and discuss.

For me, I had little to no idea.

All I knew was that I wanted to do something personal, but it wasn’t like I was putting my whole life on the internet. Generally, I think that I’m an appealing person—I’m nice, and I get along with almost everyone. So, I figured that no matter what I wrote, as long as it wasn’t too controversial and that I wrote it well, I would be in the green zone.

So, for a bit of time, I racked my brain trying to come up with ideas. Eventually, I came to a mellow, but interesting topic. Comics. Whether it’s in the newspapers, or maybe even on the magazine racks at a local bookstore, comics are a very complicated, entertaining industry.

However, my interests today do not include talking about the comics industry—I’d rather discuss the matter on a personal level.

I’ve been writing fictional stories for a long time, probably since the third grade, and writing has always been one of my favorite pastimes. Recently (okay, more like two to three years ago), I’ve been drawing up comics. Despite my lack of artistic skill, I really enjoy creating characters and giving them complex backgrounds, developing multiple story arcs, and bringing my imagination to life in a whole different way. It’s very refreshing to me. Although I’m not as serious about publishing my comics, I still like to edit them and make them look a little professional.

And here is where things get difficult.

Yes, you think that it would be so easy (or at least I did) to draw up a comic and edit it. I mean, hundreds of talented artists and writers put out their own comics on the internet weekly, correct? Well, try being a comic artist that has no deadline to kick in that extra motivation, and also not know how to use Paint Pro Shop. When I first started out, I realized immediately that editing this 600- age series I had worked on was going to take me at least seven years to edit.

Editing by a mouse was my biggest obstacle that I had to overcome. This takes countless hours to do, even to finish just one panel. You have to make it look nice, of course.

Fortunately for me, my older brother purchased a pen tablet and shipped it to me as a birthday present, so I’ve gotten used to that. The time it takes to edit has now been sliced down by over half—which for a high school student, this is the absolute most fantastic thing. I’ve also managed to get the hang of adding multiple raster layers.

At first, if I were to erase something and try to draw over it in that same area, nothing would work. It would drive me absolutely bonkers. There would be many times when I would sit there at my computer grumbling at it, closing the program, and then waiting for it to load back up again just so I could continue working on a panel.

In retrospect, I really should have just selected the tutorial button. It’s there for a reason.

So now with my biggest problems out of the way, the only thing that I have left to do is wait for the weekend. Then there come the long nights when I sit there hunched over my laptop with my pen tablet plugged in and working away at something that is very time consuming, but I love it all the same.