The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics

DC Comics Guides

by Freddie E. Williams II

At last–the first guide to drawing comics digitally! Artists! Gain incredible superpowers...with the help of your computer! The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics shows how to give up pencil, pen, and paper and start drawing dynamic, exciting comics art entirely with computer tools. Author Freddie E Williams is one of DC Comics' hottest artists and a leader in digital penciling and inking–and here, in clear, step-by-step directions, he guides readers through every part of the digital process, from turning on the computer to finishing a digital file of fully inked comic art, ready for print. Creating a template, sketching on the computer, penciling, and finally inking digitally are all covered in depth, along with bold, timesaving shortcuts created by Williams, tested by years of trial and error. Step into the digital age, streamline the drawing process, and leap over the limitations of mere physical drawing materials with The DC Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics .

Genres: Art, Comics, Nonfiction, Drawing, Graphic Novels, How To, Dc Comics

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 14, 2009

About the author

American comic book writer and artist. Best known for his work on DC Comics, and for working almost entirely in Digital format. He was hired for several issues of Seven Soldiers featuring Mister Miracle, for which he won an Eisner Award.

Reviews

[Shopgirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty cool book, and not too difficult to follow along with. My experience is with GIMP rather than Photoshop, but most all of the stuff talked about in here I was familiar with and knew how to do, I just never considered using it this way. This book has made me excited about trying out digital drawing. The one downside to this book is that it stops at the inking stage and doesn't go into doing color (which, I suppose is something he doesn't do, so understandable, though it would have been nice to have had a co-author who does digital coloring to add a couple chapters about that at the end of the book. The cover illustration erroneously leads the casual browser to believe that coloring will be addressed). Overall though a good read.

[Michael Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics introduces the reader to three fully or largely digital processes for drawing comics. A professional introduces good technique, good tools, with good examples. There are some good quips and good business advice. Nothing exceptional, though.

Best bit: I liked the best the description of the three creative workflows. The fully digital workflow is particularly efficient, with roughs, wireframes, and inks all being done digitally. The first hybrid workflow starts from digital breakdowns, and proceeds with physical pencils and possibly also with physical inks; this allows the creator to capitalize on the market for original roughs and inked materials. The second hybrid uses a digital process up to and including wireframes, and then uses physical (traditional) inking.

Content: The book starts with the big question, Why digital?, which it answers satisfactorily: to improve the speed of the creation process, the precision of the tools, the communication processes with the publisher. Then, the book spends a couple of chapters introducing the digital tools, focusing on Adobe Photoshop; there's also a late chapter on the physical tools for drawing and inking. The book further covers three creative workflows, all digital-heavy and one fully digital, and, in turn, master pages and templates, libraries, roughs, wireframes, and inked pages with some coloring tips.

Tools: As digital tools, it's Apple hardware and operating system, plus Adobe Photoshop (the old version). Late in the book, there's a quick reference to Google's SketchUp, for quick 3d prototyping. There's already a feeling that some things are obsolete, e.g., no Creative Cloud, no cross-tool operations, etc.

Writing and teaching material: Overall, good writing for the high level parts, with good details in many places. Gaps in many aspects, especially pencilling and inking, where the techniques are too many and too detailed to do justice in this short page-count.


Background: part of an ongoing personal project, I'm traversing the collection of DC Comics Guides, focusing on:
+ pencilling (The DC Comics Guide to Pencilling Comics or The DC Comics Guide to Digitally Drawing Comics, or this read),
+ inking (The DC Comics Guide to Inking Comics),
+ coloring and lettering (yup, The DC Comics Guide to Coloring and Lettering Comics), and
+ writing (The DC Comics Guide to Writing Comics).

[Daniel Te · Rating 3 out of 5]

A solid intro to thinking about digitally drawing comics. It definitely feels outdated though, looking at the Windows XP (or is it 7?) interface in the pictures shown. It also only covers Photoshop, where other programs like Clip Studio or Adobe Illustrator would have been nice to see more of as well. The parts talking about the process though (e.g. rough sketching, wireframing, inking) is still a solid guide that still holds up, so if only for that, then it's valuable. Not to mention that the tricks in Photoshop should still work too, it just happens that today it has a nicer interface and probably even more tools to use still.

[Parka · Rating 5 out of 5]

(More pictures at parkablogs.com)

Artist author Freddie E Williams has been creating comics digitally since 1999. He has put together this great resource targeted at those who intend to create comics on the computer, or looking for ways to streamline their digital workflow. You must already know how to draw to get the most out of this book.

Three types of workflow are discussed, namely the All-Digital Workflow, Pencil Hybrid Workflow and the Ink Hybrid Workflow. You can choose between these three to best suit your working environment.

Every tutorial in the book is explained step-by-step with screenshots and concise instructions. The software used here is Photoshop, but the version is irrelevant. It's easy to follow along as he explains on how to create your own Master Page template, or from creating drafts up to the final inking stage. Nothing is left out.

The best part about this book is it highlights all sorts of ways to harness the power of using the computer, fully taking advantage of what it can be made to do. There are chapters on creating brushes, textures, effects, templates for props and many more. You can see how all of these are used in real examples. There's even a section on creating Actions and Droplets to reduce repetitive tasks, which is an incredible time saver.

There are loads of tips everywhere. One particular one helped me very much. There are times when I draw two characters but they are of a different size. So I scaled one up but now the thickness of the line is also scaled up. This book even has a solution to make that line thickness match!

The only thing this book doesn't cover is perhaps colouring tips. That shouldn't be a problem after you've mastered all the techniques in the book anyway.

This book is really good. You're bound to learn something regardless of your level in art. And if you have only been using the computer lightly for comic work, this book will present to you all sorts of possibilities.

[John Kirk · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a lot of useful information here, and I'm glad I bought the book (rather than just borrowing it) so that I can refer back to it later. However, you need to understand the scope. This book targets a particular niche, and it's really about logistics. He refers to a couple of other DC guides in the series for more information about pencilling and inking. So, this book won't teach you how to draw, but if you can already draw (on paper) then he'll teach you how to do it digitally.

The writer talks about a few different workflows: drawing everything digitally, or doing traditional pencils then digital ink, or digital pencils then traditional inks. He also goes into a lot of detail about setting up layers/groups in Photoshop to store files at each stage of the process, and covers the nitty-gritty detail, e.g. the specific hue/saturation settings that you need to represent a "non-photo blue" pencil (lines that don't get photocopied). Some of these details did go over my head, so it took me a while to slog through a couple of the chapters. However, I think that's because I'm a relative beginner to Photoshop; someone who's more experienced (hopefully my future self!) should get a lot more out of those chapters.

[Eric · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was exactly what I was looking for. I'm glad that it was, too, because I believe it's the only book that covers creating digital comics so thoroughly. There's obviously more than can be contained here, but I'd list this as essential. Might check out the forthcoming digital color book DC is doing also.

The one thing this book did for me is make the whole process doable. I can see from start to finish how I could do this and that's huge. It's still a lot of work, but now I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Also this book opened my eyes to things I would have considered "cheating." It's almost as if I needed permission and now I have it :)

There was some info about automating a lot of steps in Photoshop (beyond basic actions) which sounded intriguing, but I don't see that I have a use for it unless I get into a high pressure production timeline.

[Bob Bello · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book takes you where no traditional comic artist has gone before! Freddie explains painstakingly everything you need to know to create stunning, modern-day graphic novels in Photoshop. The book is virtually loaded with information and step-by-step tutorials, unlocking secrets of digital art, tricks, effects, and even 3D manipulation in 2D graphics mode. If you want to know how to do it digitally or tradigitally (i.e., hybrid), I strongly recommend this book, a masterpiece on the subject! If you want to do it fully traditionally, then I recommend The DC Comics Guide to Inking Comics. Both make a priceless companion to any novice and avid graphic novelist!

[Stasia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book. Very specific and instructive. I really got into the mindset of a professional comic book artist. Although, since I'm a graphic designer, some of the Photoshop settings and tool explanations had to be skipped over. And sometimes I didn't really understand why Williams did things a certain way, when I would have done it completely differently (and in my opinion, much more efficiently). But each to his/her own, I like that he wasn't didactic about his method, and he didn't make it seem that this way is the only way. All in all, an incredibly useful read for anyone looking to know the nitty gritty of drawing digitally.

[Serge Pierro · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting approach to doing comic books digitally. Although it focuses on using Photoshop, any similar graphic software could be used. The most interesting aspect of the book was his use of his "cardboard cutouts" and his technique for doing background architecture. This approach is more akin to working on cel animations, than traditional comic book techniques. I look forward to reading some of the other books in the "DC Comics Guide to" series.

[Cindy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a great resource with really helpful step-by-step instructions on how to digitally create comics. I learned many things I'd struggled to figure out on my own and will definitely be buying this in the near future.

[Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good place for me to start - I'm well versed in Photoshop and wanted a workflow. A few helpful recommendations on which tools to use for each step. Directions were sometimes a bit hard to follow despite being very familiar with PS.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty good!

[Jaime · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read, could have easily have been 3x the size. Lots of interesting details as well as tips and tricks to get you started.

[Maurice · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok. Maybe it's for people looking for something different than I was, but I took some pointers out of it. Pretty easy to get through, didn't take long.

[Josh Storey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend these books enough. They really are top notch guides. I've read two so far, and I've extensively annotated both.