*ed note: this was published over multiple days (5/13-5/16) on tumblr. it was intended to be done over the course of one day, but i got sick. i bitch about it in the blog post so you can really experience the excitement in real time. this is also very long.

part 1: pre-gaming

webcomic day is a yearly celebration of the art form concocted by the screentones podcast team as a way for people to see how the sausage gets made. my webcomic “a ghost story” has been running for over 10 years, yet i still don’t think i can say i am any good at making a webcomic. regardless, the comic is going to get made, because otherwise i become very, very sick in the head. today i would like to share with you the process of making a page of “A Ghost Story” from start to finish. either this will demystify the process or will make you think i’m so cool and strong for doing this 2x a week.

let’s get started. wait just kidding i want a cup of coffee first, hold on.

ok now im ready. i have a big glass of water. i have coffee. i have a headset for the parts of work that don’t involve typing words. i can’t type words and listen to some streamer babble in my ear at the same time, so it has to be instrumental music or nothing. i just took my meds so they should kick in after about 30 mins. i woke up late today, which is weird and annoying. but maybe i can work late instead.

first off, i need to know where i’m going beyond this one page. if i don’t know where im going with something, then i usually create something that sucks that i have to deal with later. hold on my internet died, i have to reset the router. ok, anyway.

what’s rattling around in my brain is that not only do i have to deal with maxine’s current predicament, i am also dealing with multiple plot elements i need to wrap back around to from the previous chapter. luckily, i’m about to put maxine down for a nap, which means i can get back to those other elements:

i need to finish the exposition from the three ankou characters for this story arc establishing their motivations as the oppositional force in the story. the “villain” is not these three specifically, but their boss. they need to have a loose understanding of what’s going on in order to communicate this to the audience. god, this started turning into a huge ass paragraph so i’ll just keep it short there.
we’ve jumped back to before jack’s horrible day from the first chapter of this storyline so we have to make our way back toward that and then lapping it, which means wrapping up his various open threads like:
1. feeding victoria and learning something new about her
2. finding out alice is a very exceptional employee who is getting many awards
3. watching valdo call lily while interrupting her during something personal to ask her for help with maxine’s situation.
4. jack meeting with valdo and lily the day after they first met so jack can just tell them straight up that lily has 4 sisters she doesnt know about.
5. help that girl with her poltergeist problem. remember that. i’ve had jokes for this rattling in my head for like 4 years. im going insane.
6. and also the fucking tilberi!!! that has a point its going somewhere!!! there’s a larger menace here!!!
7. other things to set up the climax of this storyline. sexual tensions, hints at larger emotional problems not immediately evident to the reader

lots of moving parts. and i feel like i’m moving in slow motion to get to them. i can see them all weaving together in my head, its the process of putting that onto paper that’s proving difficult.

ok that took an hour starting and stopping. -_- let me write the next part as i keep brainstorming on how to approach this page. taking a “rubber duck” approach to this might help. heres an image from the last page i worked on (i have a 5 page buffer rn so the site does not match the finished pages) to get us semi-situated.

images will also help people understand what skill level we’re working with here. i need to be able to communicate an idea to the audience; if the art also looks good on top of that, then that’s just an added bonus. but the ability to communicate my ideas is sometimes hampered by my lack of artistic skill or comics language ineptitude. like those speech bubbles kind of fucking suck but at a certain point you have to just hit print on what you’re working on in order to keep your already glacial pace.

webcomics is a tightrope act where you’re also spinning 4 plates at once. the trick is to keep the audience from realizing how many actually fall or how wobbly they all are. the act sucks but technically its not a failure.

part 2: planning

like every single artist on planet earth since the dawn of time, i suffer from some kind of unknown malady that causes me problems for no reason and cannot be confirmed by an outside source. usually, its whatever; its fleeting muscle/tendon/join pain with some inflammation that comes and goes for no reason after a few hours. today, however, the muscle in the webbing between my index finger and thumb on my drawing hand is swollen and painful, making it annoying. it’s really only like a 4/10 when it hits and the actually annoying part is just the unpredictability. with any luck it will be gone in a few hours.

that doesn’t have anything to do with planning, i just wanted to bitch about it to a captive audience. also my guts are mad at me.

in all honesty, i’ve been sitting here sipping on my cup of coffee, staring at my screen and struggling to think of an interesting and concise way to portray what i know i want. this is a great page for me personally because it signals forward momentum, no matter how minuscule, in the plot. maxine is completely exhausted and beat to shit, so she’s reluctantly passing out. her vulnerability in this moment makes it hard to convincingly ohhh hold on ok i think i have it. i’ll spend this page putting her to bed lol.

christ this comic feels decompressed to shit sometimes and breakneck at others. since i felt like i needed to aim toward one or the other after flailing in the middle for years, i picked “trying to be more narratively slow” because it gives me more time to think and feel. but that’s really rough for something that updates serially. in this case, it just doens’t feel realistic for maxine to willingly fall asleep considering she operates with the instincts of a wild animal; she’d chew her arm off if it got stuck in a vending machine. she is not going to be happy about sleeping in a strange place surrounded by people she just got done aiming a gun at.

BUT what if she issues one last warning to this guy and then as he drones on in response, she falls asleep while tuning him out. she would want to tune him out but the falling asleep would be an unintentional side-effect of her stubbornness. no way is she actually trusting this guy or any guys. its against her will. the last panel can be her in a nice dream, so she has a reason to stay asleep instead of fighting it. this has the bonus of allowing me to draw something weird and fun by trying to draw what a dream feels like. ADDITIONAL BONUS: i don’t have to come up with a lot of dialog. it can turn into squiggles once maxine stops listening.

uhhh ok time for sketching. here’s where we’re at right now after 2 hours of work:

uh oh!

part 3: sketch

hmmm. giving up on the first few panels for right now. here’s what i’m thinking about as i sketch this:

too many of my panels were talking heads or constantly relied on one point perspective. i have been trying to work against this for a while with mixed results. sometimes the result is so bad i have to scrap what i did and start over but sometimes it’s “good enough for TV”* and i hit publish on it. no risks, no reward after all. can’t get better if you don’t try.
in this first panel, i have two people having a back and forth conversation through a weird magic hole in the floor/wall. maxine is laying on a couch with hole right above her head. homestar runner will demonstrate what i mean:

*my friend kelly had an anecdote from working in animation that im going to retell badly from memory. her boss would take the work she labored over to meet by deadline and would laugh at it, saying “ah, its terrible! but good enough for TV”. and while extremely mean, he had a salient point: it never has to be perfect. it just needs to be good enough to be seen. sometimes i seriously think about this anecdote when im dissatisfied with my own art. it’s bad. but it’s good enough for tv.

however, there are logistical problems with maxine that homestar runner doesnt have. maxine’s right shoulder is dislocated, so she can’t lay on that side, or any side that would put pressure on the joint. i’m realizing i don’t actually know what position would be most comfortable in her situation or how she would instinctually arrange her body to avoid pain. i start looking up videos from physical therapists on how they recommend patients sleep for some ideas.

also i start looking up what women look like sleeping on couches. how does the human body fold up. because this isn’t it.

anyway, this was my first effort with the first panels.

for reference, the last page ends like this:

the top left of the sketch would have been the hopi clown back on the shelf with the “camera” tilting above it to reveal maxine. while this keeps the relevant object from the previous page in frame as a piece of connective tissue between updates…i’m struggling to fit the second character in. the one talking from the hole. maybe there’s still hope for this? it’s not terrible. initially i nuked it but maybe i can make this work.

fuck! she needs a pillow or two to make this work. this video is right, that DOES look naturally comfortable compared to the standard fetal position that would pull the affected shoulder inward. i didn’t draw any pillows into the stupid establishing shot of the office bc its not the kind of couch you are expected to sleep on!!! this is a man’s business office!!! i thought i was so smart!!

basically every couch comes with decorative pillows though, and the shot of the room didn’t include the wall the “camera” was up against. my 2-point perspective failure might have paid off here lol. if i can establish that the second character is talking through the hole, he can use his rayman hands to reach across the room and get the pillow for her. it can be part of his personal campaign to show maxine he means her no immediate harm. the pillows were just out of frame. lurking. ok let’s try it again. uhhhh after i eat some lunch

ate lunch, played a little crusader kings, and helped adam unpack groceries when he got home. my stupid hand is getting worse and hits all the way to my middle finger sometimes. what a weird problem. i think its going to flare up and then deflate before the night is done but its going to go through the full paces, i guess. just keeping tabs.

anyway: panel 1 gives me enough for maxine to threaten santiago while he fetches her pillows. the clown is still in frame. panel 2 is maxine listening, panel 3 is maxine no longer listening and closing her eyes to sleep. panel 4 is maxine on the couch in a somewhat comfortable position. panel 5 will be mostly the same except maxine is dreaming around her. i gave myself more room for that. the good thing about a character going to sleep is that they don’t move much.

i gotta lie down bc i think its the stupid flares that make me need a nap. at least im taking for real cat naps now instead of 2 hour speed-sleeps

part 4: the art

this part i feel like gets done semi-easy once the rest of the shit is dealt with. yesterday, my knuckles continued to swell and feel like rotten wood so i had to cut it short. this shit happens more frequently than i would prefer. today i need to run to the store and also pick myself up a lil treat (an eighth). for right now tho i have some cbd rich stuff that should help. maybe. while the index finger still hurts, only the middle knuckle is swollen anymore. let’s see.

i started with panels 2 and 3 bc they seemed the least immediately labor intensive. ill be copy/pasting the line/flats for panel 3 to edit from there. t…there’s going to be a lot of copy/paste this page*. its not usually like that. but i usually only copy/paste the lines and flats. i will re-shade things so that they look different

*no there wasn’t

unlike the sketch, the lineart has more “weight” to it. wait thats not how the pillow would deform. hold on.

ok that’s better. did people even notice that before i changed it. probably not. but it matters to me!!!!! these little things add up and add weight to your world!!!! ive been trying new things with line as as of [looks at watch] last week. so it looks bad right now. like someones vague idea of what good lineart is supposed to look like. practice makes perfect tho….or breeds familiarity or something.

some parts of this look weird. don’t worry. we will cover up that shit with speech bubbles. thank you comics for your ways of obfuscating bad art.

flats are easy. select everything that isnt your line art, invert the selection, and dump a base layer. then color that base layer with a mask

this page will, blessedly, not have any complex backgrounds. i already established the scene previously and can skate on doing my textured backgrounds. the background gradients in the direction the light in the room is being cast, usually.

first, a multiply layer at 50%. since she’s facing away from the light source, she’ll be mostly in shadow. then a white overlay layer at 50%; this is to make the first shadow layer pop and keep from getting too muddy. then a second multiply layer at 50% for the next layer of shadows.

added some sweat beads to make her look more haggard and some shine to her hair, since she’s so close to the light. i’ve started bothering doing this bc it unfortunately looks good. finally i add one more multiply layer at 40% over her eyes to make her look more over this entire thing. and then added the red glow in another overlay layer (100%) where it would land if being cast from above.

completely servicable and theres room for like. a speech bubble later. usually i do text first, but in this case its so secondary to the actions being performed, i want to prioritize one over the other.

looking at it, im not going to be able to copy/paste this after all. she’s going to settle in more and her body will rotate too much in the process. i can use this as a base to trace over, though, which will get me started.

but pain is occurring so im going to eat breakfast. what a bitch!

the page is complete as of this update. here’s how that went:

i wound up copy/pasting the first panel so i could trace over it and change it as needed. aw man, i just noticed the ear should be behind the pillow in the second panel. i might have to go change that*, otherwise it looks like she’s lifting her head back up!! i added some wiggles marks to the first panel so it looks like she’s getting comfortable.

*i did

one panel shouldnt take an entire day and yet, somehow, this depiction of a person’s body in a fetal position was shockingly impossible to draw. my friend cami helped me out with a sketch after i spent two hours moving the legs around and trying to draw a folded torso. impossible!

then it turned out to barely even matter because i copied the layer, blurred it, and then erased around her face so it feels like she’s dozing off. it all got blurred anyway.

final panel. copy/pasted the previous and then smothered it in white overlay layers at 100%. blurred the couch and a copy/pasted. slightly larger version of maxine set to 50%. a good dream for maxine is one where she’s in her natural element, the forest near where she grew up. warm rays of sunshine and a cool breeze.

back to the first, and most annoying, panel. it has many elements to deal with: the contents of the shelf, the shelf, the hole, the contents of the hole, two hands (one holding a pillow), maxine, a couch, and the floor.

at this point i was fatigued again for seemingly no reason, but more of my joints had started to freak out instead of improving like i had hoped. being stupid tired and unexplained pain goes hand in hand; i did more sleeping than i would have preferred yesterdat while dragging my way through this. it looks bad, but its good enough to communicate an idea. this panel looks the most different from the sketch because i really struggled to fit all the elements in the frame the way i was hoping to. the perspective is kind of all over the place and everything is a weird size. the background is boring. i was losing steam.

on a wednesday night, you can no longer afford to be picky about your results. if i want to meet my self-imposed deadlines, i need to give up on achieving perfection.

part 5: text

this is an easy page but the bubbles still look like ass. i was so tired at this point and desperate to get my work done in time. i knew the dialog was not especially important, but still struggled to write a back and forth that imparted some kind of information (character quirks and traits if not plot info) instead of being just panel filler.

when i first started writing and drawing AGS, white speech bubbles looked weird and wrong. they stood out WAY too much (especially since my contrast/brightness was fucked up back then lol, everything was so muddy!). as a bandaid, i used a light gray speech bubble for the first speaker in a conversation and a darker speech bubble for the second speaker, whose bubble would overlap with the first speaker.

the dead guys in the ichor suits talk in black speech bubbles with a white outline. this is probably my new standard for all ghosts who are so dead they no longer have vocal cords to communicate with, giving their voice a distinctive “otherworldly” quality. the grey bubbles are for the living and those with more human bodies/sentience. both also have a drop shadow because. i don’t know. it looked weird otherwise. they blend into the background too easily.

the line connecting santiago’s “i know.” and “sigh” bubbles becomes wobbly and takes its time getting to the sigh. this is intended to demonstrate some wavering in his confidence as he reflects on what’s happening, which he recovers by the time he asks her about pillows. likewise, maxine’s lines are strong until we get to her last few words and it becomes a little wibbly coming out of her mouth. does this come across to the audience? i have no idea. hopefully it does but in a way that’s so subtle they don’t notice it until its pointed out. that’s the dream!

santago’s bubbles get weird as maxine drifts off to sleep. this is just the photoshop ripple effect. it kind of sucks, but, well. deadline.

ripple effect+blur as she drifts off. i couldnt come up with some crap for him to prattle on about easily. boo on me tbh i was really struggling here. it looks ok i guess. its communicating the idea. i chant “its communicating” to myself like it’s a magic spell that makes my art better.

final panel required no speech bubbles at all. whew!

part 6: the end

voila. the process used to take me about a day and a half, but being sick slowed me considerably. i’ve been getting better though! if i can get back to my old pace i’ll be estatic.

uhhh, well. that’s how it goes. you don’t have to make comics like this. look at how other people do it as well because they probably have a more normal workflow and process. bye

webcomic day…uh, week: the process of making “A Ghost Story”