Anchor Babies

This week I thought I'd give you a look at the behind the scenes journey of one my editorial cartoons. Prepare to be underwhelmed. Click on the images for a larger view.

They start out as a script of barely legible chicken scratch. I do a lot of writing for my comics but almost never sketch them out. I'll do roughs for my more realistic work like War Is Boring, but for my cartoony stuff I just plan it out in my head and start attacking it.

For the wordier comics I could go through pages of reworking it but this one was fairly simple so I jotted down the line I had in my head and did a small sketch about an inch wide to get the placement of the inset panel right.

The rest of the process below is pretty self-explanatory: draw, letter, ink, then scan it in to color in Photoshop. These pencils are pretty tight, meaning I didn't leave much room for improvisation with the inks. If I'm doing a character like Cheney or Bitter Pundit Man that I draw often, I may just pencil their basic shapes and go ahead in with the inks. I ink most of it wit a brush and get the details with a dip pen.