The Prisoner in the Dungeon – a short comic

Recently I wrote about a new comic I was working on, and I am pleased to present it here in its entirety. It is eight pages long, and was included in a new anthology called Minimum Paige published by the Harvard Book Store.

The story evolved as I wrote it, and although it was conceived as a short comic, I would like to expand it into a full-length book someday. You can read the comic here.

Below are some images showing the process I went through to create the comic. It was a new process for me, using traditional and digital methods. I started with very rough sketches to write the story and map out the pacing.

Then I did a more detailed series of sketches to figure out the final layout, pacing and text.

I scanned the sketch and brought it into Adobe Illustrator do to the typesetting, and see exactly how much room I would need for all the balloons.

I printed out the sketch with text, and using a light box, traced the final pencil lines on good paper, also refining any details that were missing in the last version. All the word balloons were drawn by hand to fit the text.

I drew the final ink lines over the pencil using a Micron pen and brush, then erased the pencil.

I scanned the ink drawings into Photoshop, painted the shading, then brought the image back into Illustrator, where the type was already set. (I could have also done the typesetting in Photoshop, but this is just the way it happened.)

So there you have it! It was a new process for me, but I think it worked pretty well, and it was a fun project. I hope you enjoy the final product!