Here are some examples of layout drawings that I made in the creation of some Pudding comics. Some times I work traditionally with pencil and paper and other times I work completely digital. It depends on my circumstances. If I’m on the road away from my studio, then pencil and paper are my choice. In the studio, I usually just go straight to digital.

For me one of the more difficult aspects of drawing layouts is my working angle. By that I mean the angle of my drawing surface. When I’m on the road, I usually have to work on a drawing board held in my lap and that’s pretty much horizontal with me looking down on the drawing. In the studio my drawing surface is tilted to a 45 degree angle with me looking straight ahead at the drawing. It may seem like a small difference but I find it takes getting adjusted to the optical change each time I shift my working angle.

This next series of photos shows layouts for an upcoming Pudding comic. They are drawn in “blue pencil” digitally in Photoshop. One of the things that always brings a smile to my face is hearing a comment at a convention about digital drawing. For some reason many people have this misconception that if  a drawing is done on the computer digitally then it’s not as difficult as drawing on paper. Obviously, they think the software magically draws for the cartoonist. It’s a similar concept to thinking that word processor software writes the novel for the author. No such luck, it’s all hard work and skill.

All of these panels are waiting for Monroe to be added. I’ve already drawn him but I purposely turned off his layer so as not to spoil the comic reactions he’s having to the insane plan being created by Bentley and Splunker. Hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes peek.

I often use background trees in BugPudding that are created digitally. I draw and paint them directly on the computer usually in Photoshop or Sketchbook Pro. Here are a few examples from previous strips.

But I also enjoy painting backgrounds and trees in particular using watercolors on paper and then just scanning them into the computer to use in the comic. Here are a couple of examples that you can expect to see in some future strips.