Thumb
First off, I start with a really rough thumbnail. Actually this is one of my more 'detailed' thumbs. Sometimes it is just circles and lines. I do this so I can see how everything will fit on the page. Also since it is a quick process, I don't get too attached to the picture, so I am able to erase without caring too much. Right now it is about finding the best layout and composition. Don't worry about detail. Adding detail makes you miss out on the larger picture. I do these digitally on the computer. I try to be really quick with these, maybe 10-20 minutes per page. Once finished I print them out on 11x17 bristol using an Epson R1800 printer. One of the few I could find that would print on large, heavy paper.
Pencil
Now we more on to the pencils. I had varying degress of finish on pencils. Sometimes I would do really loose and other I would do more detailed. I find for me personally that more detail on pencils really helps my inks. I don't have super confidence with inks, so the more thinking I can do in the pencil stage the better. Sometimes during inking I would have to go back and re-pencil stuff I had not defined enough. This is a more time consuming process. Maybe taking 2-4 hours, more if there is perspective involved. I use .7 mechanical pencils with Pilot Eno Color lead. I use both soft blue and red. Really great leads and they erase easily.
Ink
I am really sloppy with my inks. I almost ink like other people pencil. I don't like having a single line to define stuff. The reason I do this is to keep the energy of the pencils in the inks. Sometimes you will see pencils and say that looks awesome, then when you see the inks it looks dead. So I try to do the inks with that same energy of the pencils. For Cubicles I used Faber-Castell PITT pens. Mostly XS and S sizes. Though I did use F and M to outline larger shapes. I did use some brush and ink for action lines and also a toothbrush for splatters. These I could usually do in 1-3 hours.
Tone
I really wanted to do an inkwash on the pages for the toning/coloring. However I had printed out my pages too dark. So that thumbnail lines would have shown up in the file product. This is a problem I will have to figure a way around. Maybe just print it really light. So I had to fake an ink wash digitally. The way I pulled this off was by splattering ink wash on a blank paper, scan it in and then overlay it on my page in Photoshop. I think but down some gray colors which picked up the overlay of washes, making it look similar to a wash. I will be posting a how to on this in the future. I went for a really sloppy look so these only took around 30 minutes to an hour to complete.
First off, I start with a really rough thumbnail. Actually this is one of my more 'detailed' thumbs. Sometimes it is just circles and lines. I do this so I can see how everything will fit on the page. Also since it is a quick process, I don't get too attached to the picture, so I am able to erase without caring too much. Right now it is about finding the best layout and composition. Don't worry about detail. Adding detail makes you miss out on the larger picture. I do these digitally on the computer. I try to be really quick with these, maybe 10-20 minutes per page. Once finished I print them out on 11x17 bristol using an Epson R1800 printer. One of the few I could find that would print on large, heavy paper.
