destroyerzooey

M.K. Reed and Matt Bernier did the Comic Tool blog in 2006-2007 and I've used my contribution as a quick link when people ask how I do what I do. I realize that after two years my methods have evolved or solidified to some degree, so I'm writing an update. I encourage other artists to do the same, whether you did the original comic tool survey or not. IT'S... FUN!


Bryan Lee O'Malley
Comics: "Scott Pilgrim" series, etc
Website: www.radiomaru.com
Making comics since year of: 2001 (professionally)
Art education/schools attended: No art school, and I gave up on university (was taking Film Theory)

Pencils: Sanford Col-Erase in various colours. These days I draw pages with light blue most of the time, with green and orange for borders or additions/corrections sometimes. I've been using red for thumbnails and I still use other dark colours for sketchbook. I use those foam pencil pillow things to help my grip. I never liked mechanical pencils much because I like a softer lead, but I recently got one for traveling and convention purposes (sharpening is hard on the road). The Col-Erase pencils are nice because they're soft, but they don't smudge, plus, if you use a light enough colour, you don't have to erase before you scan.

Inks: I am back to using the Koh-i-noor drawing ink with the yellow label. I keep trying others, but nothing works quite as well for me.

Brushes: These are always a problem. Lately I'm using the Rosemary & Co sable brush, #3. Her brushes are a little smaller, shorter-haired, and have less of a belly, and their tips are almost wedge-like, which I'm really into. It lets me do really fat lines. But generally, talking about all brands of brushes now - only one in three is a keeper, and you can experience sudden brush death at any time. They're good when they're good, but when you have brush trouble it's an endless nightmare.

Pens: I still use cheap Pilot tech pens to ink my letter balloons and small details. I've also started using a B-nib (round tip) for illustrations and sound effects lettering, and an A-nib (square tip) for some effects lettering as well. I use the Pigma Graphic pen size 1 (and sometimes 2) for panel borders and for most book signings and a lot of sketchbook work, and the Faber Castell Pitt pens (size S, and the brush pen) for miscellaneous stuff.

Paper: Just the usual Strathmore bristol in the yellow pads, smooth. They also have the "wind-powered" eco-friendly version now, which I get when I can.

I'm drawing at 9.5 x 14 right now. The first three volumes were drawn at 7 x 11, mainly to fit into a normal-sized scanner, but now we have a big scanner, so through Vol 4 I transitioned to the large size. Now it's hard to imagine going back down.

Lettering: I stopped hand-lettering for the most part because it hurts my wrist, so now I just use Comicraft fonts or whatever. One day I'll get my own font made.

I do the computer lettering after resizing and touching up my pages, at print size, 600 dpi. I have years (and 800+ pages) of experience in this series, so I can eyeball it pretty accurately with just a few scribbles to space out my balloons.

Color: When sketching I often use Faber Castell Pitt brush pens to add colour. I also have become fond of watercolours (see: Bear Creek Apartments). Mostly I colour in Photoshop. I've had my 6x8 Intuous 2 tablet since 2001; it still works, more or less, and I use it almost every day. I've used Painter once or twice and always think I'd like to become great at it, but I don't know if I ever actually will.

Layout/ Composition: I do thumbnails just in pencil in my sketchbook. With Scott Pilgrim 5, I'm actually using a grade-school-style composition book (I think of it as a "cahier" because of my French Canadian upbringing). I used to print out sheets of proper-sized thumbnail templates, but I find it's faster to do it in the sketchbook now, and I can eyeball the page proportions well enough. If I switched to a radically different page format, I might print out some more templates. I do my thumbnails only about an inch and a half high, because I can't stand the idea of drawing them any bigger if I'm just going to redraw them later. I still find that my thumbnails have a disturbing resemblance to the final pages, even down to the scribbled facial expressions.

Also, on Scott 5 I started using a t-square and triangle to actually get square edges. I never thought I'd see the day. I'm also on a precariously-angled drafting table, for the first time in my professional career, and loving it.

Convention Sketches (when different from illustrations done in the studio): This has been evolving as shows get busier for me and as I have more books in print. But generally I still use the Pigma Graphic 1 pen to do a sketch and an inscription, sometimes adding tone with a Faber Castell Pitt colour brush pen. Sometimes I use the Pigma Graphic 2 to get a chunkier look - they get really appealingly fat and round after you work with them for ten or fifteen minutes. I've started using Copic brush markers for larger con sketches, which has worked well so far.

Tool timeline, starting from when you began drawing in any serious way until the present, and what spurred the changes: I think when I got serious I started using a brush, because I equated "brush" with "serious". I used really bad, cheap brushes for years, until I got a good one and realized that the bad brushes had been holding me back. I've also been using the Col-Erase pencils since before I got serious, so I guess I haven't really changed my tools all that much. (This post is an update from an earlier version from 2006.)

What tools you'd never use, and why: I don't really like Microns and that type of thing, but for no real reason. Just personal preference. I get mad at people for using them, though.