The Making of Gates
Below you will find a journalistic and personal documentation of the making of GATES and it’s various forms and inspirations through the years, by artist, creator and visionary, Hal Hefner.
THE PROCESS:::
Since the age of three I have been drawing and painting. Ever since I child I was obsessed with drawing the bizarre, fantastic, horrific and comic books and knew someday I would make one. It took me many years of schooling, many long hours perfecting my craft but finally I am here—making a comic and loving it.
The Tools I Use:
Blue Pencil, HB pencil, #2 pencils, eraser pen, comic book paper, vellum paper, a scanner, Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign (CS4) and a Wacom Cintiq Monitor, MAC and PC computers.
The process is simple.
1. I begin by writing the comic script.
2. I then move into the drawing phase. I start off with a sketch or loosely drawn layout.
3. From there I open up a template in Photoshop document.
I either scan in the layout or redraw it completely in Photoshop to form the bare bones of what I will be painting.
I take into consideration, design, layout and where the word bubbles will go.
4. I then break up the page, via panels, which I create as individual files for later on.
5. I use Photoshop to paint the images–My FAVORITE part!
6. I take all of the images and import them into InDesign. I add borders and adjust accordingly to allow “happy accidents” to occur.
7. I then create a JPEG file from the final layout in InDesign.
I export that into Illustrator and do the lettering there because of the awesome tools it has.
8. When I’m done I delete the JPEG, save a copy, convert the text to outlines.
I then import the Illustrator file into InDesign, adjust accordingly and I’m done!
Why do I use Photoshop to paint? Well it all came about out of necessity. I am a trained fine artist and love to paint with acrylic, oil and watercolor. But the process can be messy, time consuming and when I was living in a small apartment in Koreatown in Los Angeles, it was difficult to use oil paints without smelling them, spilling them and waiting forever for them to dry. So I began experimenting with Photoshop as a painting tool back in 2000. I became frustrated at first but soon began to love the fact that I could flip an image, re-size, fill in colors fast and more. But with the development of the Wacom tools, I could actually draw and paint on their tablets. From there it involved into the Cintiq monitor and I now draw right on my monitor. It’s so awesome and some of the best money I ever spent. However I still do paint with oils, acrylic and more. I could never give that up. It’s in my soul. Regardless of how much I love to paint digitally, there is nothing like the feel of brushes on canvas or board.
Discussion (7) ¬
This gatesthecomic.com is cool. Keep posting buddy !
365 bet
Just wondering why you prefer Illustrator over indesign for lettering since indesign is primarily a text/layout program and would seem a natural tool for that purpose since you’re using it anyway. What sort of things are you doing to the text that can’t be done in indesign?
P.S I’m actually surprised you even mentioned indesign. You maybe the only comic artist I’ve heard of who uses it. I personally find it the fastest way to layout & adjust my thumbnails and refine the positioning of my text.
Word bubbles…I can’t join the tail and the word bubbles in InDesign like I can in Illustrator…do you know a way? if so please share!!!
“P.S I’m actually surprised you even mentioned indesign. You maybe the only comic artist I’ve heard of who uses it. I personally find it the fastest way to layout & adjust my thumbnails and refine the positioning of my text.”
But did you mean InDesign or Illustrator? I’m confused… Indesign rocks, it allows me to do SO many things. If you’re not using InDesign…you’re missing out.
I have a graphic design background so it’s typical in any professional advertising/retail etc. design environment that logos and text are often done in Illustrator, photoshop is used for graphics and images and some logos and then everything is imported into InDesign, collected for output and easily sent off to a printer. That’s what I do what my comic. My panels are individual paintings so I throw borders on them and I can move them around. It’s really about flexibility.
How do you do yours?
Sorry bout the confusion. I meant indesign, that’s what I use for laying out thumbnails and text.
I’ll write out my script, and rough out thumbnail compositions keeping in mind the text, but it isn’t until I take those thumbnails into indesign that I know for sure how much space the text will take. I adjust the composition as necessary.
I then print off each panel at final size and light box the thumbnail to bristol board. I finalize the pencils (tight) and then Ink. I do all the drawing (including the word balloons) traditionally so I haven’t run into that problem, but I think you can combine shapes together with pathfinder the same way as you would in illustrator, but I haven’t experimented with digital word balloons enough to know for sure. The word balloon issue was my suspicion though, in your case, as to why you’d use illustrator for lettering.
I then scan in the inked artwork and stitch together in photoshop. My webcomic is b&w with a spot color (pink) so I color that on a different layer in photoshop as well then export as a tiff.
I drop that final art into my indesign file and letter it there, then export as print quality jpeg. I take that back into ps to produce an RGB jpeg at the appropriate size for internet viewing.
Another artist friend of mine asked why, if I letter digitally, that I don’t also make digital word balloons. I suppose there is no good reason other then that I just like to work as much as I can with traditional tools & methods and because I like how the European comics incorporate an active approach to the design of their word balloons with the art. Something about the different shapes and tails they use makes the tone of a characters voice more easily heard in my head. And I guess I want to have original artwork that I can letter and color with copic marker for sales of the originals so the buyer has the story as well as the art.
This process might change when I letter my other webcomic which is in the full page format (as opposed to 3 panels) and requires more of a digital workflow.
I came to use indesign because I’m most comfortable and faster with it due to a similar experience in ad building as I worked previously in newspaper production.
Yeah I make digital bubbles. And I digitally paint. I’m not as worried as much about selling original art at this point. My goal is to take Gates to other levels of media such as video games, animation and movies. I have tons of original sketches though that one day I may sell but I enjoy keeping this stuff.