#comics process

Hello, friends!

I reworked the ol' "Schweizer Guide to Spotting Tangents" lecture from my comics-teaching days, figured I'd share it here. If you want a free, printable PDF for yourself or to share (especially if you're an educator), you can find it at the bottom of this same lesson on my website.

Thoughts on thumbnailing from the process of OPTING OUT by Maia Kobabe

I drew these two pages in my sketchbook about a year ago when I was trying to explain some of my thought process on thumbnailing while working on Opting Out (which was initially titled Saachi's Stories). Since this is a middle grade book, clarity of action and storytelling was really important to me, so I decided pick a basic page- a six panel grid- as my base, and only deviate from it when I thought it served the story to do so. I co-wrote this book with Lucky Srikumar @diamoric-comix and it's out in stores on May 5 2026 <3

Transcript below the cut!

NEVER AGAIN but im committed now and have to see it through

FIVE WEEKS LEFT until TAZGN6 is out in the world (7/16/24)! I'm back with another process post for a page from early in the book.

layouts are the very first thing I draw! this is where I'm thinking about page and panel breakdowns, whether we need additional beats to help with pacing, and where the text will go. You can see that in my very rough balloons! nobody else usually gets to see this, so enjoy the sneak peek at the messy first stage. as long as I can understand it, it's all good.

thumbnails- at this point the overall page composition is locked in & I'm working on strengthening the overall poses/gestures. You can see I decided to open up the panel for magnus getting a spell refresh and that merle's pose changed to account for more text elements.

pencils- here's where I start thinking more about likenesses & detail! I'm still tweaking some sizes to make sure there's enough room for text… but you can see I pretty much copied magnus over from thumbnails. Sometimes it just works!

inks- at the inking stage I'm thinking about using line weights to emphasize depth/ important elements and strengthen the overall composition, as well as making small fixes to sell expressions and flesh out outfit details.

And finally, colors- I use color much more as a way to heighten tone/ establish emotion than to be literal about local colors! In this case, going monochrome for magnus helped sell that something magical was happening AND helped his exhausted face stand out a little bit better.

and that's it! the pages go off to the letterer after pencils are locked, but I keep the rough text layer visible at every stage as I'm working so I make sure to leave enough room for all text elements.