We've already discussed the various software you can use in creating your comics-prose pages. This post will detail how I draw my pages, and while I draw by hand, this works perfectly fine for people who draw by computer as well.

STEP 1: Setup each of your pages

I use Adobe InDesign to set up my panels an my paragraphs. Usually this involves shifting things around, shrinking or enlarging panels, and re-writing paragraphs and sentences so they fit the amount of space provided. The size of the page I use is 6"x9".

Additional help: Here is a tutorial by Jessica Abel about Visual Scripting: How to use Adobe InDesign to script a comic book page. It's not for comics-prose, but it's extremely helpful for those who want to learn InDesign to script a comic book page.

STEP 2: Print out the page

I print the page out on normal copy paper at 111% of normal size, complete with dialogue sometimes so I can see how big I make the word balloons. I usually print the dialogue out in 30% opacity greyscale incase I want to move the words around in the panel.

STEP 3: Fill in the panels with art

I sketch with blue pencil so I don't have to rub it out (the scanner doesn't pick it up when I scan it back in), then trace over my sketches with a black fineliner. I use Sakura microns 0.05 and 0.1 for this part.

STEP 4: Finish the drawings

Page all done!

STEP 5: Scan it into the computer

I scan the finished picture back into the computer, and open it up in Photoshop to fix it. I treat each individual block like a since panel, and shrink it back to the proper size.

STEP 6: Tone the pictures

I tone all the panels using greyscale toning in Photoshop. Once I'm happy, I flatten all the layers and save it as a new greyscale TIFF file.

STEP7: Putting the pictures back into the original file

With all the pictures finished, I now insert it back into the Adobe InDesign file. The file is now finshed, and ready to be exported as a PDF. From the PDF onwards, I can open the pages up in Photoshop again and either make it into a print-ready file, or shrink it to webcomic size.

DONE!