A lot of people have asked me to write about what goes into producing the strips. So I’m finally getting around to it. I took some photos of the process awhile back but just got delayed putting them up. I’ll break it up into a couple posts, starting with this one.

Ideas

Well, as most of you know, many of the ideas for the strips come from Sophie. After that it’s just a matter of watching the characters in my head and jotting down bits and pieces of what I see. I always carry the small Moleskine notebooks with me, specifically the storyboard books. These are pre-lined with little boxes that work perfectly for strip ideas. I also like to use a slightly larger sketchbook too, just for a bit more room.

This is a page from my larger sketchbook.

I like to be way ahead with the writing of the strip. This keeps me ahead of my deadlines, but also gives me some distance between the initial strip idea  and when I start drawing it. That’s when I get a fresh look at the strip and usually make a few edits or change some of the dialog. In some cases I just have an image and the copy changes several times.

The next post will be on the tools of the trade.