Behind the Comics: How are they made?

As part of the Issue #100 milestone, I've shed some proverbial light on the process I normally go through when making the comics on this blog. I won't include all the details, so this is just a general overview of the creation process, from draft to donkeys(?).
For demonstration purposes, I will use Issue #79 - An Untimely Opportunity to showcase the creation process.

Early Paper Drafts

Before I even begin making a comic, I often make a sketch draft in a scrapbook of sorts to see if I think it's an idea that might work. For Issue #79, the draft looked something like this:

For some drafts like this one, I leave the idea on paper for a few days, maybe cross some bits out and add new parts. Maybe I want Dante to be mad on the last frame, or just plain disappointed? What about the words, do they flow nicely? I think about a bunch of things, and once I think the idea is workable, the idea hits the screen, metaphorically speaking.

Digital Composition

Currently, I have a master sheet of various components, including emotions for Dante, the phone gestures, and Donald Aite as well. I take the pieces I need and compose each frame's elements in Paint. Yes, you read that correctly: I use Paint, the bare-bones graphics program on most Windows operating systems. Maybe one day I might step up to something more capable...

Below is a sample of the digital composition of Issue #79:

Because I'm using Paint, I have to manually layer everything together. So the phone and hand, for instance, is filled in and placed over Dante to make it look convincing that Dante is holding the phone.

Some of these digital compositions can get quite large, especially those 8 frame comics that barely fit onto the blog under normal circumstances. But eventually, all the frames are composed according to the paper draft (or close to it) and assembly takes place.

Frame Assembly and Finishing Touches

Here, I place the frames in a nice square or rectangle format, add dialogue text, slap on some colours if needed and remove layering colours (i.e. the orange areas in the image from the last section).
I also add my name stamp with the year on the bottom right, as well as an issue identifier on the top left of the comic. So we get something like this:

And then finally post as well as Tweet the blog post when needed, and that's how it's done. There are a few steps I have omitted, but I guess we'll just have to cover those in another anniversary-related blog event.

Hopefully this has been an interesting read, so if you have any comments or feedback, tell them at me through whatever channels seem appropriate at that time.