Design Process: Island Out In Space Art

Island Out In Space is a suspense-thriller webcomic I made as an entry into Webtoon's Short Story Contest of 2020. I was asked by the Asian Creative Network (Sydney-region) how I went about making the art. You can find the process below.

Link to the short story.

The standard size I used for the short story was 800x49920 at 72dpi. I initially took the traditional path, working with individual A4 sheets for my previous webcomic but found out later that it was not suitable for Webtoon's vertical scrolling format.

This is the basic setup for my layers.

I start by laying out panels with an emphasis on establishing clairty, readability and pacing.

I continue to review my work using these three aforementioned criteria. This is evident as I disposed of the standard rectangular panel for a 'naked' panel in order to emphasize the emotion of the character.

Having a draft you're happy with makes the lineart process more enjoyable.

This process is important as flatting colors allow for snappy adjustments in the color of any object. I recommend flatting with anti-alias disabled, so that your colors do not bleed into each with when you use the paint-bucket tool.

Shadows and ambient occlusion pass. I pair these two in separate layers again for easy adjustments. Ambient Occlusion referrs to the shadows or varying degrees of light that is absent on an object. AO is more noticeable along corners or areas where light has difficulty penetrating. For shadows, I took a creative approach and added them among the the eye region to emphasize the character's shock.

I imagined the current setting as diffused indoor lighting. As a result I didn't create too much contrast between the light and shadow, opting for a softer look. This is to juxtapose the lighting in the rest of the short story (for good reason).

The backgrounds are worked in tandem with this process. Texts and speech bubbles are established in the script and during the panelling state (beginning). I often make a habit to take some time off to view the completed episode with fresh eyes before I publish. Hope this helps!

You can find the short story webcomic here.