Use whatever tool gets the job done!

Inking your own comic! Sneak peak at inked interiors of I Am Māui!

Nau mai hoki mai e hoa mā.

Welcome back my friends.

I have now completed 30 pages, pencils and Inks of I Am Māui. It was such a blast to have a regular project to work on and now its over I feel a little lost. You build up a routine of hitting the studio, knowing your task for the day, struggle through the first hour or two then hit your stride, ending the day with the satisfaction of a good day’s work. Now the projects almost over, still a few loose ends to clean up, the anxiety of how to earn money through art begins a fresh. But I have faith.

Regarding the inking process, my favourite ink tool is the hunt 102 crow quill dip pen. Its trickier than a marker pen, but once you get warmed up you can get thin to thick lines, which saves me switching tools every time I want a thicker line. But the marker is still an essential tool in my kit. The ruled lines in backgrounds, or the fine details in the eyes, I always grab a marker. The brush is great for filling out those large spaces or getting some dry brush effects. I’m not super confident in the brush for clean art, but I hope to do a looser style comic soon where I’ll dedicate the whole book on just using the brush.

Nothing too fancy here. A bit of masking fluid in panel 1 for the city lights. It meant i could fill the whole space in with ink and just remove the masking fluid for the spots.

Wairere and her Māori tarot cards. They were fun to design.

Here’s a secret, panel 1 is a real boys home that was in a film. The scene pans across so you don’t actual see that wide angle in the film. I used screenshots and pieced them together for my reference.

It was a lot of fun to draw panel 2 with the state houses and a marae. Buildings we see all the time in NZ that Ive never seen in comics.

Panel 2 was a good exercise in drawing figures in perspective. Nothing impressive for any comic veterans, but these are the kinds of shots that are staple in comics and good to stretch that muscle.

With all the detail in the steamboat, I got lazy here, or efficient, and skipped clean pencils. As these boat shots rely on good reference, I just sketched in ink straight after my pencil layouts..

Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou mō tou tautoko.

Thanks for reading my friends. Next letter Ill share some of the coloured work and the process of hiring a colorist and letterer.