Auto-Tailor - page 11 - Process (Patreon)

Since the colors and shading were done by my partner, Jade, I'm going to talk more about other aspects of my process in more detail.

1. I start with a rough thumbnail to plan out the page.  Now things are really speeding up and getting crazy with lots of big things happening very quickly so the panels are even more angular. I'm doing lots of close-ups here because I want to keep the reader in suspense over how the complete outfit looks. Suspense is important in a multi-page comic to keep the reader interested until the end.

2. Now I go in and work out the final poses and proportions. Applying the floral detail like cake frosting is, like the puffed sleeve bellows, a silly approach but gives me more variety than just another roller or extruder. Plus, it's a little suggestive of a certain naughty sex act which is also fun, especially with the dominating way the machine is holding back the character's arms. For the skirts, I don't want to show the whole shape just yet so I'm just indicating the process without really showing how it attaches. Then it's time to get crazy with too many bows and so many robot arms all over the place. The last panel is the only rectangular panel because I wanted it to fell like the last page and a half was fast and hectic and then it suddenly slows down to delicately place a single big bow on top of the character's head. To make the last panel seem particularly orderly, I used a perfectly centered symmetry ruler to draw everything in it.

3. Now I go back and work out all the fine details.  I used a perspective ruler to draw parts of the skirt extruders.

4. Then I ink everything, using a couple of different pens (one with a blunt tip, for outer edges, and one with a fine tip, for fine detail). Thicker lines in closer objects contrast with thinner lines in distant objects, like the closer bows and machine parts compared to the matching more distant versions in the third panel, to enhance the sense of distance. As usual, I stick with variable-width lines for everything organic and constant-width lines for everything mechanical.