I use four drafts to come up with what you see. First I take an idea that I have had (usually written down in rough form) and draw the whole strip in pencil in a small comic strip format, complete with pictures and dialog. Then I scan this picture and tweak the proportions and positions of the characters, the dialog bubbles, the foreground and the background. I then print this out in a 13" by 4" size and use it as a guide to draw the original draft on a lighted tracing table.
I touch up the details of this draft while wearing magnified reading glasses with very fine drawing pens at another drawing table with bright lighting. I then scan this “original” in the computer. There I use Adobe Photoshop to do some more minor touch up, then redo all the dialog boxes and words using a personally developed “Duck Pond” typeface pre-loaded into the graphics program. I save this version for use with black and white formats, then I color the whole strip, saving it separately as a colored version. Both versions are saved on CD and are then ready to ship or download to any syndicate or media outlet.
