Punko

How a Webtoon Is Made (Stagtown Edition)

Added 2023-03-01 07:03:36 +0000 UTC

Thank you everyone for your patience while I finished up the last of a frankly stunning amount of medical tests and procedures, the sheer number of which I'm starting to suspect is directly connected to how many bribes my doctor takes from specialists that are outside my insurance's Tier 1 group.

In the last poll, many people said they'd like to see how a webtoon is made. Many people also said they'd like to watch me eat a bee, so expect a mini-comic of that next week for the 5$ patrons. And yes, I'm just going to do everything for you on the poll. :)

It's important to note that ideas for stories don't come out of people's heads. They come out of 30 Red Bull cans, but you have to drink everything inside them before you get the idea. Kind of like how cereal boxes used to have prizes in them.

THE SCRIPT

I write a one or two paragraph outline of each episode at the start of a season. Most webtoon episodes are produced well in advance of when they air, with episodes being completed anywhere from 3-6 weeks in advance.

When I get to the first of the month, I more fully outline the four episodes I'm working on that month, by going into much more detail. One week out from each episode, I will refine that episode's script with a panel by panel indication of action, etc, and a vague outline of dialogue ("Panel 3: They are in the car. Frankie admits she's allergic to the napkins at the Olive Garden.")

It's only when the episode's art is done and it's being actually lettered that I decide on the final dialogue, writing most of it as I go. I'm the only person who does it this way, as far as I'm aware. I like to write the final dialogue on the spot because it feels more natural and less rigid. I always come up with better dialogue last-minute than what I wrote in the original script.

THE ART

As for the art, I work on an iPad Pro, in the program Procreate, which I like because it's more simple and gesture-driven than ClipStudio (I also use CS, but for other stuff). I do each panel as its own art page, numbering them as I go.

(30 is missing, I cut it from the epsiode :D )

I do "redline layer," aka the pencils layer, in a reddish color, then ink over it in a separate layer. In the comic industry, it used to be called a blue line because back when we drew on comic paper art boards (when I was young and the world was too), we used these photo-blue pencils that drew in a special light blue lead, which supposedly meant you inked on top of them and then scanned your artwork in, and the blue would just not be seen by the scanner at all, so you didn't have to erase it before scanning in your inks! Which was great cuz those blue pencils were impossible to fully erase!

For the record, this has never ever ever happened to me. Every scanner always picked up the blue line.

Anyway, computers are great and crosshatching is the third layer, then any special effects.

Every panel is its own separate file. I do this for two reasons: one, WEBTOON has a panel-minimum policy for its Originals Series, anywhere between 45-60 panels of art each week. Length of episode, amount of dialogue etc is also factored in. I like to do the panels separately to keep track. But I also do them this way to examine the visual impact of each panel by itself, not all of them together in a long strip, which can sometimes make you not consider how each panel of art stands by itself.

The "strips" I mentioned are just that: long thin files that get chopped up into loadable jpgs automatically by WEBTOON's cool uploading program for creators.

Dialogue and effects are done on my bestest frenemy, Adobe Photoshop. Just you wait, Adobe. I've been learning how to letter in ClipStudio behind your back. Soon as I nail it down, you and your 25 dollar a month subscription plan are gone. I will mail you many Taylor Swift breakup songs.

Nah, they're really not, J. They've got everyone else's money.

From there, I load the strips of art into the WEBTOON SupermDoodlemaBob (which I cannot screenshot for you as it is proprietary, sorry). The program chops the art into bite-size bits to easily load on your phone fast, and I go to bed super exhausted after a long, dumb, long week. Then I do again the next week.