The Creation Process

My process to create a comic page...
Step 1: Write the dialog for the page as well as note any important actions in the scene.
-When I get stuck or am having difficulty coming up with dialog, I will sometimes list out the purpose of the page, what I am trying to convey to the reader, and if I'm still stuck I'll write out a brief summary of what happens in each panel. I haven't needed any other techniques in case the other two don't work....yet.
Step 2: Set up the panels, loose sketches to determine placement, posture, etc.
Step 3: Draw the rough draft.
-Although step 2 and 3 are generally done simultaneously, there are times I am forced to separate the two. This process is usually about +6 hours for each page, though that's probably a minimum that I've only begun to achieve in the last page or so as I become more familiar with my characters and the process.
-I had tried to combine steps 3 and 4 but I draw too darkly for that to ever work. I also tried to cut corners by printing out the page with the panels preprinted on them so all I'd have to do was draw what was IN the panels (When I still tried to use the "gutters" I'd waste 20 minutes or so with a ruler trying to get the panels straight). Well, turns out my printer prints the panels at slight angle on the page. Not a big deal you'd think, what's an 1/8 of an inch away from being straight on the page? Wait until step 5 and I'll tell you.
Step 4: Ink the draft
-I'll tape tracing paper over the "finished" rough draft and trace over the pencil lines with archival ink. I generally use a number 05 (.45mm) or 03 (.35mm) pen for normal lines while I use the finer number 01 ( .25mm) pen. I used to use a number 08 (.50mm) pen for the panel outlines, but I've all but eliminated that from the actual inking. I generally end up using a bit of white out to fix lines I mess up.
-This is the step where I do the most experimenting; trying different types of tracing paper, size pens, or lines to see that will save me the most time in the cleaning step. Some of them work well, the biggest one being the fact that I'm only marking the end points of the panel boxes and just adding the lines on the computer, while others not so much. The biggest failure was when I tried to use the lighter tracing paper and it wasn't ridged enough and the edges curled up on me. Enormous pain in my --- to continue inking on, took forever and the ink smeared. Nightmare to clean.
Step 5: Scanning the inked copy
-Pretty self explanatory no? Well not with my scanner (ScanJet 3300C). The edges of the scanning area are curved. It's impossible to get something perfectly 100% straight in there. So when you're page is scanned your lines are converted into pixels and these little square boxes don't do smooth angled lines well, not until you start playing with resolution and compression and that doesn't fix it, just makes it less noticeable. So when you take something that is already crooked and make it more crooked....it becomes a mess. Took some trimming and tweaking of the physical page to fix that problem...for both the first and second pages (I didn't notice until the second page that the main problem was with the panels being crooked to begin with).
-My scanner also tends to merge lines that are too close together into a mass of black pixels, so that's where the cleaning comes in.
-I scan my pages on the "black and white or text" option at a resolution of 150 DPI.
Step 6: Cleaning
-I use Paint to clean up my comic pages because GIMP and Macromedia Fireworks aren't the most user friendly programs when manipulating simple black and white pictures. If I ever moved into color however....that would be a completely different story. I could get around the pixel problem with Macromedia Fireworks but I have very little experience with and knowledge of that program (other than a few "make-my-picture-look-cool" buttons). GIMP I have even less experience with since I only recently acquired it.
-I probably spent 2-3 hours on the first two comics and then the number spiked to 5-6 hours for middle two comics. These last two comics have dropped back down to 2-4 hours cleaning. It all depends on how OCD I am about minor flaws or how much my scanner screws up the page.
-I make two save files during this process, the original uncleaned file (00#) and the cleaned version of the file (00#a).
-After the page is cleaned I compress the cleaned version to a size viewable for the web which is about 640 by 480 (pixels? I have no idea what that's measured in).
Step 7: Adding dialog (and sound effects)
-Word art is amazing for sound effects. WHAT?! It's simple but it works.
-I use GIMP to figure out the word spacing and where I need to 'hit enter' so the dialog will fit in the panel. Also I like the text options better in GIMP than the other programs. After I figured out the specifics I save the text lines in a blank file (usually called 'text' or something) and I import it into paint. ^^ I abhor Paint's text feature, but creating text bubbles and placing them is still easier in paint than the other programs, so that's how I do it.
-This is when I create my final save file (00#b) and send a copy of the finished page to my "Fortune Faded" folder where I can rename it to uploaded.
Step 8: Uploading the finished page
-This is the step that involves the most swearing cause it always takes about 10 minutes to log into my account to upload my comic. The password and account name are both case sensitive, and when you have as many variations on Dark_Sky13 (my normal user name) as I do, it takes a while. I am getting faster now, it was mostly the fact that I'm not used to the underscore "_" being absent between the two words.
-There is a method to use FTP to update my comic manually but the tutorials are not the clearest on how to do that so I tend to avoid that method so I don't screw up anything.