This tutorial doesn't really teach you how to draw. It's kind of just like the process I go through when I make a page. I use Adobe Photoshop and a tablet, so I dunno if this tutorial makes sense for everyone.
Step 1) Open up your sketch and crop it to the size you work with. (I prefer big canvases, so I work at 6x9 in at 300dpi). Then duplicate the background layer (which is the layer that the sketch is currently on) and clear the background layer.
Then make a bunch of new layers (Ctrl+Shift+N) My layer order, starting from bottom to top is: Background, background copy, fix, bg, solids, shading, lighting (I forgot that in the screenshot), highlights, outline, frames, speech bubbles, thought bubbles (if any) and text.
(<-- Click the picture to enlarge.)
Step 2) Frames Go to the frames layer and use the line tool and rectange tool to outline the panels in the page. Usually, color comics use black outline on black bg for frames, but in black and white comics they tend to use black outline and white background for the panels. (Click to Enlarge -->)
Step 3) Fix If your sketches are really clean and neat, then you don't have to this. But since my sketches are always scratchy and messy, I have to fix it. xD Flip your canvas horizontal (Image -> Rotate Canvas -> Flip Canvas Horizontal) and fix anything that seems off on the fix layer. I have a habit of using red, but anything works. (Again, Click to enlarge the screenshots)
Step 4) Outline your sketch. Go to the outline layer and use the brush tool to outline the picture. Zoom in until you can make nice lines that aren't wobbly. I like to use a 3-pixel brush at 200% zoom, but choose a brush size that makes nice lines on your canvas. Lines that are too fat will make it look too 2-D. If you use a tablet, set your Brushes settings to shape dynamics only. You can also use line weights if you're not lazy. Outline details with a smaller size brush, and outline the outside of a person with a bigger brush. You can see I kind of got lazy with the line weights in panels 2,3 and 4 in the next screenshot. Try to keep your lines clean without holes in them, if possible.
Step 5) Solids After the page is inked, it's time to fill in the solids. Go to the solids layer and set Tolerance to around 25 and make sure the Contiguous and All Layers options are checked. Hide the background copy (sketch) layer by clicking on the eye. I keep all my colors for my characters on a palette file, so my characters don't keep changing skintones every single page.
Now take the paint bucket and fill in the lines. (This is when clean inking comes in handy). Fill in all the big spaces with paint bucket. If there's a hole somewhere, find it and fix it.
Things like the eyes, tips of hair and other small accessories sometimes can't be filled in with the paint bucket, so zoom in and touch them up with the brush tool.
After the touching up, it should look something like this:
Step 6) Shading After the solids are all done, the next part is the cell-shading. Go to the shading layer and set it to multipy mode. Next choose a color to do the cell-shade in. I hope a light tan-ish color for this page, but it oftentimes depends on the lighting. (For example, during nightime, a light-blue would work better than a tan.) Zoom in and use the brush tool and paint the places where you want shaded. Here's a different ttutorial just on cell-shading that may help. I also use the smudge tool sometimes to soften the shading on places like the hair.
This is how my page looked like after I'd finished shading over all the solids.
Step 7) Lighting. Set the mood/time with the lighting of the picture. First, go to the frames layer and select a frame with the magic wand tool. Make sure that the All Layers option is NOT CHECKED.
After you've chosen the frame that needs to be lit, go to the lighting layer. (If you haven't made one yet, go make one) and then either use the gradient or the paint bucket tool. So like, if you were making it night-time, you'd just color it dark purple-ish. If it were a sunset, you'd fill it with a yellow-red gradient, etc. Play with the layer mode and opacity until you like it.
Repeat these steps for all the frames that need to be lit.
Step 8) Highlights - Add highlights to the hair and other places, etc. Set the highlight layer to overlay mode (or screen, whatever you like). Then zoom in and take a white brush to go over places that need highlights. (Sorry, lost screenshot for this step xD)
Step 9) Text - Add words to the comic using the text tool (looks like a T). Pretty self-explanatory... Some typical comic fonts are anime ace, digital strip, manga temple...etc. Please do not use 12 pt Times New Roman font on your comics. :[ Some places to download free fonts are DaFont or Blambiot.
Step 10) Speech Bubbles - go to the speech bubbles layer and use the circle tool and make white circles under the text. Some people also prefer to draw their own speech bubbles to make it look less round. You can also do that. I'm lazy. Not all speech bubbles are circular. Screaming is often jagged-er and narration is often done in rectangles. And really happy-bubbly people speech with poofy speech bubbles. Black speech bubbles with white text are sometimes used to create a dramatic effect, or evil-people-speaking effect or insert-some-other effect..
Apply the Stroke effect to outline the speech bubbles. Black outline for white speech bubbles and white outline for black speech bubbles. Some comic authors like to put every character in a different color speech bubble outline color. And after all the circles are done, go back and give every circle a speaker using the brush tool.
For thought bubbles, just do the same steps for speech bubbles, only set the opacity of the layer lower (probably somewhere around 60%) is good.
Step 11) Background - Paint a background with the brush tool on the bg layer. Set the brush properties (if you've a tablet) to pen pressure for both shape dynamics and other dynamics. Another method is to just paint a background on a different file and then copy and paste it for the pages.
Optional Blur - Sometimes you can blur the background a bit, to put more focus on the foreground. Or blur the foreground to put more emphasis on the background. Go to Filter -> Blur -> Gausian Blur for an out of focus look. For action panels, Motion Blur, would be more approapriate. I applied a little bit of Gaussian blur on the background classmates.
Then you're basically done. :) This is what the page looked like after I finished the background and played around a bit more. Wheee~ Color Explosion!
