Ron Kaulfersch and Mike Schwark are the team behind Pseudome Studio LLC, creators of Van Von Hunter. Recently, they took some time out from their manga deadlines to let Manga Online readers know how they create the artwork for Van Von Hunter. Here's the procedure, in Ron's own words:

1. First, Mike does the layout for a given page in the form of a really sketchy thumbnail.

   

2. Next, I take an 11x17 sheet of Bristol and rule off the 2x dimensions for a Tokyopop book. I put in the "Live Area", the "Trim" and the "Bleed".
3. Then I give the page to Mike, and he pencils in the finalized page.

   

4. He then gives it back to me, and I ink it. I just use 005 and 02 Microns. Yes, I know you're supposed to use a brush pen so that way you can get your line variation in one stroke. But I'm not that skilled yet.
5. I make a point at the corners of each panel. I also mark off the corners of the outer-most bleed area.
6. Once a page has been inked, I go over it with a kneaded eraser to remove excess pencil. Technically, I'd do better to use those crumbly erasers. But I hate the mess they make.
7. I then scan the page on an 11x17 scanner. I scan the images at 600 DPI, 8-bit.
8. Once scanned in, I open the file in Photoshop, and crop the image. I also use the "Levels" tool to get rid of the last little bit of stray pencil markings, and to solidify the line work. Note: you can't use the "Levels" tool unless the file is at least 8-bit.

   

9. I then open the file in Paint Shop Pro. There, I convert the file to 1-bit.
10. This is also where I add in the panel borders. Remember those dots that I put at the corner of every panel? I use those as guides for the line tool. Technically, they're not perfectly perpendicular. So I just use one edge to start off with, and keep the line tool perfectly parallel and perpendicular from there on out.

    

11. The bordering process is quick, but a little sloppy. So I take the "Shapes" tool, make sure it's set to white, and then tidy up the borders.
12. After that, I switch to the paint bucket, change the color to black, and start flood-filling the areas that need to be black (unlike Photoshop, you don't need to use the selection tool to flood fill in Paint Shop Pro).
13. Finally, I open the file in Photoshop one last time, make sure it's set to 1-bit, and save a copy as a 1-bit bitmap file.
14. Next, I open up Comic Studio (which will be called Manga Studio when it's released in the US). I create a new "page" and make sure it's max dimensions match the bleed dimension of TOKYOPOP's books. I also set the file to 600 dpi.

    

15. Then, I import an image file...namely, the page I just processed in Photoshop/PSP.

    

16. When the "Import Image" dialog box appears, I uncheck the "White transparent" checkbox and hit okay.

    

17. Next, I add in the text and word balloons. I do this first so I know if there are going to be any large areas covered over by word balloons...No sense in wasting time toning something that's going to be covered up.
18. I click the Text tool, click the general area where I want the text to be, and start typing.

    

19. Once you have the text you want, add a word balloon. To do this, click the following menus: Layer -> Add Text Box.
20. From here, choose whatever style of word balloon you want, change the line thickness, add a tail, etc.

    

21. Finally, once you have all your word balloons, you can start toning.
22. I tend to use only three values of gray. As such, I know what objects will have what values ahead of time. So, I just use the selection tool and select all the areas that I know will share the same gray value.
23. Once I've selected all the areas, I go to the tone browser and drag and drop the appropriate tone value onto the page. All the selected areas will automatically fill in.

    

24. After that, I'll go back to more complicated areas (like shadows on the face, arms, etc.) and use the Magic Marker tool to draw in the tone shapes I want, add speeds lines, gradients, and the like.

    

25. Once I'm done, I output the file as a layered PSD Photoshop file.