How Astounding Space Thrills: The Daily Adventures is created.

How Astounding Space Thrills: The Daily Adventures is created.

STEP 1: ORIGINAL ART

Each episode of Astounding Space Thrills starts out as a ballpoint pen illustration on standard white photocopy paper. The original ballpoint art for episode 262 can be seen below.

STEP 2: LINEWORK

A scan of the ballpoint illustration is brought into the drawing program, FreeHand 5.5 (Macromedia's FreeHand program is now up to version 8 - I prefer the speed and interface of 5.5 and continue to use the 4-year old program, having purchased and very much disliked the the later upgrades of the software). Using that scan as a starting point, I redraw the image using a mouse. I've tried using tablets and don't find them as precise as I'd like. The final linework is below.

STEP 3: COLOR

Once the linework is complete, the FreeHand document is exported as an EPS file and imported into Adobe Photoshop. In Photoshop, the colors are applied to separate layers, giving me precise control over the opacity and colors of each layer. The color art is created at a much higher resolution than what you see online so that the art can be collected in print format later.

STEP 4: LETTERING, ANIMATION

All lettering and animation (if any) is done is Adobe ImageReady. I find the text for the word balloons is sharper when produced in ImageReady vs. Photoshop. Some sound effects may be done during step 3 if they require some of Photoshop's specific tools. The final file is exported as a GIF with an effort to keep the file size as small as possible (usually 40 to 45k).

Below is the final comic strip.