Digital Comics Creation

There are several methods of digital comics creation. One is the use of a pressure sensitive graphics tablet and a computer graphics program. Panels are drawn using the pressure sensitive stylus, handled in much the same way as a pencil or pen, but the lines are drawn in the image editing software, producing a digital file.

Other approaches include drawing in vector graphics applications, with or without a tablet, allowing for the manipulation and revision of lines after they are drawn, and the use of 3-D computer graphics applications to create characters and backgrounds. Some digital comics include various combinations of these techniques.

The first digital comic was Shatter, written by Peter Gillis and illustrated on the computer by Mike Saenz. Shatter appeared simultaneously as a one-shot special and as a backup feature in First Comics' Jon Sable title in 1985. It was published in its own 14 issue series from 1985-1986. Shatter was serialised in the British computer magazine Big K from the March 1985 issue.

Shatter was initially drawn on a first-generation Mac using a mouse and printed on a dot-matrix printer. It was then photographed like a piece of traditionally drawn black and white comic art, and the color separations were applied in the traditional manner.

Shatter artist Mike Saenz went on to create Iron Man: Crash, the first digital graphic novel in 1988.

Batman: Digital Justice was published by DC Comics in 1990, and introduced a more sophisticated blend of computer graphics techniques.

The Black Diamond Effect was created and started publishing by George Peter Gatsis in 1990, incorporating all the 3-D rendering and 2-D techniques of that time to mimic an animation still.

Mike Saenz and Norm Dwyer created Donna Matrix, the first digital graphic novel utilizing 3-D rendering, in 1993.

Other comics began to appear, both on CD-ROM and in printed form, that utilized computer graphics to manipulate or add to traditionally drawn comic art, and more all-digital comics were published as improvements in software and computing power made this art form more practical.

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