Lethal Comics :: Come Get Some!

	So, you want to know how a webcomic is made? Eh? Yes? I see that gleam in your eyes... the froth building at the corner of your mouth. I see you out there... you sick twisted pervert you. I bet you're just reading this so you can figure out how to make MegaMan and Roll get it on. Eh? Ehh? Yeah, I know you. But no matter... we shall attempt to school you on the intricacies involved in creating a webcomic. Shall we begin?

The Script	The first step into making the magnificent comic that you so enjoy, is to lay the foundation. The script. And we're serious about our scripts. For both our 9-Bit Theater and Life with Grimmy comics, we bring in the top Hollywood scriptwriters. They toil laboriously for hours on end, making every line... every gag... every comedic masterpiece the best that it can be.

Conceptual Art	The next step in this laborious process is to have our conceptual artists work out the character designs. Action and reaction are very important when working with comedy... and it's no different in comics. Our conceptual artists are some of the best around... we have graphic designers from such prestidious schools as "The California Institute of Art", "The Art Institutes International" and many others. We group our artists into teams, and each team specializes in one of the comics. As you can see, the visual style of the comics is vastly different, and so each team must be intimately familiar with each comic style, and characters. We let them out once a day for fresh air and sunlight... unless they're running behind schedule.

Storyboards	On to the next step, we take both our conceptual drawings, and our scripts to our highly specialized storyboard teams. These are the guys responsible for putting all the panels together in a nice, logical manner, so that they're both asthetically pleasing, and functional in guiding your eye through the flow of the comic. These fine folks take the working script, and a mish mash of all the conceptual art, and make a rough draft of the final comic that you've come to read and love.

Cleanup	We then take these boards to our cleanup artists who ... well they trace. I know they'd tell you it's inking, but they trace over the conceptual art with ink so that clean pictures can then be placed into our super duper mega dollar scanners. Once the line art is done, the picture is then scanned in at 72dpi. Don't let those other comic artists fool you! 300dpi is a waste of precious space, and totally unecissary when working with such high quality line work.

Color and Shading	After the line work is scanned in the computer, the files are then transferred overseas to our affiliates in Europe and Asia, where they are colored and shaded to bring them to vibrant life. Our overseas partners are top notch, and we don't know where we'd be without them. After all of the coloring and shading is done, the new files are then sent back to us for the final stage.

Layout and Final Script	Once we recieve the freshly colored and shaded pictures back, our storyboard teams are called back once again to set up the final layout in the computer, and to implement any script changes that might have occured during the other stages of production. Once all of this is done, we shrink the final image by 50% to allow it to fit into the demensions that are appropriate for the web, and apply copious amounts of compression... our storyboarders tell me they set their jpeg compression at 1 for the smallest possible picture. After saving the jpeg, they then convert it to 256 colors, and save it once again as a gif. At that time, the comic is uploaded to the website, and ready for your enjoyment!

We hope you found this behind the scenes look at how our comics are created, to be both enjoyable, and helpful for your own endeavors! Thanks for reading, and now go enjoy the latest comics.

Your friends,
The LethalDeath.com Staff