This is a page from a comic I had published by Shanda Fantasy Arts, Called "Control Freaks." The pages are digital composites - I started by drawing small rough page layouts (with a pencil) based on a simple script I had written. Based on the roughs, artwork was then drawn in felt-tip FLAIR marker on 8.5X11 xerox paper, and flatbed scanned into photoshop. I then created a "page" photoshop document at 6X9, at 300dpi, and roughed in the panel shapes using the selection tools. After that I began cropping and pasting the different scans together into the "page" document, arranging them on layers. In some instances, characters and background were drawn on different sheets of paper - this allowed sections of backgrounds to easily be inverted, to create shadow areas. (This is visible in panel one, as an example) Zip-a-tone dot patterns were created in a seperate document, by running photoshop's "color halftone" filter on various greyscale shades and gradients with all four colors set to 45-degrees. These were then imported and trimmed to size thu the use of selection tools, and matted in multiply mode. Towards the end, text was laid out using some wonderful free comic fonts courtesy of www.blambot.com - (I used "edible Pet 2" mostly) Word baloons were created, (colored a 75% grey to make them visible aginst the white page)thru use of oval-selections, with triangular selections being created with the lasso-tool for the voicetails. The balloons were then filled with white, and given a 5pt black stroke as an outline. This all sounds a bit cumbersome, but allowed me to work at my own size, rather than try to fit everything into the standard 10X15 area "real" comics are drawn in, and allowed me to re-draw different characters and bits of scenery if I didn't think I had done a decent enough job on them the first time. It also allowed for me to use cheapie tools and materials, while still outputting a professional-quality final print. (prints were run out on my HP inkjet to matte-quality photo-paper) The end result? A project that would normally take me seven days was completed in two and a half, and looked a lot better than it would have if I tried doing it the "right" way. It also got pubished (in a kid's comic book called Magic Carpet.) Just something to keep in mind next time someone tells you there's only one "right" way to do things.