When I first started drawing Walk the Fish, I did everything on paper. I’d start with a light pencil drawing, go over it with a darker pencil as I refined the characters and details, then ink the final lines by hand. After that came a lot of erasing, followed by scanning the drawing, cleaning it up digitally, and finally adding the colour.
I now draw Walk the Fish in Procreate on an iPad. By the time I start drawing, I usually have a pretty good idea of what the scene and characters are going to look like. I draw the main elements first, then work through the characters, expressions, backgrounds and smaller details until everything looks right.
From there I create the final line work and add the flat colours, shading and finishing details. There is still plenty of drawing, redrawing and erasing along the way. It’s just a lot easier to undo now.
Even the lettering comes from my own handwriting. I created a custom font from it so the dialogue stays consistent from cartoon to cartoon while still feeling like part of the hand-drawn artwork.
Below are some of my original paper sketches, along with timelapse videos showing how the cartoons come together today.
