swordscomic

Behind the Scenes ~ Grapes and Beans

Added 2025-02-15 01:24:08 +0000 UTC

Here's a piece by piece breakdown of how I draw ordinary episodes.

Swords and Stars are both drawn on a Surface Pro 8, using the default brush tool on its default 10 pt setting in MediBang Studio, a free piece of software.

Shading is done on a 50% transparent layer set to 'Multiply' - usually in some shade of blue or purple.

I reuse the same frame in every episode, so I'm not spending a lot of time setting things up beforehand. Because each episode is something of a Ship of Theseus, reusing the frame from last time, the Layer count is now in the high 10,000s - but an average episode is about a dozen layers.

In terms of productivity, I'm usually doing most of the work between 8pm and midnight, where there is less going on in my life. I do all the cooking, cleaning, shopping, etc etc so its the longest chunk of time available throughout my day. The place I've been living in for the last few years is a bit more loud and chaotic at night being in the middle of the city, which has definitely impacted my schedule. I'm trying to be mindful about my health too and not push too hard to get things done on an arbitrary deadline, even if the fans get grumpy about it a lot.

I don't have a specific work playlist, but usually I find one high energy song and play it on a loop until I suck all the joy out of it; so you can thank Dance the Night from the Barbie Movie and Spin the Wheel from Arcane for carrying me through a lot of episodes lately.

I believe the most episodes of Swords I've made in one day is 3. I just broke my Stars record last week by drawing 5. I'm going to a wedding this week, so I won't be posting Stars daily during that period, but I will pick it up again afterwards, at least until the end of February.