jephjacques:

[from an email] What brush tool do you use to get your lines so clean?

I googled your comic (HAH YOU THOUGHT YOU WERE BEING SNEAKY BY NOT INCLUDING A LINK) and from what I can tell, you’re drawing it at the same size and resolution it’s being published at! This is a big part of why your lines look all funky. You should be drawing at print resolution- that is, 300dpi or higher- and then shrinking down the art for when you publish the comics online.

The reason for this is twofold- one, drawing bigger will smooth out your lines when you shrink it down, and give you a LOT more room to work with, which will lead to smoother lines and better art. The second reason is you might want to do a printed collection someday, and you’ll need a minimum of 300dpi resolution art to make it look good in a book. The weird pixelation issues you’re having are probably a result of using BPelt on a 72dpi file- it works way, way better on print-resolution artwork.

Personally, each PANEL of my comic starts out as a 5000x2800 300dpi photoshop file. I draw really, really big! This is how big Hannelore’s head is in the original art for the last panel of comic 2129, for example:

Practice is also a key element of line quality- tablets are hard to use, and it takes a while to get really comfortable with them. But if you keep at it, you’ll get better. You can see that even at full-size, my lines aren’t too wobbly- part of that is that I use a Cintiq these days, but most of it is just because I’ve been working digitally for almost 8 years and have developed a steady arm. Also notice that I said steady ARM! When you’re working on a tablet or a Cintiq, you have to use your whole arm to draw, not just your hand and your wrist. It’s more like drawing on a chalkboard than on a sheet of paper- think big, smooth, confident movements, not little, shaky, hesitant ones. Don’t be afraid to redo a line over and over until you get one you’re happy with- as you get better, you’ll find yourself hitting the undo key less.