Creating Comics!

brush is really outstanding. I looked at and drew a lot of plants

while working on the design for these infections. From the top

left to the bottom right there’s a black diagonal line; I did this

on purpose to create some forward energy for the page. Com-

pare this to the other page and its relatively stagnant layout.

The black line also was a good reason for letting me black in

the panel borders for the middle panel on the middle tier. This

helps the balance and I also did it because it’s an important

and creepy panel. I also like to have a little bit of grounding in

my comics; I look at clothes catalogs to choose what my char-

acters wear (this page is kind of a silly example of that because

there aren’t much clothes to speak of). On this page Amelia is

wearing a bra from Free People. I chose it partially because

the flowers would connect visually with The Mustache Man’s

flowery chest infection.

I use a brush for my people, and a nib for words, back-

ground, and panel borders. In this page I filled in the solid

black with an old brush, and then cleaned it up in Photoshop.

Title: Amelia, chapter 5 p. 3, 2008

Media: Ink on paper, Photoshop

Title: Amelia, chapter 7 p. 12, 2009

Media: Ink on paper, Photoshop

Creative Process

This page is part of a dream sequence where Amelia, my main

character, is attacked by a “Nosferatu”-type character and then

sees in the dark that she is being watched. It mirrors events

that happened earlier in the story, but also references the 1922

F.W. Murnau Nosferatu (which is one of my favorite movies).

So I used stills from that movie as a visual reference while

choosing my panel composition, especially the second panel. I

have a character in the story whose appearance is styled after

Nosferatu, so by keeping this character in heavy shadow I’m

counting on the reader to assume that’s the vampire in the

dream sequence until it’s revealed in the next page that it isn’t.

Normally, a white outline would be thrown around Amelia’s hair

to distinguish her from the background, but I decided not to do

that to add more to the dark feeling of this page, like Amelia is

being engulfed in it.

I used a G nib for all the line work on this page, spending a

lot of time crosshatching. After inking I scanned the page into

Photoshop and filled in the large areas of black on that. Some-

times I’ll do that by hand, depending on the page. For this page

I used the computer to fill in the black, saving me a lot of time.

In the next page Amelia is being attacked by the Mustache

Man, as blood drops from his evil chest flower (for that to make

any more sense you’d have to read the book), touching her

infections, causing an unexpected reaction. I wanted a very

fleshy, organic look to the characters and the things growing

from them, so I inked all the people with a brush—a Rosemary

& Co kolinsky sable series 33 #2 pointed brush. I order them on-

line from England. The line quality and variety I can get with this

D

enis St. John graduated from the Center for

Cartoon Studies in 2008. Since then, he has lived

in Vermont as part of a large and unique comics

community that is centered on the school. St. John has been

self-publishing his series, Monsters & Girls, since 2007, and

is currently serializing his first graphic novel, Amelia. He is

a frequent contributor to independent anthologies, includ-

ing Funny Aminals, Dark Corners, the first two Sundays, and

more. St. John has also taught comic book classes in high

school and middle schools in Vermont.

Denis St. John

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