I thought I'd show a bit of my storyboarding process while I'm at it. Let's work our way backwards, starting with the clean-up panels. These are the final versions all inked and shaded.
Now here are the roughs. This is where I begin using the Cintiq, working in the best software in the world, Photoshop. I like to use blue ink and keep it loose. This is mainly to find the composition and staging...while also beginning to explore potential character poses/acting. I try to really solidify the timing and panel count here as well.
Lastly (well actually, firstly), are the thumbnails. I like to keep this super sketchy...at times so much so, it's undecipherable (thanks past self). But I find this part very freeing, it's the time where I can scribble and explore potential ideas in my sketchbook. Though they are often doctor-hand-writing-level scribbly, I try to thumbnail out the entire sequence from start to finish to work out the story as much as possible from the very beginning.
Before all of this, I write out the script/dialogue...usually in my sketchbook, because like thumbnails, there's something untethered about pen and paper rather than the finality I feel from working in the computer. The computer comes when I feel like the boards are in a good place to dive in. The dialogue of course evolves as the drawings evolve, but I like to have a blueprint from the start.
