The first thing I did was set up my comic website. I chose comicfury, (link: http://cardinaltraits.the-comic.org/comics/first) because I had built an artistic following on the site, and I felt I had been integrated into their community. Later on, I decided to post the comic on Facebook and DeviantArt as well. The above image was a teaser for the upcoming comic, a way to get people interested. Branding is very important, so I came up with a logo for the comic. 

I made sure that I had all of the dialogue and the important plot points planned out. I use Pages documents to organize the story. 

Next comes character designs. I had been playing with them for a while in my head, but I had to get them down on paper. I love the sketchy aesthetic, but I didn’t use it in the comic. This is Naomi Whittaker, the main character. She is sort of an amalgamation of all of the powerful and resilient black women I grew up around. I even named her after my mother. 

This is another character map, but for Mary, Naomi’s art professor. I modeled her after the actress Nicole Ari Parker. I used a more refined manner because I was trying to find my style for the comic.

Next, I created a character page for the comic site so people can get to know the characters a little before the comic. It is important to give the viewer just enough information about the characters to make them interested to know more. Too much and they have no reason to read the comic. 

The next stage involved promotional images. I drew Naomi in multiple different manners. I did everything I could think of from digital paintings to using traditional ink and colored pencil. Naomi has natural, coarse hair, and she likes trying different hairstyles, which was a lot of fun for me.