How to draw a comic layout tutorial

For all those wanting to know how to draw a comic layout, here is how I do it.  I am a professional comic book artist with years of experience.  Check it out to see how I layout an X-men page.  Plenty of trade secrets from greats like David Mazzucchelli and the like.  This is Part 1 of a video tutorial explaining my process of drawing comics.  Here I cover thumbnails and layouts.  Next will be roughs and finished pencils. Bonus points to anyone who can identify the opening music.

Uncanny X-Men #500 comic page 18

Uncanny X-Men comic page 18 pencils by Lee Oaks script by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction
This is Wolverine's page.  Wolverine is always cool to draw.  I tried to give it a slightly unique spin in the way I did his eyes.  Here I used a technique for shading in the bricks black with white joints.  I know Ed Brubaker is not a fan of the outer white lines but I like how it looks.

Uncanny X-Men comic page 19 pencils by Lee Oaks script by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction

X-Men comic page 19 pencils by Lee Oaks script by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction.
This is Colossus' page.  Colossus is fun too because of the reflective surface.  The X-men are just cool all around.  I also enjoying drawing cars.  I'm not a car guy, but it is fun drawing them.  Their beauty is more visible when simplified in a drawing.  I used to love drawing cars from how to draw car books.

X-Men comic page 20 pencils by Lee Oaks script by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction

X-Men comic page 20 pencils by Lee Oaks script by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction.
Drawing Nightcrawler's Bamf is as fun as it looks.  I thought it would be more challenging to draw cyclops, but it went smothly.  Magneto not so much.  Beast took a little getting into also.

X-Men comic page 21 pencils

X-Men comic page 21pencils by Lee Oaks script by Ed Brubaker and Matt Fraction.
Drawing Storm is always a pleasure.  Her eyes light up everything. I wanted cyclop's blast to have this certain effect on Magneto's magnetic field, but it will make more sense with color.

X-Men comic page 22 pencils

X-Men comic page 22 pencils that I'll be using for an upcoming tutorial.
It took me awhile to get Angel's pose.  I didn't want it to be a pose that you see all the time but when I got too original it didn't hold as well...  The White Queen came out of my pencil in one stroke.

Saturnist page 9 pencils

Saturnist #1 Page 9 script by Mike Baron pencils by Lee Oaks.

ESCAPE FROM TERRA Vol.2 Release Signing Mile High Denver

So it looks like Scott Bieser and I will be doing a signing for the biggest comic book store in the world, Mile High Comics (Jason Street Mega-store) in Denver!  I grew up in a rural place that didn't have comic book stores.  But in the books I read I remember seeing the ads for Mile High Comics.  Little did I know it was only like a 3 hour drive away from where I lived!  Since then Mile High has become a ginormous warehouse of comics making it the biggest in the world.  I have shopped at BD world in Belgium (and still do when I'm there) the previous largest store and now live not far from Mile High.  The last two guests at Mile High were Jim Shooter and Chris Claremont, so we're pretty excited to be a part of it.

Hope to see you there.  I will have sketches.
Saturday March 17 10am-3pm