Let's begin with the concept. Anecrophilia is Cheiral's story, but the actual character came about years before I decided to make a comic. I rather like the way she came into being, so here's far more detail on the subject than you could possibly want to know.
Way the heck back when, a friend of mine decided she wanted to run a game of a certain famous RPG. Specifically using the dark, horror themed expansion thereof. Having a nice context for it, I decided to play a necromancer. As a change from the norm, my concept was to have someone who got into the necromantic scene due to a desire to become undead. Specifically a lich, or barring that a vampire. This opposed to the usual motivation for becoming a necromancer, the sheer joy of commanding an army of walking corpses to do your bidding. Most of the cosmetic details of Cheiral came about here. Being part demon, the hair and eye color, and of course the name. Specifically, Cheiral's name, along with most proper nouns in Anecrophilia, is the product of a surprisingly versatile random name generator my cousin created.
In any case, the campaign lasted for roughly half of one adventure. I'm rather glad truth be told. This proto-Cheiral was a bit of a jerk really. She hired someone to kill a local vampire the second after it bit her. She was thoroughly grounded in reality, actually using her looks to influence people here and there. The worst part though was that she was actually put off by zombies, and the whole concept of rotting flesh and exposed bone. Again, I'm not a fan of proto-Cheiral.
After this campaign fell apart, the concepts for Anecrophilia started to fall into place, and I began writing it in my mind. This process however was sidelined after a while though, when I revived the RPG character of Cheiral for use in someone else's campaign. THAT campaign was anything but short lived. More importantly, this is where her personality really took shape. Skipping through graveyards, singing cheery songs about the decomposition of corpses, and of course, constantly arguing the morality of Necromancy with just about everyone around. This is also the point at which Blinky entered the mix. Point of fact, this incarnation of Cheiral is essentially the same as can be found in Anecrophilia. The setting, story, and supporting cast of course are completely different, but the character was right here.
Some roleplaying enters into the other characters' origins too, but not nearly as much. The name of Resphee first applied to my attempts at creating the antithesis of my typical character. A slutty human bard. That character was so horrificly unlikable that everyone involved was thrilled to see her die. I pondered basing a character off Ceolf when I felt the urge to play a fighter, but passed in favor of an orcish lumberjack. Cthubert meanwhile would live in the land of the twenty sided die if only I found someone willing to put up with him.
But enough about all that. On to the actual creation process.
I knew how Anecrophilia would end before I even really began. Cheiral's childhood followed shortly thereafter. From there of course, all I had to do was flesh the interim out into something people will find interesting. Thus all 6 issues have been outlined in my mind from day one.
Sitting down to actually get cracking, my process is fairly simple. First, I write out all the dialog and sound effects for a given chapter, occasionally coughing up a scene for the future while I'm at it. Specifically, the pre-title teaser of each issue is already wholely plotted. Then I take my sheet of dialog, and set about providing art to match. Repeat as necessary.
The first step in actually drawing the comic is of course, dividing things into panels. To be quite honest, I usually do this as I go. I take a look at a line, think how big the accompanying visual should be, or if there's more dialog to squeeze into that panel, and get cracking. Shortly thereafter, I have something like this on my screen:
The final version of that frame incidently can be found here. I think this particular moment of time goes pretty darn far to describe how I go about drawing. Debunking any notions you may have had that I draw this sucker on paper and then scan it in, Anecrophilia is created completely on my computer, using the most bare-bones drawing program you'll ever see. Said program in fact wasn't even made to create images with. It's a shareware program called Graphic Converter, whose main purpose is to smoothly change the file format of images. The actual line work is done with the plain old "when the mouse button is down, this pixel turns black" pencil tool, with the occasional circle or line thrown in as a guideline.
In any case, I'll start with a few circles to place everyone's heads. If Resphee is present, I am compelled to fully draw her hat right then, usually finish people's heads up before doing too much else, and struggle for hours trying to shape and proportion limbs properly. Not exactly a method to emulate here. You may also notice that I tend to place speech bubbles strategically to cover up any areas I'm really having trouble with. That's a really bad habit to get into kids. You'll never learn if you don't practice.
Once I can stand looking at everything, which usually happens after everything is fully colored, there's just two little tricks I use to hide the use of my very bare bones tools. I throw the whole thing through a blurring filter and scale it down 50%. Makes the lines look more natural, and brings the file size down for posting on the web. Plus it gives me these original high-detail versions to work with if I want to squeeze money out of people later on.
The last step is the most rewarding for me, although occasionally frustrating. Margin art. I never plan this stuff out ahead, and just draw whatever comes to mind in the spaces between the panels. Billy the Bouncing Backstory Skull just popped into my mind as I stared at the gaps for example. The border art as it is now however is more of a stand-in than anything however. Down the road I intend to fill every single pixel of empty space with distracting imagery.
So there you have it. The creation process of Anecrophilia. I hope you found it at least marginally informative and/or interesting.