I’m always hearing about how few cartoonists still draw their cartoons completely by hand, so I was wondering what software they use. For some reason it’s really curious to me how they do it, so I want to delve into it a little. I’m speaking strictly of comic strip cartoons.
I think most comic strips are still drawn completely by hand. IIRC There are some successful cartoonists that use assistants/slaves to do the final inking and lettering, but other than possibly doing color separation scans or greyscaling before emailing the strip to the publisher I think most stuff is still hand done. There are some cartoonists that use computers to do backgrounds and add picture elements in with Photoshop (Zippy the Pinhead?) , but I think this is the exception in most newspaper comic strips, not the rule.
Well, Dr. Fun uses Photoshop™ and a Pen tablet. (Look a little over halfway down.)
But that’s an Internet cartoon. Newspaper cartoons have to be very simple. No complex gray scale in the daily strip. Limited colors in the Sunday strip. And as little artistic detail as possible. “Pogo” was considered too detailed, esp. after papers started to shrink their strips.
Well, Dr. Fun uses Photoshop™ and a Pen tablet. (Look a little over halfway down.)
But that’s an Internet cartoon. Newspaper cartoons have to be very simple. No complex gray scale in the daily strip. Limited colors in the Sunday strip. And as little artistic detail as possible. “Pogo” was considered too detailed, esp. after papers started to shrink their strips.
Where computers are begin used is in the coloring of strips. It’s become much easier for cartoonists to scan a drawn picture into the computer and dump color that way. Some newspapers are even running color strips in the daily pages.
“Ozy and Millie” is an internet strip I particularly like, and is, IMO, better drawn than the vast majority either in the paper or on the net (not to mention often being genuinely funny). David Simpson says this about drawing media in his FAQ:
He also has a page on his process, with one strip as an example:
http://www.ozyandmillie.net/process.html
This seems to be in keeping with a lot of comic strip artists - they tend to be rather particular about their tools and techniques, and the computer is still not a medium that lends itself to freehand drawing. Note Simpson pointing out that it took him “years of practice” to get any good at his ink and brush technique. By this time, his fine control over that particular tool is undoubtedly so exacting that it would be VERY difficult to come up with any digital drawing medium that would satisfy him.
I’ll wager that almost all strips, particularly good ones, are still hand drawn. Some artists may post process or colorize them after scanning them as has been suggested.
I have a friend who draws a nationally syndicated comic strip. He uses a stiff stock paper that absorbs ink nicely. He starts with the paper, roughs the ideas lightly in pencil, and then inks over the pencil. Then he has them delivered to the syndicate. The originals are much bigger than in the news papers, I’d estimate 4 inches high and a foot long. He does all of his own art, nobody else is allowed to do anything.
Actually, the truth is that styles vary just as much as the comic strips themselves.
Watterson used brushes and technical pens on bristol board (card stock). Breathed used brushes and felt-tips early on, over pencil sketches. Sergio Aragones uses a selection of Magic Markers on blank paper, no pencil at all.
Breathed used to get lots of mileage out of a copier- he’d copy three or four panels of, say, a headless character, and just redraw the head and fill in the dialogue. He’d also use the copier to insert high-contrast photos of celebrities’ heads and such. 
As far as internet comics like “Ozy and Millie” go, again, styles vary VERY widely. I know of one artist who pencil-sketches the rough drawing, scans it, and “inks” it using a WACOM tablet and stylus. Paintshop and Photoshop are used widely to “flood fill” colors and shading- the guy with the WACOM uses Win3.1-era lettering software.
Several artists pencil in the rough work with a light blue lead in a mechancial pencil, and ink directly over that without bothering to erase- the scanner won’t pick up the light blue when set on B&W scan.
There’s one strip where the artist has scanned copies of shaded areas he did in pen and scanned. When shading a strip, he cut-and-pastes from this shade stock, and it gives the look of having been pencilled in by hand. It’s quite good.
Speaking personally, for my work, I sketch the art into pre-photocopied panels, using a plain .5mm mechanical pencil. When I’m fairly happy with it (it ain’t high art) I ink it with a .3mm Micron felt-tip pen (commercial, right out of the Office Supply lane at K-Mart, $2.50) or sometimes an old Paper Mate felt-tip if I want a heavier line in places.
I’ll then erase the pencil, plunk it on the scanner and scan it at about 150 dpi and moderate contrast. Export the scan .TIF to Paintshop, convert it to B&W, jack up the contrast, add shading or tones with the “flood fill” tool, and in some cases, I’ll cut-and-paste sections. For example, I might draw the complete character in the first panel, but only the head in the second. I’ll copy the body from the first and paste it in the second.
The resize it to the finished strip size, tack on the signature (a premade graphic) and save it as a .jpg for posting. A buddy of mine cooked up a clever little SQL applet that updates the strip for me, so I just upload to the right file and forget about it. 
Just a note to mention there is one web comic I am aware of that is not hand drawn at all: Real Life, by Greg Dean.
He uses Adobe Illustrator, and has a page on his site where he explains how he uses the program to create his comics: http://www.reallifecomics.com/stuff_howto.html
Correcting a bad link in my original post. Sorry about that.
Folks I know who cartoon professionally (although I haven’t talked with them in years) aren’t technical enough – or don’t care enough about technology – to use software.
Somebody who’s good is going to be pretty fast with a pencil / pen. There’s plenty of art that’s SLOWER on a computer, because it’s harder to control.
The recent manual for “Poser” from Curious Labs tries to convince readers there’s comic book potential by inserting a running comic story. It isn’t particularly compelling. I’ve just started using Poser because I have trouble with unusual body attitudes. But I’m not using it for cartoons, and at this point I haven’t tried to make the leap of selling graphic art professionally.
I cartooned years ago in high school and college. If I could avoid computer software for cartooning except for coloring, shading and lettering, now, I would.