The first step is to take the loose script made up of dialogue and the odd stage direction and turn it into thumbnails. I know folks who draw tight thumbnail layouts at A5 or even A4, then transfer them via lightbox onto the finished page. Personally I prefer mine to be tiny rough guides, rather than effectively pencilling the page twice. These days I do my thumbnails at A6, dividing an A4 sheet into quarters. At this stage I'm not concerned so much about panel arrangement and angles, as this is mainly to get a rough idea of the characters' positions and where the dialogue will go. For more complex panel layouts I often sketch a little grid in the corner, to get an overview of the page composition.
When it comes to pencilling, I've used the same 0.5 HB propelling Pentel pencil since Frontiers, although it's looking a bit battered now. For paper, I prefer stock smooth enough to take brush lines without blotting, while thick enough not to curl up like tracing paper. Lately I've been using these A3 pads from Ryman's, which have that near perfect balance. I first rule out a 10 x 15 inch box, then add the panel borders. Pre-lined paper strikes me as an unecessary expense considering this only takes about 5 minutes, plus in the case of my recent work, I end up rubbing out the borders anyway.
As you can see, I don't stick too closely to the thumbnails, repositioning figures and changing angles as I go. On some panels I lay out a few rough outlines until I find an arrangement that works best. I can at times be a hideously loose and messy penciller. I remember laughing at John Buscema's How To Draw Comics method of scribbling out a drawing until you pick out the right lines, thinking nobody actually draws like that. But that's pretty much how I pencil my own work for the sake of expediency, barely troubling my Staedtler Mars Eraser. It would be nice to be a more natural artist who can pencil a precise line without preparation, but I struggle to visualise an exact image until I've roughed it out. Thankfully there wasn't anything too tricky on this page, aside from the perspective and legs on panel 6, the latter which I redrew several times but still couldn't get quite right.
I'm one of those rare nutjobs who actually quite enjoys inking, probably because I leave myself a fair bit of drawing still to add from my sketchy pencils. These days most of my foreground figures are inked with my beloved Pentel brush pen. Some people don't like brush pens for the thickness of the line or the lack of tactile feeling, but ignore them, they're idiots. To be fair, before I switched to brush I always used to go over and thicken up my curves anyway, so the brush pen is a great time saver. For the more mechanical lines which usually comprise the backgrounds, I use Berol Fine pens. The rounded nib wears down quickly, so I keep two on the go, one fresh for the finer lines, and one knackered for filling in big chunky lines. I rarely use a ruler for anything other than panel borders, as I've got a steady enough hand and prefer a slight and more natural curvature to all my lines. The other tool in my arsenal/pen case is a Sharpie for broad strokes and filling in blacks. As you may have spotted, to save on ink I leave much of those areas to the final stage...
Photoshopping. After cleaning up the scan with some preset Actions, I select the remaining black areas with the Magic Wand and then Fill with black. To get that trimmed borderless look, I drag guides over the gutters, then using the Marquee tool select all the panels. I then Inverse the selection and press Delete to clear all the border edges. If I actually want borders, I first contract the selection by 8 pixels or so, fill with black, then clear the inverse. All that's left is to use the Eraser tool to correct any mistakes and scanner fluff. At this stage I may add some toner brushes on a seperate layer, but I'm wary of going overboard and using greytones or filters as a crutch. Must do something about that dodgy moon though...
The page is all finished then until it gets imported into Illustrator that is. If you wanna know what happens next, refer to my Lettering guide.