How I Make My Cartoons

I don’t think many ancient historical fiction authors draw… cartoons. So I said, why not?

You’ll see some of my cartoons in Wait, what? which is a series of light hearted myth-busting articles also available as a book. While they’re quite terrible, there is a systematic process that goes into creating each one. No AI was involved in the making of these—just a lot of digital “ink” and a bit of historical irony.

1. The Initial Spark: Paper and Pencil

Every cartoon begins away from a computer screen with a simple sheet of paper and a pencil. I sketch out the characters, the speech bubbles, and the basic layout. It’s messy, it’s raw, and it’s the most important part of the process because it focuses on the joke and the composition without getting bogged down in technical details.

2. Building the Foundation: Affinity Vectors

Once I’m happy with a sketch, I move to Affinity Designer. I don’t just draw the cartoon; I build it using vectors. Over time, I’ve developed a comprehensive shape library. This library contains reusable components: different sets of eyes, mouths, hands, and even historical costumes like Roman Lorica Segmentata or Egyptian Pectorals.

Using vectors allows me to scale everything without losing quality and makes it easy to “pose” characters by adjusting their vector points.

3. The Assembly Line: Affinity Publisher

For the final production, I use Affinity Publisher. I have a master layout set up with consistent margins, branding (like the “JNN” news logo), and typography. Each new cartoon is a new page in this document.

I drag and drop shapes from my library, tweak them as needed, or create entirely new ones if the scene requires something unique (like a specific ancient artifact or a particular hairstyle or a new character).

4. The Result

The goal isn’t “perfect” art—it’s storytelling with a wink. Here is one, showing Caesar’s “fake news” spin on the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria.

If you enjoyed this, you can see more of my cartoons over at the Wait, What? Cartoons page.

Whether it’s debunking myths about Cleopatra or poking fun at Roman emperors, these cartoons are my way of making history just a little more accessible (and a lot more ridiculous).