How Comics Are Made
howcomicsaremade.com
howcomicsaremade.com
For manga (Japanese comics), they're mostly black and white and serialized in manga magazines that cater to a specific genre (like action or romance) [1], and when there's 12-ish chapters published, those are published as a standalone book (単行本 tankōbon) [2] which goes for ~$5 new (inside Japan). So series are published continuously, with the tankōbon lagging behind a bit. The industry is half digital and half pen-and-ink, with a lot of artists using both for different tasks. Often there's only one writer/artist who may or may not use assistants for backgrounds, shading, etc.
I highly recommend finding some episodes of Naoki Urasawa's [3] Manben [4]. He's a legendary manga artist himself, and in the show he sets up static cameras in another mangaka's workspace for a few days, then both he and the artist watch back the footage and talk about it in a casual interview.
Anime is even more fascinating, because there's so many people involved and it's still so manual / analogue. I'd encourage anyone to scan through this video explaining the timesheet process and the different redraws for every frame [5]. Surprisingly, most anime seems to be animated inside Japan in small offices, whereas most animation in the West seems to be (largely) outsourced to Korea. And not always South Korea [6]!
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_manga_magazines
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank%C5%8Dbon
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naoki_Urasawa
4. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4981726
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr8dR_oPKbU&t=767s
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyongyang:_A_Journey_in_North_...
Won’t even bother with the usual “in case you haven’t heard of” karma farming trope on HN. Just go read the thing, enjoy.