Every commission still starts as a pencil layout, not a file. It’s slower than composing directly in illustration software, and we’ve been asked more than once why we haven’t switched.
The honest answer is that hand composition forces decisions about hierarchy — what gets drawn heavy, what gets left thin, what gets left out entirely — that are too easy to defer indefinitely in a digital tool where everything can be layered and toggled later. A pencil layout has to commit.