"Megatokyo" is usually hand-drawn in pencil by Fred Gallagher, without any digital or physical "inking". Inking was originally planned, but dropped as Gallagher decided it was unfeasible. "Megatokyo"'s first strips were created by roughly sketching on large sheets of paper, followed by tracing, scanning, digital clean-up of the traced comics with Adobe Photoshop, and final touches in Adobe Illustrator to achieve a finished product. Gallagher has stated that tracing was necessary because his sketches were not neat enough to use before tracing. Because of the tracing necessary, these comics regularly took six to eight hours to complete. As the comic progressed, Gallagher became able to draw "cleaner" comics without rough lines and tracing lines, and was able to abandon the tracing step. Gallagher believes "that this eventually led to better looking and more expressive comics".