Things aren’t going as well as I’d like. It’s not awful but it’s not good.
On Tuesday I got to work making my pages as instructed. I then read through my script and started figuring out the panel layouts. It was surprisingly hard. Thankfully I’d recently ordered a large collection of “Tales from the Crypt” to take inspiration from. I noticed EC’s comics tended to use a three-by-three layout as opposed to the three-by-two layout James suggested. Given I had a lot of story the more panels the better right? Well yes and no. More panels gives you more frames to put story and images into, but it gives you less space to but them in, and drawing small is hard. And you need more space for text, and counter intuitively the more story have the more panels you need the less space you have for text tat you need for the extra story.
For whatever reason we like our pictures landscape. For a landscape format you need something like three-by-two or four-by-three at the least, which isn’t always optimal. Sometimes portrait style panels are easier to make. But they are good for standing humans and tall buildings and not much else. Thankfully EC had the answer. Their panels tended towards the portrait style, but they use the extra space for the text. Letting the pictures have something closer to a landscape format. Buying that “Tales From the Crypt” collection proved to be a very smart move.
I’ve come to think of panel arrangements on a comic page like notes on sheet music. Three-by-three is your “Doe, Ray, Me” Three-by-two is like a slow piece of music. Four-by-four is more like complex but fast music like heavy metal. And just like real music you mix-up these combinations to give your work pace, variety, tone, and emphasis.
I think I’ve done a good job
I would not have thought just selecting and arranging the panels would be that hard. To think there are people who do this every month.
That done I started drawing. I want for the simplest drawings I could. Very cartoony, very simple. No or very little backgrounds. i can’t say I like it. But it keeps me moving forward.
I will hopefully redraw all of this with drawings that don’t suck. No idea how I’m going to add in the dialogue.
There are moments when I when I feel I could really get to like making comics. it feels very rewarding. Then there are other moments where I can’t stand it. I’m having a lot of trouble getting into a flow. Barely working for more than two minutes. I think the problem is I’m constantly moving onto new images, having to jump back into the pure creative part of the brain. Drawing new poses, new angles, and new effects each time. I don’t get the feeling of continuum and building that I do with animation or painting. Whether I can get over that remains to be seen
John's Learning Journal 