I posted this thread over on my twitter:
It’s a little look inside the thumbnails to finished page process. I figured I’d discuss some different process things here. Particularly a little bit about how I “script” a comic book.
With House on Fire it began as a series of notes in sketchbooks, this is how most ideas begin, usually it’s a paragraph outlining story beats, accompanied by sketches of locations, characters, story beats, it’s basically pulling all the ingredients out of my head and getting everything onto the counter (not a great analogy but we’ll go with it).
House on Fire began with this prototype page I shared a while ago:
I made that page and I think laid out a few more - but it never really got off the ground, I think I got distracted and maybe overwhelmed myself with the concept. After taking a road trip with my dad and sketching scenes along the highway House on Fire began to take shape, again. I laid out a few more pages and did a couple new prototypes.
I think these pages hold up pretty well, there the beats are all still here - there’s a thing I was playing with regarding SIM cards - but I didn’t give any space for interaction at the front, I think there was going to be narration in this version - but I don’t remember. I was also trying way too hard to be “clean” and that second page could be two pages. I think the storytelling still works, but something about the setup wasn’t really working for me. So back on the shelf it went.
A little more time passed and I came up with a new image, what would basically become the start of the book except in a different more extreme composition, and that new opening unlocked the story for me. I was still playing with narration here - which reading back was VERY on the nose, and I’m glad I killed that. The narration was spelling too much out and I think it’s a bit too cumbersome. The reader doesn’t need to know all of the information that I’m giving in the following pages, they can infer most of the world.
After I drew these - I stopped again, refined the idea and went all the way back to layouts. But after doing these three pages I finally had my concept worked out - I knew what the rest of the story was going to be and I knew how I wanted to tell it.
I’ll share the thumbnails and layouts from round 3 next time.
What I’m Reading
Shuna’s Journey
Finished reading this and thought it was lovely. Relatively short, really enjoyed the pencil and watercolor look of it, the low panel count, it’s more of a bridge between picture book and comic. Likely great for early readers.
Plugs
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Totally agree on skipping the narration. Whenever I'm tempted to put some in, I take a look again and ask myself if anything in the narration is already at least implicit. Definitely is the case with HoF, and I think it has a much more moody neo-western vibe without it. Cool to see the sausage being made!