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Now that it's been several days since I've completed my mini-comic project, it's time for what the game industry (and possibly others) generally refer to as a "post-mortem". (Funny that the game industry would use a term that can also refer to an autopsy. I wonder if there's any symbolism there, or if it's just a coincidence?)
Anyway... This project was not my first attempt to make a comic. Several years ago, I drew a couple of pages based on a story my sister had written. That little experiment was only ever intended as a gift and was never really meant to go farther than that (though I briefly considered it). My approach for it was different that for my mini-comic. Back then, I really had no idea what I was doing - I drew each panel separately, on individual pages, scanned them, and attempted to assemble them into full pages in Corel PhotoPaint. It sort of worked, but by drawing each panel in isolation, they didn't fit together as well as they could have. I don't recall if I did anything analogous to thumbnailing, though I think I at least had a vague notion of how things were going to fit together. Still, doing the layout properly would have saved a few headaches.
It doesn't have to make sense. Notice the slightly odd panel arrangement in the upper right corner - a consequence of drawing each panel individually without the context of the larger layout.
Since then (and in the context of my PhD over the past couple of years) I've read several books on the subject of making comics and have learned a lot more about the subject in the process. Thus, I now know the importance of doing thumbnails and properly designing the layout before I start. I've also learned about various techniques that are used in comic and, to an extent, why. For my mini-comic I attempted to follow what seems to be the standard practice and I think that helped out.
That said, I was still a bit "looser" with my process than maybe I should have been. My script was, initially, more of an outline, which left several sections of dialogue along the lines of "gives cheesey speech" or the likes. As a result, I ended up rewriting (or in some cases writing) dialogue as I went along, though the script was finalized before the comic itself was finished (before page two was finished, at least, I think). While there is something to be said for being a bit flexible with the script (I found myself rewriting dialogue for page 1, which was one of the more finished pages in the script at that point, while I was drawing the page) it's still important to, at least, have a complete, fully written draft of the script since it's also quite important to be able to plan the placement of word balloons.
Moving on the the drawing side, well, I am not an artist! While I have done a fair bit of sketching in the past, it's mostly been of individual characters in relatively neutral poses. I do not have much experience drawing scenery, or characters interacting with each other, let alone whilst doing actiony things. I bought myself a mirror that I could use to help with poses and anatomy and such, though I've still got lots of work to do there. Though I wonder if it might be better for me to focus on a more cartoonish style (moreso than I'm doing now) where having less realistic proportions wouldn't be so much of an issue.
The thumbnails that I drew for the mini-comic could also, I think, have been a bit more detailed. There does seem to be a fairly wide variance in the level of detail that artists put into their thumbnails. While I didn't want to get bogged down with putting too many details into my thumbnails, I think there were a couple of cases where I could have benefited if they'd been a bit more detailed. In one case, I had to slightly modify my panel layout to accommodate changes in panel composition (bottom row of page 1) and in the second, I actually changed the composition of a group of panels from what was in the thumbnails (top right corner of page 2). Though in the second case, that was partly due to the script still being in a slightly unfinished state at that point.
Despite some of the criticisms above, I'm generally pleased with how the mini-comic turned out, my own artistic limitations aside. It's also kind of nice to have the physical artifacts left over as a result (ie, the physical comic pages).
Final Thoughts
Overall, I had fun with the project. I enjoy drawing, which I hadn't done nearly enough of in recent years. I feel like I learned a lot, which is good as that was part of the goal. I also find myself wanting to do more - not necessarily continuing the mini-comic (despite leaving the door open for more at the end of page 4, I basically intended it to be a one-off), but I'd like to do a longer term comic project of some sort. Though whatever that project ends up being, I've also got to get faster at drawing pages, or maybe just devote more time to it.
Before that, however, my next comic related project will be, if all goes according to plan, running an (unofficial) reading group on making comics in the graphics lab using the book "Drawing Word and Writing Pictures", presuming that there's sufficient interest and timing works and all that.
Freak Out,
-TFitC
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