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Description
Having reached the end of my already created strips/panels and the end of my story notes yesterday, today was all about writing. Switching gears between writing and drawing is sometimes challenging for me. They are related creative tasks, but require a different brain process from me or something. It could be because I don’t spend as much time writing as I do drawing, but regardless, once I slip into “the zone” things start flowing and I have a lot of fun. I will admit I had some trepidation about writing the next bits because I haven’t really thought about the progress of the story beyond where I was and I was afraid of writer’s block. Thankfully that didn’t happen and some cool and interesting things have taken place in the story.

I know some people are very specific when they write for comics, breaking things down page by page, panel by panel, being very descriptive of the camera angles and placements of everything in the panels. I don’t work like that. I write a bunch of rough notes, I write out dialogue. Then when it’s time I start sketching out little thumbnails of all the scenes and action with no borders. I try to figure out how many amorphous panels I want to use to convey an action, where I want an extra beat to slow things down or show an important detail. I then take all those sketches and figure out what panel shape/dimension works best for the “shot”, taking into consideration previous and subsequent panels and the overall page layout. I add and remove panels and scenes as needed to make everything fit and to create the visual pacing I want. It’s kind of an organic process, swapping back and forth between words and visuals for me. It’s also a work flow that’s is much easier digitally than analogue because I can simply select and resize and move around all my little sketches to make them fit the page dimensions. It’s a lot harder to do with pencil and paper.

Description
Having reached the end of my already created strips/panels and the end of my story notes yesterday, today was all about writing. Switching gears between writing and drawing is sometimes challenging for me. They are related creative tasks, but require a different brain process from me or something. It could be because I don’t spend as much time writing as I do drawing, but regardless, once I slip into “the zone” things start flowing and I have a lot of fun. I will admit I had some trepidation about writing the next bits because I haven’t really thought about the progress of the story beyond where I was and I was afraid of writer’s block. Thankfully that didn’t happen and some cool and interesting things have taken place in the story.

I know some people are very specific when they write for comics, breaking things down page by page, panel by panel, being very descriptive of the camera angles and placements of everything in the panels. I don’t work like that. I write a bunch of rough notes, I write out dialogue. Then when it’s time I start sketching out little thumbnails of all the scenes and action with no borders. I try to figure out how many amorphous panels I want to use to convey an action, where I want an extra beat to slow things down or show an important detail. I then take all those sketches and figure out what panel shape/dimension works best for the “shot”, taking into consideration previous and subsequent panels and the overall page layout. I add and remove panels and scenes as needed to make everything fit and to create the visual pacing I want. It’s kind of an organic process, swapping back and forth between words and visuals for me. It’s also a work flow that’s is much easier digitally than analogue because I can simply select and resize and move around all my little sketches to make them fit the page dimensions. It’s a lot harder to do with pencil and paper.