First Steps -- Working Methods

I'm going to look at the steps that went into the creation of the page that is featured in the previous posting. I will look at each step, from the initial sketch/thumbnail, to full scale pencils, to inks  and finally to the finish. Today, the preliminaries, the thumbnails. After looking over these pages, I'll go back to the beginning and tell the how, what and why of my graphic novel project. But working methods first....

These are the thumbnails for four pages from the 4th chapter of my graphic novel, specifically pages 75-78. I drew them on a piece of 8.5"x11" printer paper using an ordinary  #2 pencil. The idea is to get the basic narrative elements from the script broken down into sequential panels. At this stage, I mostly use a simple 3x2 panel grid for each page's thumbnail. Thus a page is fit into roughly a 4.25"x5.5" quarter page, and each panel is approximately 2.125"x1.8". As I mentioned before, many artists fit an entire page into a little 1"x2" frame, so they can focus exclusively on composition and patterns of black and white. I like to get the signal story elements into a tight frame and work on composition later, when work moves into full scale detailing. OK, a professional would tell you that  that is backwards, but there are practically as many working methods as there are professional comics and graphic novelists (at least as far as I have learned from fairly intense study over the last 6-7 years). 

So here we are, the "rough" for page 75, the NW quadrant of the 2x2, is blown up to full size, 11"x17", the standard  size for comic book raw art, and not coincidentally, nearly the size of the bed of my Epson GT20000 scanner. When I first started work on the book, I would print out what is called a blue line version of the rough so I could draw over it in pencil. For most of the book, however, I used the rough for a guide but I redrew each page, typically improving most of the story elements and tinkering with key details. It is much easier tackling each page a second time, after putting some thought into ratcheting up the visuals. The actual proportions one cares about in this format is 3:2 height to width, as the typical professional page stock is ruled for a 15" to 10" working area. Having said that, however, you should realize there are practically no rules in the graphics novel business. If you are not doing line work for a comic book publisher then you can use whatever paper stock you want, in any proportions you like and find convenient. I just happened to have started with the comic book standard. 

A wonderful book to help you get started is:

Working Methods: Comic Creators Detail Their Storytelling And Artistic Processes by Jon Lowe

http://www.amazon.com/Working-Methods-Creators-Storytelling-Processes/dp/189390573X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1416593488&sr=1-1&keywords=working+methods

I found it very helpful -- it is one of many I'll cite as I go along in future installments.