Visual Scripts and Scrivener

Some interesting posts about ways to write comics using "visual scripts" in InDesign, and also another post about using Scrivener to write fictional comics at J. Abel's blog. I used Scrivener to write Ganges 5, and it went great. I highly recommend this program if you think it's the kind of thing you need. You can download a trial and use it for 30 days. Work through the tutorial that comes with it and you'll see how well-crafted an application it is. But it might be more than you need. If you're already writing a lot but your problem is organization and flow, then look at Scrivener. If you problem is you're not writing anything, you can probably just use a simple text app and get to work.

Body of Work Thumbs

These are the layout pages for "Body of Work." (You can read it here.) 

I'm in-between projects right now and trying to clean up the studio (AKA the living room), so I may as well post some junk like this.

I had a hard time with this assignment (for an exhibition at Parsons about polymath cartoonists) but I eventually figured something out I was happy with. Here's some tricks I learned about how to approach assignments that work for me personally:

1) start building the story around whatever emotion you're currently feeling in your life (annoyance, frustration, hostility, etc.)
2) make it recursive
3) "death"

Layout Templates

It used to be that whenever I tried to figure out a page directly onto the big sheet of paper, there was so much erasing and so much daunting, expensive white space that I would get psyched out. But then I figured out this system of using these 8.5x11 copy-paper templates, and then there was less pressure to get it right the first time. It was easier to dive and do the "shitty first draft." 

This is one of the page templates I use to figure out a page of comics. I draw most of my comics -- the "Ganges" stories, especially -- with 4 rows. When I'm starting a new story I usually print a few of these out on copy paper and sketch on them. Sometimes I figure out a page pretty much exactly right the first time, but often it takes a few tries. Or I'll just sketch scenes and characters in the boxes and not worry about where each panel is going to go until later. For a few years now I've worked this way and it's become second nature.

****  This link will take you to a .pdf of the file, ready to print out and get started.  ****
(You can make your own 3 row, or whatever, templates for yourself, obviously.)

Here are some older examples of this:

I have tons of these. Here's some from the "Jeepers" era:

But this created a NEW PROBLEM, which was the tedium of translating the thumbnails* onto the large piece of paper to do the final drawing. Then only about a year ago I figured out a trick:

Scan these layout pages back into the computer, and then enlarge them to the right size (for me, a row is 10cm tall, 30cm wide). Print them out again. You can only fit 1/4 of the page on an 8.5x11 sheet of paper, so you have to use 4 sheets of paper. 

So you get something like:

Then you use that to lightly trace the big, basic shapes and placement of elements on the large sheet of paper. And then I ink in the panel borders and lettering, and now all that's left is getting the drawings right.

Now, I realize that this seems like more work than just looking at the thumbnails and sketching in the shapes! Maybe that works for you. But for me it's somehow less daunting to do all this, and do the tracing. Because all of the computer stuff is so easy for me at this point, it takes less brainpower than eye-balling it. There's less erasing and mistake-making, and thus fewer chances to get frustrated.

(Looking back, I'm embarrassed that I didn't figure this out more quickly.)

There's still a lot of erasing and re-drawing and fixing to do before I have pencils that are ready to be inked, but this trick gets me quickly through stages of layout that use to give me a lot of trouble. 

You may not have the same troubles.

*I call these 8.5x11 copy paper layouts "thumbnails" even though they're obviously bigger than the thumbnails of any known mammal.

Moments Strung Together

"What is your story? No story? Here's what you do. String together moments - think sequence. Think poetry. Think painting. Just let the "melody" come - let your mind focus on the images that move you - the words that flow through you. Composing any story, song, anything - always involves chasing half remembered dreams, ideas, memories. How does one compose a story or flesh out a story that is already forming in one's mind?"

-Frank Santoro
(sign up for his class! see here)

How Things Go