Hey Dino,
I'm here to respond to that question of yours in the previous post, since you seem to think that it might be interesting for people to see how my addled mind works. So anyway, yes, let's get geeky! HUZZAH!
So, in the first panel, in the rough, we're seeing similar, yet slightly different layout and figure work. Ok, well, first of all, I rough completely out of my brain box, no reference, whatever, so this is just kind of an idea of what I want to draw at that stage. So then, when it comes to the final page, I do reference. For this panel, I went on YouTube and found videos of bo staff fighting. I freeze framed one of the videos to a spot I thought looked somewhat dynamic and drew that panel using that as a reference. Also, I wanted the figures to be a bit smaller, so there would be more room for action and dialogue/captions. Finally, we had agreed that we were going to (and pardon me if I reveal too much here, you can go an edit it out later, if you like):
...thumb it out, and we could agrue and scream at each other over panel sizes and such while I come up with the dialogue.
Any thoughts about where to put the credits? I'll come up with a short title.
It'd be neat to try and work it in with an Eisnery type of style...work the title in to one of the panels organically.
Also...if you have any thoughts about changing the panel layout or condensing some of my stage directions, please go for it. You're got great instincts!
This'll be lots of fun. Thanks for coming in with me. It's nice to get the band back together again.
D.
...from an email you sent me, so I had my marching orders. You had given me a rough idea of where the story was going, but left it to me. I didn't have a title at the time I did the rough, but knew that I needed to leave room for it in the final art (great title, by the way!). So that necessitated a change as well, in that opening panel.
In panel two, I initially had the figure a bit smaller, but wanted to emphasize the alien judges, so made everything a bit bigger. My only regret about doing that is...
...the samey-ness of the figures in panels 2 and 3. To get around that a bit, I tried to make the panel more visually interesting, by giving it a bit of a tilt. This also allowed more room for the background alien figure we can see lying in defeat.
I can't really talk about the last two panels to much, (so as not to spoil the story) other than to say that you caught on that I had missed a crucial element in the ending, and so I had to change the ending a bit, to make it work better visually. Perhaps we can revisit this when the book drops and people are able to read the print copy. Of course, it's still not perfect, but then, what in life is? And it IS fun, so we have that going for us.
So, I guess that answers some of the questions about how this all works. Hopefully we can get a few more of these projects off the ground, and do some more of these process posts. What do you think?
