Art & Story 030 – The Big Limitation
March 18, 2008 by Mark
Filed under Art & Story, Podcast
This week we talk about working with limitations (parameters) within comics and how these limitations can actually foster creativity. We discuss length of stories, genre, format and a bunch of other egghead topics. Jerzy also explains why Beast Wars is one of the best written cartoons, ever.
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First off, Beast Wars was one of the best shows ever, started slow, but by the end my mind was blown. Inferno, favorite TF villian ever. Beast Machines made me sad.
As for picking the moment, I find that, since I write too, I try to find a different way then the obvious to tell the info. If the scene involves the good guys tricking the bad guys, I would switch from telling the story from the good guys point of view, to the bad guys POV.
I think its important to set parameters, If you give yourself unlimited number of pages to tell something, you can start to trail off and begin to loose the audience. If you give yourself a set number of pages, you are forced to pack each page and make the read more compelling. And if you tell too much, and start to finish early, you can always just get more “showy” with the art.
Yeah, I only made it through the first 5 or 6 episodes of Beast Machines when it first aired. It was a pretty sub par show in relation the BW.
I totally agree about parameters. I’ve been actually getting more story out of less pages than my previous work. The new issue of Mulligan’s Run was going to be 16 pages, but I actually condensed it down to 12.
Yeah, in a lot of cases a page count parameter can keep you focused. I think a lack of intended page count can work just as well, but as Matt said, there’s a danger that the artist will take advantage of the freedom and show off, or he/she may suddenly find themselves wandering in the story. I think in those cases it’s important for a creator to remain especially intentional and focused on the story, in order to avoid the pitfalls.