Art & Story 130 – The Big Man Vs. Art
May 5, 2010 by Jerzy
Filed under Art & Story, Podcast
We have a special guest panelist for this week’s episode–Raul Aguirre Jr., host of the fun and insightful Man Vs. Art podcast! Raul, a veteran animator and cartoonist, sits down with us to discuss how we have to think visually when writing comics or storyboarding, and share some strategies we use to write entirely in thumbnail form.
We discuss a bevy of concerns facing a cartoonist when approaching a new comics project including the following:
Pre-Visualization
- Finding the story’s tone, feeling, and moments before laying lines down on the page
Choosing Moments
- Capturing the emotion of the moment/scene
- Expressing the inner life of the characters
Thumbnails from Equalizers of the Divide
Choosing Paneling
- Determining when non-traditional paneling is appropriate and when it is not
Choosing Levels of Abstraction
- Line usage
- Shape usage
- Icon usage
Choosing Word Balloons/SFX
- Finalizing dialogue/sfx on the thumbnails
- Leaving dialogue/sfx for later
Spontenaeity
- Finding those happy accidents that surprise, delight, and inspire you
Links mentioned in this episode:
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This episode is very helpful for beginning comics creators like myself. It makes me think about the process of putting a story idea into visual storytelling. Since that is what I’m struggling with right now, I can’t thank you enough for pointing me in the right direction.
As I understand from the discussion, in this stage not only your art should be loose and creative, but also your process of turning the story idea into thumbnails. Also how that process in itself can and will modify how the story flows. The more informal it is, the more it will help you to to stay loose and playful.
I still find it hard, though, to stay focused on the story while meandering around with alternatives. This has to be a two-step process of working in cycles. I hope you can elaborate some more on how to deal with this part of the process of throwing things against the wall and see what sticks. Maybe a demo would be better for that than a panel discussion.
To put it more bluntly: Is picking the right thumbnail a yes-no decision, or do you give a value judgment to thumbnails in how far they support the general story idea?
I’m so glad you liked this one, Rene. The last two episodes were recorded with you and creators like you in mind.
Looseness and playfulness should be the order of the day at the thumbnail stage. To paraphrase something Kevin once said, you should be serious about the process, but serious about having fun.
When I was starting out, I depended heavily on doing several drafts of the tiny thumbnails before moving on to the more refined thumbnails like the one you see in the post. You’re right, it’s hard to tell if everything you’re doing is “pointing at the story” while you’re in that playful and loose mindset. So you have to get a lot of versions of the thumbnails done and take a break, returning to evaluate the thumbs with a critical eye. I have pages and pages of thumbs for The Front that I just threw out because they weren’t appropriate for the story. But at the time when I was sketching them, I thought that they were brilliant.
With practice and time, you get better at keeping both of those sectors of the brain working at the same time. But even so, there are times where you throw out entire sequences and have to re-thumb them, even after years of experience. When I was thumbnailing Equalizers of the Divide #1, I re-sketched the entire first act. I got to where I wanted to in the story, and it was an interesting sequence of panels and pages, but I had focused entirely on the wrong group of characters.
So yeah, the Art Mullet concept is in full effect. You create in that loose, free mindset, but you edit and refine with the analytical part of the brain up front.
Make sense?
Ahh the process. Is there anything I love more than to here you guys discuss the “creative process”!!! Ok maybe cake, cold beer, my wife, dog errr… I mean is there anything I love more on the Art and Story podcasts!
Raul was an excellent guest! Learned allot listening to him and Jerzy bounce ideas off one another!
You gave me some inspiration and ideas and that’s what it’s all about!
ArrrOOooo!