I confess I panicked a little. XD I have a general idea of how I do what I do, but it's a process, one that involves a lot of little steps. I just couldn't answer her in less than a few paragraphs. So I promised her that I would tackle it here as this week's post.
Obviously you have to have a pretty clear idea of your story. Asj talked about getting words in her head and not being sure how to show them on a page. Write the summary out. If you have an understanding friend, take advantage of their presence and pitch ideas to them, and see what they think (this is the real reason I refer to Invid as my "editor." It's not exactly editing, but it's similar enough to call him that.) Write down a list of all the things you want to happen in your comic, or a summary of the chronological events with notes about character reaction and interaction.
I'm going to use the Law of Purple short storyline I just finished, "Shades of Sin," as an example study, partly because I did parts of this stage on the computer, so's I can just cut and paste, (XD) but also because it underwent a lot of mutations to become what it is.
The basic premise of Shades of Sin was this and simply this: Synn backstory. I wanted to include the defeat of Clarence the Evil, and I wanted to go into the conditioning torture that Synn had to suffer at the hands of Silver and Doc Dross. When I started the thing, I only had a vague idea of what kind of torture was involved (and originally had no intention of going into any detail.)
I had no idea how I wanted to show what I wanted to say, so I wrote a script. Scripts are very handy for when you aren't sure how to depict something. I've occasionally done short narratives also, because prose is what I cut my teeth on and it helps me to collect my thoughts very effectively.
Here is that original script:
Basic Summary
Synn headed the operation to kill Clarence the Evil and bring Geist under Silver's control. It is a shaking experience for him, especially as he is thanked by a woman who bears a faint resemblance to Vanessa and Clarence (who Synn kills himself) does not look unlike Doctor Dross. The story is sprinkled throughout with themes of Synn's torture at Dross's hands, a torture he comes to welcome.
Page 1 (montage)
I love him.
He killed you.
She killed me.
He let her.
I love him.
He does not love you. Watch him. See how, with your absence, he warms the beds of many.
I love him.
He went to her first.
I love him.
Then love him. But never, never forgive him.
I won't.
Page 2
Scenes of the battle on Geist.
Silver: See what he does to these fine beings, stuffing it down their throats until they choke to death from the inflammation.
Synn: (determined eyes) (takes down a soldier)
Silver: WE would not torture them so. WE will put their talents to good use.
Synn is shooting someone who was standing over a young woman.
Page 3
Notvan: (stopping Synn) Oh, sir--!
Synn: ?
Notvan: Thank you, sir, thank you so much--!
Synn: !!
Notvan looks a little too much like she IS Van.
Synn: (pushing her gently aside) Just doing what I'm here for.
Notvan: Are you all right, sir?
Synn: (closing his eyes) Yes. I'm fine.
Page 4
Clarence's throne room door is getting knocked down.
Synn: Lord Clarence?
Clarence: Who dares!!?
Synn pulls his helmet free. Clarence looks surprised.
Clarence: A woman?
Synn: (smirk) Not the last time I checked.
Clarence's face twists in anger, and in that moment looks altogether too much like Doctor Dross, but with hair.
Synn's face slacks.
Then twists in its own anger.
And Clarence gets his head blown off.
Page 5
Doctor Dross is working on something in his lab.
Synn: Doctor. I'm back.
Dross: So I heard. Stunning work, boy.
Silence.
Dross: What's wrong?
Synn: I need....
Synn: I need to be reminded who hurt me.
Dross: I see.
Dross has picked up an obvious instrument of torture.
Dross: Take your shirt off and lie down on one of the tables.
Synn: (tears running down his cheeks silently) Yes Doctor.
END
If you clicked the link and read through the story like you probably should have, you'll see that the final story got much longer, covered more events, that Clarence's passing resemblance to the good doctor never was pointed out very sharply, that Synn and Blue's relationship was gone into MUCH more deeply, and that Synn hardly was as passive. (This is something that happens a lot in my projects: characters become more agressive in the final product than they were in the original concept. This is usually a good thing.) Also, "he warms the beds of many" is a really cornball line. I don't know how lines like that keep ending up in the first cuts of my fiction, but in more serious stories, they're usually weeded out by the time it goes online.
So how did it change so starkly? Because of the next step in the process: Sketch comics. I usually call these "precomics," because that's what they are, but it's important to remember that this thing is not your final product and does not deserve as much time or attention. My precomics are typically very scribbly, sometimes feature nothing more than talking heads or stick figures, and sometimes the characters talking aren't even drawn into the panels, and just their voice bubbles are there (occasionally with a label to remind the reader, me, of who's talking. Although the voice only panels usually only happen when the characters aren't doing a lot of moving.)
Occasionally, precomics (especially for action scenes) can simply be drawn on a part of the page, enabling you to use one page for several precomics or even several versions of the same page. I think my maximum number of times that I've sketched a scene was ten, for the opening scene of Man of Power Part 2. Your average sketch comic, not counting dialogue, should take maybe ten seconds per panel to draw. Seriously, don't spend a lot of time on these things.
The main expanded parts of Shades of Sin included the scene at the beginning, which now features a conversation between Silver and Doctor Dross, and everything after the rescue of "Notvan" (I have great placeholder names, don't I? XD) All the scenes that covered events after the taking of Geist featured things I already knew took place in the comic, from the disapproval of Silver's actions by the royal family to Slaughter Night and even to the brief extra scene for Man of Power. (Although it was sexier originally. XD I toned it back for emotional reasons, partly, and partly to keep to my own standards of mostly-safe-for-work.)
I'll concentrate on Slaughter Night. This scene had already been alluded to in the comic, but back when I had only colored pencils and MSPaint to work with. I'd always held back on it before, showing glimpses as brief as possible or simply showing symbolic imagery. Now that I felt reasonably confident with my skills at CG color and with my craft, I was ready to rip into the scene as drastically as possible.
I already knew what was in my head: it had been there for years. Somehow, Blue would get his siblings away, but his parents and most of the rest of the royal family would die. Parts of the scene would still be fractured, since the scene is shown through the prism of Synn. Most importantly, I wanted to make it as clear as possible that Synn was not responsible in any way for Slaughter Night, and neither were most of those goofy soldiers that we saw running around in Man of Power: they were simply too strong minded to cold-heartedly kill people they loved just because Silver said so. These were not Star Wars clone troopers, steeling themselves constantly for when Order 66 came down the line.
So I had to have Synn trapped in the barracks. Originally, I was going to have his suit of armor in his quarters, so that the entire scene he would be hearing the screaming of his troops through his helmet comm, demanding to know what was going on, but the sketches showed that no matter what I did, this distracted from Synn's own anguish too much and broke the flow of the scene. So I discarded it. I wanted to call back the scene of Whitey's nightmare, way back in Far Side of Nowhere, so I did a sketch that interspersed Synn's struggle to get past his door with shots of Blue dragging his siblings out of bed. This was, after some fixing here and there, what ended up becoming the final page. (In my head, he was going to be clawing at the door, but when I sketched it, hitting it with his fist turned out to look better.)
Among other things, you'll notice that several things were actively scribbled out, and some of the dialogue was changed when I actually inked the page. While the sketch gave me a good idea of where panels were relative to one another, I didn't allow it to completely govern how big the final panels were relative to each other.
Incidentally, there's been a lot more swearing in LOP since Synn joined the cast, has anyone noticed?
I may as well mention that, despite all the sketching before hand that goes into my comics, I will often still change things at the last second. In the final page of Shades of Sin, Synn was originally pushing Blue down in several panels. But I sat and stared for a minute at it before I started penciling, and ended up deciding that it looked too forceful on Synn's part. So they ended up just leaning against the table bed the entire scene. XD
Once you get into practice, you'll find yourself settling into an average of one to two sketches per page. One of the things I do a lot is sketching out several pages, one right after another, in the order of a scene (like, I zip out a quick page one, then page two, then page three.) That way, you can work on a scene several pages long as one cohesive whole. Sometimes, instead of drawing a whole new page for one or two changed ideas, I'll write a little note in the corner of the panel or sketch a tiny alternate image next to a panel. The point of these things is not to be pretty or neat, but to organize your ideas.
My final word for this post is this: do NOT exercise caution in sketch comics. This is where you figure out what looks bad, so that you can also figure out what looks good. Go to town, people.
Signing off-
-Jessi-sama means it about throwing caution to the wind. Do it. Do it now.
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