Making Comics is hard pt 2

-
Making music v making comics

The music making process is intuitive, time-based, iterative. It can be as involved or as simple as I want it to be.

Whereas my current comic making process is laborious, programmatic and quantity based (pages). 

How can I make my comic process more like my music making process and thus more enjoyable and flow inducing?

1. Make projects smaller, shorter duration. I'm only one person, I don't have to match what marvel is doing with multiple full timers. Make comics of a couple pages. 

2. Analogous to gathering samples at the beginning of a track, gather my reference at the beginning of the comics process.

3. Establish a basic structure that I can modify as necessary.

4. Iterate, edit.

5. Create parts. Think of the timeline as similar to a storyline.

6. Just do it and make comics I want to and can make. Don't try to measure up to anyone else.

Proposed comic making process:

1. Gather / develop the elements of the comic (analogous to gathering samples, synths): settings, characters, themes, objects. 
  • have a rough idea of genre (analogous to bpm / musical genre)
2. Lay down story beats, like music beats.
  • maybe build in the main conflict and create the intro and outro after wards
  • or start with the main beat and build out from there
  • layer elements over the main beat
3. Start to structure the story:
  • intro, outro, drop, breakdown, etc
  • act 1, act 2, act 3
  • set up, confrontation, resolution
  • ki sho ten ketsu
  • intro, development, twist, conclusion
4. Write the story

5. Sketch the story - Steps 1 - 5 should should be relatively quick, like 1 - 3 hours, analogous to developing a basic track 

6. iterate and rearrange as necessary - fine tune the drawing, story, dialog

7. finish the pencils - analogous to finishing a song arrangement

8. start inking and toning (analogous to mixing and mastering)

  • have fun with it
  • don't make it hard
  • as I iterate and develop it, make sure I really like it
  • I don't have the time or consistent mental space (or attention span / stamina) to work on a long project. Make comics as discreet units, like songs that I might combine into a longer work or a collection of short stories like an album. 
  • Finish them before I lose interest and to maintain enthusiasm.
  • make stuff i'm proud of.

   


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

on middlebrow

-
Culturally, the middlebrow is classed as a forced and ineffective attempt at cultural and intellectual achievement, and as characterizing literature that emphasizes emotional and sentimental connections, rather than intellectual quality and literary innovation; although postmodernism more readily perceives the advantages of the middlebrow cultural-position that is aware of high culture, but is able to balance aesthetic claims with the claims of the everyday world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middlebrow Rather than selecting books for their intrinsic cultural value, middlebrow people select and read what they are told is best. Middlebrows are concerned with how what they do makes them appear, unlike highbrows, the avant-garde men and women who act according to their indelible commitment to beauty , value , art , form, and integrity . Woolf said that, "We highbrows read what we like and do what we like and praise what we like". Likewise, a lowbrow is devoted to a singu...
Read more

guy

-
Image
I like to use a loose line. I've heard it called "travelling lines" which are lines drawn as a sort of searching for the right line. This type of drawing is also used in prelimary stages for working out composition and design. I like drawing like this as preliminary searching and for their own right. It's got a lot of vitality and personality. Giacometti comes to mind. I think also, there is a heavy influence from the look of wire frames used in computer graphics. 5.5'' x 8.5''.
Read more