Drawing Comics Pages Out of Order
About a week or so ago, Michael Grabois on my Facebook page asked my why I don’t just sit down and draw each comic page in order from start to finish.
I sit down and do a number of thumbnails or layouts, maybe for the the entire book. It depends. When I have finished those layouts, I have had time to get away from the earlier page designs. After days or weeks, I can look at them with a fresh eye and see new ideas or mistakes I did not see before. If I sit down and do one page at a go, I do not have the advantage of distance and reflection.
Drawing one character at a time over a large swatch of pages keeps character and costume design consistent. This is especially important when you are juggling a large cast with many costume changes.
Drawing one scene at a time: ditto. If I am working on a monthly comic of only 22 pages, and sets like The Daily Bugle are already established, this is not such a big deal. But when working on a 140 page graphic novel like Gone to Amerikay, I not only have to do period research, but I have to accurately depict that period, and to create new sets every few pages. Pull pages which have the same set designs and draw those pages as a group, and this task is made easier.
Ink and correction fluid take time to dry. I ink large areas at one time. There’s no reason to sit and wait for that to dry. Just move on to the next page and keep working.
Some pages are much harder to draw and are far more time-consuming than others. On the two assignments I am working on right now, there are four double page spreads. Each spread takes roughly a week to draw. That’s only eight pages produced in one month. In order to keep production steady, I pull those double page spreads and move them to the front of the production line. Then I chip away at them, sometimes for months at a time. I draw an hour here or an hour there, while working on easier pages. Over the course of several months, there’s no discernable drop in production, because I am producing easier pages steadily.
A book which is front loaded with establishing shot settings will get bogged down early. If I have to pull pages 35-40 and work on those while letting pages 4-10 sit so I can still move forward, I will. It’s demoralizing to see yourself slipping behind. Give yourself a break once in awhile and do an easy page to keep moving.
Sometimes I can easily figure out what to do on one part of a page, but may want to rethink another part. I set it aside and come back to it later while moving on to something else.
Detail work and certain types of rendering can be hard on the digits after a long day: I get sore. Switch over to some other task (such as spotting blacks) and come back to detail work later.
Sometimes I get bored, and move on to something new. If you push yourself to keep producing on a page toward which you have developed unenthusiastic hostility, you are unlikely to do a very good job on it. Set it aside and tackle it with a clear head.
OK, that’s why I draw comic pages out of order.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
There’s a lot of good advice there. When I tutored students in college, I told them the same thing when it came to timed tests. You don’t have to do the questions in order. If you’re stuck, move on and come back.
Having said that…a week for double page spreads? Huh. I remember the days of bad superhero comics when double-page spreads were what you drew to give yourself LESS work. Is that because of the nature of the pages, or are double-page spreads something that take you more time than, say, a single page with multiple smaller panels?
August 19th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
Good point, Ray.
The other night, I tried to push myself to finish a page and it just wasn’t working. Afters some hours, it was obvious that I had simply botched it. I ended up cutting the panel out and starting over from scratch.
Doing the panel from scratch took half the time I had spent trying to fix that panel I had botched in the first place.
Drawing a comic book is not a contest you are going to win against anyone but yourself. So, there are no rules you have to follow except the one that requires you to actually get the book done to your editor’s specifications. If he doesn’t need a finished book for a month, there is not point in pushing yourself to make that panel work tonight. Go make something else work, and come back to that troublesome panel when you are feeling fresh the next day.
In many comics, a double page spread is a big splashy scene with only two figures punching each other in the face.
The double page spreads I have been drawing on Stealth Tribes prompted my editor Will Dennis to exclaim, “You’re insane!”
And then I sent a double page spread from Gone to Amerikay to JMS and he wrote “That’s an insane amount of detail!”
So, no pages with two dudes bonking each other over the head. My pages are certifiable.
You’ll see them next year. Sorry about the wait, but this level of insanity takes time to develop.
August 19th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
You know, this is a beautiful idea. I’m so a/r about writing chapters in order but I’ve got the entire last chapter, dialog and all, finished in my head. The only thing keeping me from just writing that down and having it on paper is my Monk-ish OCD when it comes to construction, that I somehow “can’t” write it till the rest of it’s done.
Time to put my skates on and just elbow the mf in the ribs. Thanks for the insight!
August 19th, 2009 at 12:45 pm
Thanks for another informative post for those of us who enjoy the final product but don’t really have any clue about how it comes to be.
August 19th, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Arlnee, I definitely use this method on my fantasy novel. For the first draft of which I write long-hand. I keep a second notebook at hand, for those flashes of scenes and dialogue for scenes in “future” parts of the book. Mostly I write the story linearly, but since those key bits are already written down, when I get to them, I just plug them in — with whatever little tweaking is needed to make it match the main text.
Thanks for the insight on your process, Colleen!
August 19th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
I remember reading an interview with inker Mike Royer, where he said he liked to jump around from page to page, inking a panel here and a panel there. His logic was, if he was having an “off” day, or if the deadline loomed and he had to rush the work towards the end, any “bad” panels wouldn’t all be clumped together — they’d be spread out, and thus less noticeable.
After reading that, I started skipping around, and found that it also made the work seem less…I guess “intimidating” is the word. Working straight through, I was always painfully aware of that stack of blank pages that lay ahead of me. But if I had at least a little bit of work done on every page, it didn’t seem so bad.
Of course, now that I’m doing the weekly webcomic, I’m pretty much back to doing one page at a time. :-/
August 19th, 2009 at 2:46 pm
Thanks for bringing up that point by Royer! I haven’t worked on monthlies in years, but I think I used to work out of order specifically to avoid Glaringly Bad Page Drawn at 2 AM Syndrome. I wasn’t always successful, however.
There is one page on Stealth Tribes that I think is so out of quality with the rest of the book, I have to redo it. I recall pushing through to get it in for an invoice, and now I regret it.
Doing a monthly is tough, but it is something you can take in small bites. These big GN projects can be very intimidating.
The blank paper stacks up a foot high! My initial enthusiasm is always cut short by the realization of what I have just agreed to do. Then I pace and worry.
And I worry about getting hit by a bus and being unable to finish.
Gone to Amerikay is the equivalent of penciling and inking 6 monthly comics. Just to put it in perspective.
August 19th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
In other words, you’re using the same type of scheduling that movie studios employ when shooting million-dollar movies.
Evil question: How do you know when the art is perfect and finished? When do you stop working on a page?
August 19th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
Torsten: yes.
The work is never perfect, but it has to be finished.
A big reason why A Distant Soil has not moved forward much lately is because no one is looming over me holding back a paycheck and saying “Get on with it!” It is too easy to niggle when you are your own boss.
I turned in some GTA pages more than a week ago. This did not stop me from finding a few details and errors that need touch ups. So, I will re-upload them. And then I will stop and move on to something else, I hope.
August 19th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
As you say, there are no rules. Some artists (like Steve Dillon, for instance) start drawing at top left of page one and keep going until they reach bottom right of page 22, while others bounce around all over the place.
Jack Kirby apparently used to create a comic by drawing disparate sequences — a 4-page fight scene, say, then a 2-page quiet interlude for a completely different comic — once he felt he had sufficient sequences to fill an issue, he’d chop and change, reorder pages, shuffle the sequences until he was happy, and then erase a few panels and draw new ones so the story would flow in a logical order. From time to time he’d take a sequence originally intended for, say, Thor, and drop it into an issue of the Fantastic Four. Seems an odd way to work, but, hey, it worked!
August 19th, 2009 at 5:57 pm
hee hee, I saw you refer to “Going to Amerikay” as GTA and I thought “wait, they’re making a Grand Theft Auto comic?”
XD in the words of Emily Latella, “Nevermind…”
August 20th, 2009 at 4:32 am
I think I’ll leave the artistry of comics to the artists and stick to something easier, like writing them.