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In Praise of Title Spash Pages

Started by jbud73,

230 posts in this topic

Kevn

Kevn

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Posted

AVb2mAli_0503150030431.jpg

 

Here's one I just scanned last night. Actually, I think it's my only title splash. All the usual paste-ups on title splashes turned me off, as it did with most covers. Anyway, enjoy.

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Unca Ben

Unca Ben

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Personally I enjoy titles, words, and captions on my OA.

 

Since the sequential art of comic books is all about combining words and pictures to tell a story, I like this stuff on my artwork.

Guys like Eisner, Kirby and Lee (and many others) used word balloons along with the art to properly guide the eye through the page.

When done correctly the composition, not to mention the narrative, depends on this combination.

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Kevn

Kevn

Posted
Posted
Personally I enjoy titles, words, and captions on my OA.

 

Since the sequential art of comic books is all about combining words and pictures to tell a story, I like this stuff on my artwork.

Guys like Eisner, Kirby and Lee (and many others) used word balloons along with the art to properly guide the eye through the page.

When done correctly the composition, not to mention the narrative, depends on this combination.

 

Changed the image for the Romita Spidey splash. I did the thumbnail on purpose, since I wasn't sure if it was cool to overwhelm the thread with full images. Anyway, I too enjoy the artful combination of word balloons, captions, sound fx and so on, but on too many splashes and covers those elements overwhelm and crowd the art (at least to my eye), and when those elements are stats that fade at a different rate, and that come with globs of rubber cement everywhere, I find myself preferring well-composed panel pages.

 

An interesting thing about so much OA is that the artists laid out and drew the pages without any knowledge of where the word balloons would go. And with writers like Stan Lee, they never even knew how many word balloons there would be! As a result, it's almost an accident if the layout, the images, and the words/titles complement each other.

 

An artist friend of mine assisted Jean Giraud years ago and told me that the first thing Giraud told him to keep in mind when doing a comics page was to start from a knowledge of where the word balloons were going to end up, and compose everything with that in mind. It blew me away that this was Giraud's top consideration when he started a page. I guess he knew he could draw anything he needed to draw, but if the final page composition wasn't in his control, then the art itself wasn't in his control. I think that's why he did his own inks and lettering and coloring, and why his comics work is frankly on another level.

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Unca Ben

Unca Ben

Posted
Posted
Personally I enjoy titles, words, and captions on my OA.

 

Since the sequential art of comic books is all about combining words and pictures to tell a story, I like this stuff on my artwork.

Guys like Eisner, Kirby and Lee (and many others) used word balloons along with the art to properly guide the eye through the page.

When done correctly the composition, not to mention the narrative, depends on this combination.

 

Changed the image for the Romita Spidey splash. I did the thumbnail on purpose, since I wasn't sure if it was cool to overwhelm the thread with full images. Anyway, I too enjoy the artful combination of word balloons, captions, sound fx and so on, but on too many splashes and covers those elements overwhelm and crowd the art (at least to my eye), and when those elements are stats that fade at a different rate, and that come with globs of rubber cement everywhere, I find myself preferring well-composed panel pages.

 

An interesting thing about so much OA is that the artists laid out and drew the pages without any knowledge of where the word balloons would go. And with writers like Stan Lee, they never even knew how many word balloons there would be! As a result, it's almost an accident if the layout, the images, and the words/titles complement each other.

 

An artist friend of mine assisted Jean Giraud years ago and told me that the first thing Giraud told him to keep in mind when doing a comics page was to start from a knowledge of where the word balloons were going to end up, and compose everything with that in mind. It blew me away that this was Giraud's top consideration when he started a page. I guess he knew he could draw anything he needed to draw, but if the final page composition wasn't in his control, then the art itself wasn't in his control. I think that's why he did his own inks and lettering and coloring, and why his comics work is frankly on another level.

 

I've seen Kirby layouts (and Kane, and Romita, etc.) where they would indicate in pencil where the captions and word balloons would go.

I think the advantage of an artist and writer working together for so long is the artist can anticipate the necessary space the writer will usually need to do his part.

 

Of course sometimes it goes wrong.

 

I've seen plenty of panels where a word balloon awkwardly extends beyond its panel borders, sometimes crowding into an adjacent panel.

Or a rereading of a sequence of word balloons (or occasionally an entire sequence of panels) is necessary, because their placement does not follow the natural flow of the eye through the page, making the narrative confusing on the first read.

 

That takes me out of the story for a moment and isn't great storytelling, in my opinion.

 

And it wasn't just the Stan Lee / Marvel method of creating a comic that was the problem.

 

I remember many DC pages where arrows were placed to tell the reader which panel or word balloon(s) were to come next, because the panel composition or word balloon placement wasn't clear on its own.

Or the above rereading of a sequence was necessary.

And this would happen even with the DC method of writers providing detailed page and panel breakdowns or even page thumbnails to the artist before he started drawing.

 

Anyways, great conversing with you, and thanks for the bigger image of the Spider-Man splash.

That is one great page!

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