Boy Comics #120 - work in progress

[Crimebuster]

Here's the cover with the background.

 

The main concern is making sure the background noise doesn't clutter things up. At the moment, some of the finer linework in the middle of the figure image is lost. I think this can be handled during the coloring phase, though. The coloring can be done in a way to make the foreground characters pop out. So I'm not too concerned.

 

I don't think I am actually going to color the cover myself,though. That might be the one thing in this comic I get someone else to do. I've never worked in color on anything before, much less digitally. More to the point, I'm red-green colorblind, which makes it difficult to work in color anyway. There are some amazing colorists here on these boards, though, as proven every time we have a coloring contest. So I might see if I can hire a boardie to color this for me. I'm thinking it might be cool to have the background runes and lines kind of glow, but that's just an initial idea.

 

One thing I will probably do is shrink the background circle just slightly. I wanted it small enough so that the arms holding the gun and lantern stuck out from it. If I make it just a tiny bit smaller, though, both characters heads will also stick out beyond the edge of the circle, which I think will help the figures pop. i could also accomplish essentially the same thing my moving the circle down instead, so I'm not sure which way to do it.

 

I'm inordinately pleased that the figures fit exactly in the circle like this, because it means I got the sizing and perspective at least mostly correct on them.

 

 

 

 

 

EDIT: I shrunk the circle just slightly and lowered it a bit so the character's heads would stick out from the edge of the circle:

 

 

[Crimebuster]

Started on page one today.

 

I drew the first panel and it was just, you know, okay. . Then I drew the second panel and it too was just okay. But then I zoomed out...

 

Comics are just magic, man. Pure magic. I can't explain the thrill of seeing those two panels together, working together. Talk about the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. That's what comics are all about, that's the magic. Gosh, it's awesome.

 

It's also really energizing. Even though my drawing skills aren't very good, just seeing those two panels telling a tiny story was enough to give me confidence that this can work anyway. It's all about the storytelling.

 

I'm pretty jazzed. I love comics!!

[Crimebuster]

The first page of my story might be the most difficult in a way, because I ended up with 9 panels when I laid it out. It's got to do three things: 1) set the tone 2) set the scene and 3) set up the plot.

 

I managed to get the first four panels done today. I was hoping to do 5, with the idea that I might be able to finish the page tomorrow. But it will likely take me two more days. Then I am going to experiment with adding in word balloons, captions and sound effects.

 

Going forward I think it makes sense to do all the art first and then add in the text after, rather than fully complete each page as I go, because it will be easier to go back and make changes if needed if I have only done the art. But I want to get the first page - and maybe the second as well - fully completed so I can get some experience with the text features before I lay out later sequences.

 

Just in the first four panels, which is one self-contained sequence, I've learned a bit. The panels felt kind of static, but since I am working in Manga studio, there were tools to address this, because one thing manga isn't is static. I ended up adding focus lines or speed lines to all four panels, which I had not originally intended. The sequence is a chase sequence, so I think it adds some visual urgency, which is important since this is the opening scene and really needs to grab the reader's attention right away.

 

I'm not sure I'm going to use lines on any future pages - there's not that much action or motion in most of this issue, as CB is investigating, so there's more conversation and the like. But I like having it as an option. I think manga has gotten a bit of a bad rap among American fans because of the manga-inspired art styles that have bled into the industry over the past 15-20 years, but for me, those artists borrowed the wrong part of manga. The good part are some of the storytelling techniques that Scott McCloud discusses in Understanding Comics. If any of those can help me figure this out, I will be borrowing them, manga or not.

 

The other thing I discovered is that version 4 of Manga Studio doesn't have some of the basic photoshop tools like lens flare. That's another type of trick I am planning to use in extreme moderation - again, possibly only in one panel. But I gather you have to basically finish your art in Manga Studio and then import it over to photoshop to add any finishing touches like blurring or lens flare. It's an annoying second step, but as I said, it probably won't come up too often. Though... honestly, I hadn't even considered blurring until now. There might be one fight scene later that could use both focus lines and blurring. I'll have to think about it.

 

I went ahead and purchased Manga Studio 5. The regular version as a suggested retail price of $80, but Amazon had it on sale for $28, so it seemed like a no brainer. The major, major thing it has that my current version doesn't is a fantastic 3d modeling tool. It has objects and environments, as well as male and female models that you can pose and rotate the camera around, creating the perfect drawing model. I'm really looking forward to this, as I think it will be a big help, as long as I don't waste too much time just playing with the figures.

 

Once I get the first two pages done with text and effects, I'll post them here. And I'm also still eagerly awaiting the arrival of the Ka-Blam sample comic to see what they have to offer in terms of publishing.

[Hibou]

Congratulations on the start and completion of the first two pages! I've always found the starting on a project the most difficult but once immersed in it... I find stopping the most difficult. I can't wait to see these pages!

 

I really like how the cover has evolved and the shading on CB is pretty cool!

[Crimebuster]

Congratulations on the start and completion of the first two pages! I've always found the starting on a project the most difficult but once immersed in it... I find stopping the most difficult. I can't wait to see these pages!

 

I really like how the cover has evolved and the shading on CB is pretty cool!

 

Thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it. it's going to take a lot of them to get me through this process.

 

I'm still plugging away at the first page. I cut it from 9 panels to 8. It might have flowed just a little better with 9, but this also gives me more room for dialogue and it's less work, so I think it's a fair tradeoff. I've got 4 panels completed, 3 panels where the linework and some limited shading is done and one big panel left to start. I'm hoping to have all the art for the first page done by tomorrow night. Then I am going to start experimenting with sound effects, dialogue and caption boxes.

 

I expect to get Manga Studio 5 and the Ka-Blam! sampler both by Saturday at the latest, so hopefully I will have an update at that time. I'm not going to upgrade to version 5 until I've finished the art for this page; I don't want to risk something getting screwed up in the transition process.

[Crimebuster]

Finally finished the first page!

 

I was going to wait to post it until I could also post page 2, but it's soooo much work I don't really want to wait several more days before posting an update. I did receive my copy of Manga Studio 5, but I haven't installed it yet; I wanted to get this page done first just in case there's some issue with the files when I change programs. I'll be checking it out tomorrow and may have some thumbnails to post if the 3D modelling works the way I am hoping. I'm also hoping to receive the Ka-Blam! sampler tomorrow as well. So I might have some updates soon anyway.

 

Still, getting feedback is important to the process at this point. Some notes on this first page - some of the grey tones do some weird things when they are shrunk down, but I think they will look better printed. Not sure, actually. But the tones look much smoother in the original, larger files that will be used for printing.

 

I'm also not sure about the font I used for the sound effect in panel four. I also kinda want to add some kind of dialogue to panel 6 to slow the read there and give some time to that sequence. Figuring out the best way to do that is tricky though. I kind of want him to be whistling/singing to himself, but that's very difficult to convey properly in comics. I'll have to think about it more.

 

Anyway, here's page one:

 

[Marty Mann]

BRAVO!!!

 

mm

[Crimebuster]

BRAVO!!!

 

mm

 

Thanks, Marty, I appreciate it!

[Crimebuster]

I received the Ka-Blam! sampler today, which also doubles as a submission guide. Learned a couple things from that; for instance, I was doing my art at 600 dpi, but they require all files to be 300 dpi. So I will need to adjust that going forward; I'm curious what the first page and the grey tones in particular will look like at half the dots per inch. Their guidelines to the printing/trimming process also specifies no word balloons outside the framework - I'm not sure if my caption in panel 5 which sticks outside needs to be moved or not, I'll have to measure it out.

 

I think once I get a few more pages done or close to done, I may order an ashcan of just the first few pages so I can see exactly what is working and not working before I do the rest of the book.

 

One big thing takeaway from the samples is the idea that I might be going overboard with the shading and inking details. Seriously, the last panel of page one took me like 6+ hours to get the shading right. Yet, I'm not sure if the subtleties are going to reproduce correctly anyway when its printed. And the samples of black and white art in the sampler are much, much simpler in terms of the shading, but are still perfectly effective anyway.

 

Here's one of the sample pages, from a comic Ka-Blam! printed:

 

 

This guy only uses three tones - black, white and grey. He enhances the grey with hand shading in a few small spots, and in panels two and three he has the grey scale into black. But that's it. Otherwise, it's just three tones. And for the most part, I think it's effective enough, though the grey does overwhelm things a little in a couple panels where it intended to show lower lighting.

 

I'm a little unsure how much of this is the art and how much is a limitation in the printing process. The sampler has a color chart to compare your monitor to, to make sure your colors will be reproduced as you are seeing them on the screen, and there are four distinctive shades of grey on the scale between black and white. So I would think they can handle at least more than shown in this sample.

 

Still, it makes me think I could save a ton of time without necessarily compromising the story or art if I learned to simplify the shading and inking going forward. Something to think about.

[gino2paulus2]

let me just say this is really really cool man!!!! keep plugging away I definitely want a copy (thumbs u you are pretty talented dude!!!!

[Crimebuster]

let me just say this is really really cool man!!!! keep plugging away I definitely want a copy (thumbs u you are pretty talented dude!!!!

 

Thanks! I appreciate all the positive feedback.

[Crimebuster]

Well, I fired up Manga Studio 5 today.

 

Yikes.

 

I'm not sure why, but they totally changed the interface from 4 to 5. And not in a good way. Some of the basic functions like making panels and creating new drawing layers are either hidden or listed under confusing terminology.

 

The 3D modelling, which was the main reason I wanted to get it, is pretty cool. However, it seems to tax my computer, so it's a bit slow and unresponsive. I suspect in the amount of time it would take me to fully 3D model a page, I could probably have just drawn it.

 

At the moment, I'm thinking I'll just stick with 4. I know 5 has a lot more capabilities, but it doesn't seem user friendly and I'm not sure I actually need any of those capabilities. And since 5 can read files from 4, I figure I can import it to 5 after the fact if I discover something that can only be done in 5. Maybe I will do all the page layouts and initial line work in 4 and then finish it in 5 where there are more tone and brush options or something.

 

A little disappointing. But I don't want to waste any more time getting confused for no good reason.

[Crimebuster]

I've started working on page 2. The process for this one is kind of interesting, so I thought I would share it here.

 

Basically, I am starting with the text and planning the panels around it. I know what goes in the panels, of course, but I wasn't sure how much space the text would take up, so I figured I'd better put it down first so my panels wouldn't be too big or too small.

 

Here's what I have so far:

 

 

 

The text block at the top is from Boy Comics #7. I had to tweak some of the wording a little because Biro had a tendency to give away the "mystery" in these speeches. Unlike what I am doing, Biro's stories usually showed the whole crime right up front to the reader and then brought CB in to solve them, but since I want at least some mystery here, I'm keeping the killer's identity a secret.

 

A bigger question was where to put the text. Originally, I had it at the very top of the page, above the first row of panels, but I decided it would be more useful below the panels. The reason for this is due to how reading comics works.

 

In the first three panels, Crimebuster's bus arrives at Curtiss Tech (panel 1), he gets off the bus (panel 2) and he walks towards campus, where we can see a gathered crowd in the distance (panel 3).

 

By putting the text after panel 3, it creates in the reader's mind the illusion of time passing. Even though the text is not really part of the story, in the reader's mind, the time they spend reading this block of text is time that Crimebuster is still walking from the bus stop to the crowd scene. It makes it feel like a longer walk than if you just moved from one panel to the next, and it also helps build a little drama simply because of the time passing - what is CB going to find when he gets to the crowd? Of course, we already know, in part because you'll be able to see the next panel right there. But the impression of time will still be effective.

 

Interestingly, this is still true even if you don't read the text and just skip it. At least, that's my feeling. Even if you were to skip the block of text entirely, which I am sure some readers will do, your mind will still register that there is a big block of text there. The reader will basically know that time should have passed and that impression will stay with them into the next panel.

 

This is one reason why I think some modern readers are missing the point of word balloons and text boxes. They serve more of a function that simply what the words say. They are a narrative element that slows the reader down - even if the reader skips the words entirely! - lending a dimension of time to scenes that otherwise may lack it.

 

My favorite example of this is the classic sequence of Spidey lifting the wreckage off of himself in ASM #33. I've seen this discussed online in recent years by modern readers who claim that Stan Lee's copious dialogue boxes are unnecessary because the images are so great they tell the whole story.

 

But this misses the point. Even if the words themselves are completely unnecessary - and even if you don't read them at all and just look at the art - the simple fact that there are big caption boxes and dialogue balloons in each panel subconsciously tells you as a reader that each of those panels takes a certain amount of time. Without the text, this sequence of Spidey struggling to lift the rubble loses a good deal of its power, because there's no scale, no drama - he could be lifting this stuff in a matter of eight seconds or something. With the text, it takes a minute, a minute and a half - or, if you skip reading the words, it might take you eight seconds to read the page, but you know you just skipped 90 seconds of reading. That's all time that Spidey is struggling, he's drowning, he's straining. Time is everything and it's the weight added by the existence of the text that gives it this dimension:

 

 

 

 

 

So that's why I broke the page up the way I did.

 

I think even the credit sequence with CB's name in the middle of the page will add this time element as well. In the big panel 4, CB arrives at the scene where they are loading the victim into the ambulance. The text between this panel and panel 5 adds weight to the scene - it makes it seem like CB and the other gawkers are lingering. It sticks that scene in your head until you finish reading the text.

 

I'm not sure about the fonts for the story title at the bottom; mixing the different fonts I'm not sure works, and I'm not sure about the actual choice of fonts themselves. But the placement I think I like. This text/time effect may effect what I actually put in the panels, though. I had been considering changing scenes int he last panel to lead readers to the next page, but I think that will interrupt the flow. It's probably best in this case to keep this page in this scene, let the time pass of people reading the story title, and then move to the new scene on the next page.

 

Finally, I am going to replace the typed "Charles Biro" signature in the opening text box with his actual signature, as he usually signed these things wither with a "BIRO" - his artist's signature - or with a full -script "Charles Biro" autograph. I'm just going to trace one of those from a back issue.

[Hibou]

Awesome first page and I like your discussion of the text block creating a sense of time!

 

Also... I like the smaller circle as well on the cover. Nice adjustment!

[Crimebuster]

Awesome first page and I like your discussion of the text block creating a sense of time!

 

Also... I like the smaller circle as well on the cover. Nice adjustment!

 

Thanks very much, I really appreciate all the feedback I can get, especially if it's positive!

 

Working on this is fun, but it can also be tiring, so knowing other people are actually interested in it helps keep the fire lit under me.

[Crimebuster]

Okay, here's the linework for page 2.

 

The page isn't actually finished. As I mentioned before, I'm going to do the linework for the whole thing and then come back and add in the textures, shading and inking. I may or may not end up completely finishing two or three more pages at some point relatively soon so I can print an ashcan and get an idea of what is working and not in the shading before I do the rest of the comic. Some of the panels here have partial shading, but only panel 1 is fully completed, and some of them have basically no shading done yet at all.

 

One thing I did discover is that one of the shading looks a little wonky in some of these images I am posting is because the program I am using is automatically changing them to 72 dpi. But since they will be printed at 300 dpi, those greytones should look much smoother in the actual comic.

 

 

 

There are a few things on this page I am still debating. In panel 4, the big panel, part of me wants to move some of the word balloons to the right side of the panel. The plus side of doing that is that it would help spotlight Crimebuster int he center of the frame a little more. The down sides are a) if all the people in the crowd are covered by word balloons, it looks weird, plus you no longer have a crowd to be doing the talking; and b) since people read from left to right, the word balloons work fine on the left side but putting some on the right means they would actually have to skip over Crimebuster to read them, defeating the purpose. Because of those factors, I will probably leave the word balloons more or less as is.

 

One funny thing, you'll see that some of the shading has been done in this panel. As you can probably guess, that's because I was using a photo reference and wanted to get the shading right before I removed the photo from the panel. But when I removed the photo, I was like, oh mess - the photo wasn't as wide as the panel! So the shading just stops. I drew the rest of the car on the right freehand and will match up the shading later, but that was kind of funny.

 

In panel 5, I'm not sure any dialogue is needed here. I didn't originally have any. But it was bugging me that her face wasn't covered, as the cops always pull a sheet up over the victim's face or whatever. For the story purposes, we have to see her face, but it was still bugging me so I added this dialogue just to address that. I'm not sure it's worth it, though. On the fence.

 

Panel 6, I'm fairly pleased with. CB looks a little more like Superman than himself, but I'm happy I figured out the eyeball thing. I was looking at other drawings trying to get this determined, furrowed brow look down when I realized the simple and obvious secret, which is that you draw only part of the iris, with the rest of it cut off by the lowered eyebrow. It's obvious, but it took me awhile to figure it out anyway.

 

And the big question is what to do in Panel 7. I'm pretty darn happy with the way this sketch turned out, but I'm not sure if it should come here or at the beginning of page 3. Having it here hopefully leads the reader to turn the page; that's the idea, anyway. But changing scenes here doesn't quite feel right, especially since there's still more text to read at the bottom of the page after the final panel. Those elements feel like they might be working against each other. On the third hand, though, I don't really have anything left to say on this page. If I took out that panel, I would be replacing it with something that doesn't necessarily add anything important. It would probably be more on CB becoming invested in this murder he's stumbled on - something like him clenching his fist or whatever. It wouldn't really add much, but it might be addition by subtraction to move the panel. Another thing I am on the fence about.

 

Let me know what you think.

[Crimebuster]

Finished the line work on page 3 tonight and started page 4. This section is very tough for me, as pages 3-5 are all conversations, which means a lot of facial expressions and closeups, which is what I am worst at. I'm laying out the word balloons first so I have a sense of how much space is available for the art. A couple panels on page 4 are going to be tricky to figure out as there is a lot of dialogue.

 

I'm relying heavily on Wally Wood's 22 Panels to get me through this section. Tough sledding, but hopefully I will learn and get better. It's all about the eyes and mouths.