Things I've learned about creating a comic book recently.
1) Character design is hard. Particularly if you're not doing a super hero. I made a list of things to consider when designing a character and his/her outfit.
Sex
Physical Size (Height/weight/musculature)
Skin Tone
Hair color. Hair Style. Facial Hair.
Make up
Face. What shape of eyes? What color? What shape of nose? What shape of lips? How is the jaw shaped?
Head shape
Corset/Vest
Shirt
Jacket
Pants/Skirt
Stockings
Accessories/Weapons
Shoes/Boots
Gloves
Belt
Jewelry
Cloak/Cape
We make assumptions about people based on how they look. In a way my entire comic is about the assumptions and roles we put people into because of they're physical appearance, so it's really important that I'm making conscious design decisions about my characters. The very first question I have to ask myself is: "Do I want this person's appearance to support or contradict his or her role or personality." Generally, if it's a character that's just making a short appearance (say, the bartender in a saloon) then I probably want to give you a lot of information in his design, because there's not going to be time to round him out. So a bartender may look bored or friendly (depending on what kind of bartender I'm going for) and be in what we'd consider a normal bartender outfit. I want the reader to see him and think, "Ah, there's the local friendly bartender" without having to puzzle it out.
Characters that will appear more often though, they're trickier. The problem with tropes is that they're useful, AND that there's almost always an anti-trope. So for every story where a woman
loves shoes, there's a story where a woman is expected to love shoes, but doesn't. So how do I make my characters interesting and un-tropy... or should I even try? After all, there's not necessarily anything wrong with tropes!
(If you're not familiar with tropes, then check out
this website. Warning: You may not be able to leave.)
2) Non-human Character design is harder. Not surprisingly, if you're not making a human, there are a LOT of options for body size, type, color, etc... at least I know most of my creatures are bipedal. Two arms and two legs does narrow things down a little.
3) I can't script without dialogue. I thought I'd be able to draw out the action with just a very general idea of what the characters were saying, but it turns out I was wrong. For one, dialogue is way too useful as a transition mechanic.
4) I script better as actual script than by doing roughs. This surprises me. I was one of those kids in high school that refused to outline my papers, or my stories... I've always considered myself a natural writer that just whips things out which are naturally awesome. Like this blog, it's awesome right? Right?!!?! But it turns out, at least when it comes to comic books, I'm frighteningly structured.
I started out with a summary of the story. Less than half a page long. A little synopsis of all the major points I wanted to hit, along with some notes about some notes I may or may not want to include. I tried, I really really tried, to go straight to page layouts from there, but it just wasn't working.
So now I'm scripting out each page. Here's a sample of a short, but action filled page (that I also hope will be artistically interesting):
Page 8:
Panel 1: Long panel going down length of page and across the top and along the bottom. Shows the saloon at the top, a narrow spiral staircase, and the caves down below. CASSANDRA, ZOT, and the three CARDSHARKS are on the stairs.
Panel 2: Inset in Panel 1. One of the CARDSHARKS has gotten too close to Cassandra, she’s spinning around, grabbing his gun hand and twisting.
Panel 3: Also inset. CARDSHARK 2 and 3 shooting at CASSANDRA, but she’s using CARDSHARK’s body as a shield, bullets ripping into him. ZOT is making himself small behind CASSANDRA.
No where near as complex as some comic scripts I've seen, but since I'm the artist and the writer I don't need as many details (I think). Hopefully at least some of it is in my head.
