Hi ho, Squiddies…

I thought I would post a few pictures of the ol’ drawering board and the madness that goes on there. My process is a bit different now than how I worked on the comic strip. I still use a lot of scratch paper and a mechanical pencil to flesh out ideas. But now there’s much more to consider… This is how the new process is working…

workspace

I like to throw ideas on a piece of paper… usually a dialogue emerges first. Then I break up the dialogue into panels via numbers… this then requires some editing of the speechings. Then I sketch a few images of the scenario… how I envision facial expressions and body language… then I move onto the layout. I have some templates that I’ve created in a program called Comic Life… these templates help me visualize action in a sequential manner.

dialogue

What I like about the new format is the room for dialogue… more space to say stuff… and also the room to really sketch a scene, a place, or area. To be able to think about setting is a nice change. It does take much longer to create a page (as opposed to a 5 panel strip)… but I like it and feel that each successive page gets better in composition.

I will say that the lot I’ve created isn’t going to run in succession… meaning I didn’t do number one to start. I started a bit further on. But I had trouble starting at number one. I guess that was a weird writer thing.

Anyhoo. The process continues.

randie-couch-marker