Panel Separation

Of all the things you need to learn in comics, separating out your panels--choosing what is in them and where they sit--is the most fundamental and also one of the most difficult. There's a lot of information out there but I've found that this always helps me clarify it in my head:

A panel is like a sentence.

Sentences can be formal, informal; correct, incorrect; effective, flimsy; charged, average; a question, a statement, a command. The main thing sentences have in common? They are separated ideas. (Note the incorrect sentence that is a question, for effect.)

Panels are like sentences. They should express one main idea clearly. They can be complex, simple, full, or empty. They can be anything you want them to be! However, they should still help convey one idea.

It was more common in older comics to attempt to express a LOT in one panel:

While this does all fit in this panel, it might have been cooler to leave it more to the imagination, so you could see the impact on the poor sap who was to wear the specially-treated monocle.

That "mistake" is much more rare today. We tend to put too little in one panel.

This one is okay. It's right on the edge of being an appropriately dramatic, short "sentence." The context defines it as a sudden impact, so you're allowed to break it up. (The problem is that all the panels are this same "length," with no variation.)

This one isn't a special moment in the comic. It's just this way because all the panels are, again, this short "length." If they were sentences, every one would be about four words long. Wouldn't that get annoying?

There are three panels here and almost nothing happens. If it, as a whole, had been more broken up and varied, the last panel--breaking Joker's dialogue into two "sentences"--could have had a lot of impact. However, reading this whole comic is exactly like reading this:

"The fury of this audience is terrible. This audience. This last court of appeal. This audience in its fury is terrible. ...

"The audience is pulling up the benches. A tomato shatters itself on the Prince's right eye. An over-ripe tomato.

...Three eggs and a cat sail through the air. Falling short, they drop on to the orchestra. These eggs! This cat! They fall on the conductor and the second trombone. They fall like the gentle dew from Heaven upon the place beneath. That cat! Those eggs!

From THE SWOOP! Or How Clarence Saved England, by P.G. Wodehouse. The above passage is intentionally bad, and is taken from a LENGTHY set of paragraphs in the same style. If you want to read it, it is free and legal here. However, be warned: many early-20th-century racial and/or national stereotypes are present, though ostensibly played for laughs. If you want to only read the complete passage, it's at the end of chapter 7.

This is one of the things that Japanese comics do well: breaking up their "sentence length."

Here's one from Beet:

Notice how they let the first panel be long so that when she thought of Beet (who is kind of her OTP and also the main character), it could have a bigger impact. If it were like a set of sentences, it might go something like this:

As she prepared to face her fate, Poala thought of those who mattered most to her: her father and mother, both of whom she would never see again--

And Beet...

At this thought, she remembered all the boyish promises he had made; the careless way he'd said it: "Once I'm a top Buster, I'll marry you!"

Variation. It's important. Much more pleasant to read than the gobbledygook in the previous passage.

tl;dr

Comics are like sentences. Using that benchmark, I've found it a lot easier to figure out what to put in my panels and how to organize them better, even pushing me to try and express more in one panel.

Hope that helps!

Bouncing Ball

Never stop learning from simple exercises!

Did It

Check out page 15 here!

Commitment

So, after long swathes of nothing, I have decided to try and make Precious Metal a weekly commitment again.

I'm mostly posting this so that the knowledge that other people are out there and have read this promise will keep me from being utterly lazy and abandoning my goal before I begin.

Wish me luck!

EDIT:

P.S., I will have a new website up soon to hold all my comic. It should be fabulous.

Grumpy Post - Black Cauldron

SUDDENLY GRUMP

I tried to stop her, but she took over the bloaaaaaaaaaaaaa--

*Grump shoves More Reasonable Me out of the way*

SHUT UP
IT IS TIME.


TO THOSE OF YOU WHO STILL THINK THIS

IS AN OK MOVIE, PLEASE IMAGINE HARRY POTTER WITH THE FOLLOWING:

THAT IS ALL.

Multiple Focus

This is one of comics’ main superpowers. They can do this like no other medium on the planet.

In a movie or a storyboard, you can really only focus on one thing at a time. The camera itself can use the “cut,” and the focal point can even change over time, but good storyboard artists know that having only one focal point—a single “object of interest”—at any given time is important. There’s a whole blog post about it on Temple of the Seven Golden Camels.

Comics aren’t like that.

In fact, in every single panel that contains dialogue, there is already more than one focal point!

What’s more important here? Her expression or the text?

TRICK QUESTION, the answer is NEITHER. A reader may look at one or the other first. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you process both and get the meaning out of it. I have said it before, but the most similar thing I can think of is a diagram: a combination of symbols, words, pictures, etc. that combine to give you a meaning as a whole and convey a lot of information at once.

In fact, according to Wikimedia: "A diagram is a plan, drawing, sketch or outline that shows how something works, or show the relationships or interconnections between the parts of a whole."

As the vast variety of diagrams illustrates, there are many ways to use multiple-focus within the artwork itself, independent of the dialog.

Here’s a good example from Beet: The Vandel Buster.

Just a little background: This is a scene I really enjoyed where the main character (Beet) arrives at the scene of a fight just in time to rescue his love interest from a bunch of tough monsters. Because he’s a dumb-as-bricks shonen hero, he’s actually quite strong, but has only bothered to visit the level-up shop enough to be marked “level 10.” It’s a quite stereotypical scene, with the bad guy having to gasp in shock every time Beet overcomes a challenge, but the little details—such as the Boss Monster’s slightly OCD, stick-to-the-plan personality—really made a difference. Their telling of the scene became extremely effective, in part because they were able to use this idea of multi-focus to convey a lot of information at a time.

Example 1:

See how the artist gave you two entirely separate pieces of information here? One describes this character’s current situation—casual, remembering an event, and even taking the time to button his collar. This is important to the scene because his nonchalant attitude is at complete defiance with the difficult circumstances he is facing. The other piece of the picture actually shows the event he’s describing, adding information and visual interest. It reinforces and in part explains the piece of dialog and helps us understand one more important detail. In this story, the monster-fighters’ ranks are reflected by markings on their chests. Whereas this monster had thought the boy was a level 11 fighter, in reality he is only marked up to 10. One of the markings is a scratch made by another monster. Of course, this makes his situation—having busted into a heavily-guarded fortress—all the more impossible. It’s a detail you don’t need to understand to know what’s going on, but it adds just that much more flair.

Example 2:

This panel is even more jam-packed. We get multiple lines from the Big Bad plus his emotions (and I do love how his speech bubble on the left helps highlight his persnickety nature); the confusion and even fear from his lackeys; and the questioning attitude of Beet in the background.

Example 3:

This is an amazing example using multiple-focus:

IF YOU ONLY LOOK AT ONE IMAGE, MAKE IT THIS ONE!

You get the important information at a glance. He has absolutely demolished all four of the monsters who were restraining his girlfriend, without a second thought. His relationship to her is expressed by their poses. She is off-balance and falling and he is her support, with a wide, stable stance, even while dispatching monsters. The hand he’s put on her shoulder to catch her isn’t possessive, but protective—more the gesture of a friend than a significant other (which leaves them some room to develop romantically). Her face is surprised, but more in awe than in shock. You can even see the difference in their levels, if you look closely—the artist included the markings.

This pose could not be achieved in animation. There is no swing Beet could be making with that spear that would cause that to happen, and certainly no way he could be in that close—her fall is so gentle he must have been standing there right as she lost her balance. If you tried to describe the process of actions that led to this using a storyboard or a continuous set of images, it would be silly. But in a comic, this is the bread and butter. This is an extremely solid panel. It conveys both the raw info—she’s safe now, and Beet has killed the monsters—and the emotional impact. Note the absence of any background image. It’s so you look at the characters’ expressions and at the important parts of the drawing without any distractions.

This panel has justified its existence.

Batman

Let’s look at some more.

Example 1: STRONG

This is Batman’s first appearance. He’s just put out the lights and is trying to intimidate the thugs in the room into talking.

This is a good use of a single-focus panel: a high-impact, emotionally charged moment. Right now, he’s the most important guy in the room and all eyes are on him. We don’t need a bunch more information—no huge movements or important plot details are occurring. It’s all theatrics right now, and this is the perfect panel to do that.

Example 2: Strong

Again, these panels are more about the acting and the feelings than the physical details. Having the backgrounds and pictures quiet down lets you read Commissioner Gordon’s line and appreciate the humor in it. Batman’s wordless glance is also…well, hilarious. A solid piece of paneling.

Example 3: Weak

This panel has only one focus: Batman’s landing. The thugs have pulled guns, but they’re still stuck in positions of surprise. The guy who’s saying “There’s four of us! Let’s take him!” would be really effective in conveying more information, but he’s so obscured by the limitations of the panel that you can barely see him, let alone his forward-leaning, aggressive pose. This panel could have expressed much more from the thug side of things by using variations in posing to express different pieces of information. One thug could be scared, one could be in the process of pulling his gun, another could already be charging Batman as he says, “Let’s take him!” 

This is the most interesting thug out of the bunch! Why don't we get to see him?

This would pull the action farther ahead and add vigor to the scene. Instead, this panel drags the action toward slow motion. This becomes even more apparent on the next page, where each punch and kick of the fight has its own large, single-focus panel. 

Example 4: Weak

The left-hand and right-hand panels are not instant “reads”. The second is fine. HOWEVER, these panels, even if made clearer, aren’t a great choice to portray this fight. The stakes here aren’t emotional. We know that Batman can beat up any number of dime-a-dozen thugs like these before he’s even had morning coffee. However, these three panels are turned all the way up to eleven. It’s easy to imagine the dramatic chipmunk music is playing in every single one of these images. This means we don’t get any dial-back or decrescendo before this moment:

This is a panel that might deserve to be turned all the way up to eleven, especially since this is the thug Batman ends up questioning. However, instead of hitting hard it just feels the same as every other panel so far. (If everything is special, nothing is.) By the way, it just keeps going on at this “volume” for the rest of the comic.

Example 5: The focus is a lie.

Can you find the important item in this scene?

...Did you get it?

It’s this:

That’s the bomb that he’s planting.

Could you even see that?

This panel has a focus, it just didn’t use it to help the reader. 

Rather than giving you important information, the artist actually misled you, focusing on Scarecrow’s face and the lightning rather than the bomb.  

ACTUALLY IMPORTANT

Faulty communication will never attract anyone to comics or keep anyone reading them.

tl;dr

LESSON:

                There can be more than one focus or action in a single panel. Use this multiple-focus technique except when there’s a legitimate reason for only one focus.

Good reasons for solo-focus:  

• High emotion
• Big impact

Good reasons for multi-focus:

• Information
• Communication
• Condensing
• Staying on “tempo”—not dragging

Story Secret 1

Never doubt your original idea.

What I mean by the "original idea" is the very first inspiration--the idea that sparked your interest and got you telling this particular story. What I mean by "doubt" is change or delete or otherwise mess with that idea.

In the movie Kiki's Delivery Service, Kiki has a crisis. About two-thirds of the way through the film, she loses her magical abilities, including her ability to fly a broomstick. Depressed and worried, she continues her life working at a bakery but sees no way to recover. Finally, an artist--a friend of hers named Ursula--comes along and they have an amazing conversation:

"You fly with what's inside of you, right?"
"We fly with our spirit."
"Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about; trusting your spirit! It's what makes me paint and makes your friend bake... We each have to find our own inspiration."

The original idea--be it a picture, a situation, a character--is that for a story. It is the inspiration: the reason for doing it.

Don't lose that!

Revision

Revision is a wonderful thing. Its job is to make what you have even better. It helps your ideas become understandable to an audience and grip them. It can make your work sing.
Naturally, change is a part of that process. There are lots of times in development where events, places, scenes, and even entire characters will need to change (or get the axe).

But the point of revision is not to mess with your inspiration! You're not trying to make yourself tell a different story, you're trying to tell the story that you already have in a better way!

Let me put it this way: have you ever played a video game where part of the objective required MASSIVE backtracking? To me, that always feels like a huge waste of time; a desperate attempt by the authors to add a few extra minutes (or hours, ugh) to the game.
If you change your original idea, you're doing a backtracking quest, only instead of having to go back to the beginning of this level or this game, you have to go back to an entirely different game and beat that first.

Doubting Thomas

I know this only because I have trod this path one too many times.
Once I worked on a story for more than a year before realizing I had sapped it entirely of life by deleting the thing that got me telling it in the first place. The basic idea came from a trip I took to New York City in my senior year of high school. I was completely captured by the mix of old and new, the largeness and smallness, the strange and the ordinary. It was a key part of my idea, which took place in NYC in the fifties.

So naturally, (like an idiot) one of the first things I changed about my initial idea was the setting. Then the ages of the characters. ...Then the main plot...

Yes. Much and many backtracking hours occurred. It was a really stupid waste of time. I remember working so hard and trying so many things, and finally I got to a point where an actual event in my story was the villains stopping for gas. Literally, part of the plot was that the villains were on their way to take over the world and they had to stop and put gasoline in their car.

My dad, who is my confidant and mentor in most things but especially in stories pointed out the ridiculousness of this idea.

I was so frustrated I started to cry. (I cry pretty easily. It's embarrassing.) I told my dad, "Do you know how long I've been working on this!? More than a year since my original idea!"

He said to me, "What was your original idea?"

I said, "It was a murder mystery set in New York City in the 1950s that involved psychic powers."

We both sat there, stunned.

Finally he said, "Well, why didn't you tell that? That sounds awesome!"

Whatever problems I may have, I'm going to try never to doubt my inspirations again.

Inspiration

Don't doubt yours, either! If the inspiration was enough to make you want to tell the story, how could it not intrigue an audience member? All they have to do is sit and look! And even if it isn't for everybody, don't give up. Again, if you found it interesting, there's an infinitely high chance that someone else in the world will, too.

Now go make something!