Hi, Folks:
In accord with the week, when so many people are looking back on 2009 and making plans for 2010, I decided to make a short list of what I’ve learned about cartooning this year. The learning never really stops, but these are the highlights:
1) The web, with its short and wide screen ratio, affects comic composition. Simply put, tall panels, especially those that extend below the “fold” don’t work well. If the reader has to scroll down, and then scroll back up to read the episode, it’s confusing and diminishes the reading experience. For the web, wide panels stacked atop each other work the best, producing what in print comic is called the “widescreen” format.
2) When possible, every episode should end with a cliffhanger. If you can’t swing a real cliffhanger, then end the episode on a question. You can’t always do this, but it’s a goal.
3) Drawing armatures or stick figures is not a crutch. For years I thought the old stick figure drawing technique as seen in “How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way” was for beginners, that it was better to practice a sort of life-drawing from your mind’s eye. Now I know that it saves time and makes composition easier.
4) Contours are way more important than interior details. Indeed, if you are drawing small, or simply want to tell a story, contours are enough. Having said that, I love detail, so I still do a considerable amount of interior rendering.
5) Colors should compliment inks, not compete with them. For a long time I painstakingly painted every panel in Photoshop; indeed, if you turned the line art off, the colors were almost finished paintings in their own rights. Now, however, I think a simple gradient that doesn’t compete with the line art is better and perhaps more elegant. Really, I think a digital painting underneath a fully rendered line drawing is overkill, muddies up the picture, etc.
6) Nowadays, when I ink, I make a point of closing off all my lines. This makes it much easier to flat the page in Photoshop.
7) When it comes time to print your comic, all the full bleeds and black or colored borders are a pain in the butt. It’s much easier to format your comics if you don’t do those things. It made “Johnny Saturn: Synns of the Father” a real challenge. That’s why I pulled back on those tricks.
I want to learn at least this much again in 2010!
Scott.
