Comic Book Layouts

The comic book layout is the order and composition of individual panels which hold the art, dialogue, narration and effects. When read in sequence the panels tell the story of the comic.

This aspect of comic book production is as important as script and art as without an engaging and more importantly an understandable flow to the pages, reading the pages can become confusing and break the concentration of the reader.

Traditionally Comic panels were laid out in a grid pattern, the reader 2x2, 3x2, 3x3 etc. The reader would read each row, left to right before moving to the next row. An example of this can be seen below in the fight between Captain American and Batroc the Brawler.

As comics grew, their layouts began to variations on this. Differing panel sizes to emphasize important moments within scenes, differing the number of panels on the page to allow for larger, more impactful images or letterbox style panels which can help to give a more cinematic feel to a scene. Below is an example of this from “Batman: Hush.” Jim Lee has used a combination of letterbox and more square traditional panels to differentiate between the faster pace part of the scene from the panels with important dialogue and events.

When producing the art for “Batman: Arkham Asylum” Dave McKean took traditional convention another way. By using letterbox style panels and laying them out on their end gave the graphic novel a looming, oppressive feel which fit with the mood and atmosphere of the story.

Alex Ross developed a style that uses both traditional and more radical techniques to create his work on Batman: Black & White as well as “Batman: War on Crime”. Ross is known for his layouts that defy many conventions when laying out pages, often forgoing margins or even separation lines between panels. Choosing to instead blend the panels artwork together, creating pages that are seamless works of art which often resembled large splash pages. With the addition of narration and dialogue to his art Ross’ work becomes a unique and visually appealing experience.

When it comes to the placement of speech bubbles in comic art consideration first is given to the size as well as the amount of dialogue in each bubble or box. Large speech bubbles and large amounts of dialogue are usually nessessary to propel the story forward in character driven stories. When laying out a comic the artist must be careful to give enough space for dialogue while not allowing it to dominate the panels. Often larger bubbles are broken up over a couple of panels. This also allows the flow of the conversations between characters to be broken up, giving the characters a chance to “breath” and for the conversations to flow more naturally. Often to aid the reader and make the flow of the dialogue easier to follow by the reader visual cues can be put into a series of panels. In the below example the reader is directed by the eye line of the characters. Even though dialogue is placed throughout the page, thanks to this visual cue it is easier to interpret the intended order of the speech bubbles.

Character Design Challenge 3

This weeks challenge is a request from one of my peers. He has asked a number of people to produce their interpretation of the Hungarian Horntail Dragon from the Harry Potter books.
This is the description he has provided: "Supposedly the most dangerous of all the dragon breeds, the Hungarian Horntail has black scales and is lizard-like in appearance. It has yellow eyes, bronze horns and similarly coloured spikes that protrude from its long tail. The Horntail has one of the longesr fire-breathing ranges (up to fifty feet). Its eggs are cement-coloured and particularly hard-shelled; the young club their way out using their tails, whose spikes are well developed at birth. The Hungarian Horntail feeds on goats, sheep and, whenever possible, humans."

Character Design Challenge 2 - Development

This design challenge was to produce a design for a Sci Fi MMA fighter that would fight in the galactic version of the UFC. 

The idea was to create a character that would pose a different challenge to an MMA fighter while still being familiar enough anatomically to take on humans.
I was trying to play around with a style half way between the realistic style and the more cartoony, characature style i used to favor. The reason for this is for speed of production when reproducing the character(s) for sequential pages.
The other part of this challenge is to take one of these forward and produce a short 1 or 2 page strip depicting a fight scene featuring one of the characters, giving me an exercise to explore layouts.

Comic Book Production

A comic book is a story that is told through a series of sequential images featuring dialogue and sounds which propel the story forward. The stories can be humorous or dramatic and can consist of any story genre.

Comics are printed in issues on a regular basis. Each issue may contain a series of, a part of a longer story which will be told over a series of issues or a whole story.  Graphic novels are an extension of this, forgoing single issues and telling a whole story in one book.

The process of creating a comic book begins with a story. Once details of the plot, characters, locations etc have been produced it is all compiled into a series bible similar to TV, film or animated series.

From this visuals can be designed, story arches can be plotted and refined into scripts.

Using the script and designs thumbnails rough drafts of page layouts can be drafted. This phase is where the panel art, sequencing, dialogue and overall layout of the page are worked out.

Once this is finalized art begins. Traditionally comic art was drawn in pencil, the line art is inked and then coloured also using ink. Now a great deal of comics are coloured digitally, however penciling and line art inking practices vary from artist to artist.

Lettering typically is done digitally as it gives a far more consistent finish to the page but there are some who prefer to produce lettering by hand or using stencils.

In the production of modern comics, digital practices like photo manipulation, 3D modelling and Matte Painting are becoming more widely used as part of artists’ pipelines. More varied art styles are being achieved through digital drawing and painting, offering far wider artistic expression than at any time in the history of the industry.

Character Design Challenge 2 - Moodboard

The second character design challenge is to design a sci fi MMA fighter.

For this challenge I will be aiming to design an alien who competes in the galactic equivalent of the UFC.
The next topic I will be looking into is page layouts so I will use this as the basis for a short 1 or 2 page strip where I will look at formal and informal comic page layouts.

Character Design Challenge 2

The second challenge is #74: Design an Sci fi MMA fighter.

Progress Presentation 1

We had the first set of progress presentations for the Honours Project. The idea was to show our peers and lecturers what we have planned for our projects and how we have started going about achieving our goals.

I spoke about my initial ideas for the project, how it had been a number of separate ideas that were all part of a whole so they were all put into one.

Until yesterday I was thinking about this project the wrong way. I was planning an art project that I wanted to do and trying to find a way to justify it for the academic side. Comparing the way comics and graphic novels are produced pre digital art vs post digital art was starting to emerge as a way to take research. 

The focus of the project should be taking a series bible through to a completed set of sequential pages and covers, the technology is just a set of tools that I can use along the way. 

Another thing that was suggested was a slight modification to the character design challenge. When designing the characters I will start considering the situations the characters might get into. When it comes to the painting every 4th week, rather than being just a character design standing there I will start to try painting them within short one page strips every second week. 

Overall the feedback was really helpful with moving the not only moving the project forward but also finally defining the goals of the project.

This week I will finish my general research and get cracking on to the practical arty goodness.

Character Design Challenge 1 - Final Painting

As this was the first of the design challenges I felt that I should do the first challenge to the end and do a final painting of the character.

The biggest challenge I found with this painting was making the character's suit look black..... without painting it black. This was weirdly the first time I have had that issue with work. Adding the hues of orange and purple from the background helped to tie the painting together while giving more depth to the image. This also worked to tie in the white markings on the character's suit.

Another challenge was getting the metal elements of the character's gear to look reflective. About half way through the painting I realised I was being far too reserved, jacked up the opacity on my brush and went for it, raising the light tones, making them contrast more sharply to the darks. 

When it came to the shield I incorporated the "Spawn" logo. The image seemed unbalanced with the glow from the spear and the large dark area on the right so the decidion was made to give the shield the glowing eyes also. I feel this helped to better balance the image. 

Overall the image was too dark, the diffuse lighting from the spear was punched up across the characters chest, head and the edge of the shield which helped to brighten it up. 

Ultimately while the image has a few issues I am fairly pleased with the outcome of the first challenge. The character's design speaks very much spawn and spartan, I feel that the original character is done justice and if used as a basis for a comic book character would not be difficult to reproduce for sequential images.
I have learned a lot from this piece as far as technique as well as about the way I work. I am too reserved and overly cautious when painting. Maybe coming from a more traditional background where if you really muck up, you really muck up. When painting in the future I must get out of this mind set and try to be more confident when working.

Comic Book History

“a comic book is a series of words and pictures that are presented in a sequential manner to form a narrative that may or may not be humorous” (McCloud 1993).

What is considered as the first “real” comic strip was Richard Felton Outcault’s The Yellow Kid which was published in 1895 in Joseph Pulitzer’s The New York World. The strip was most notable for it was the first strip to use balloons as a space to put character dialogue. Publishers started to realize that comic strips made their papers appeal to a wider audience and strips became more widespread and gave birth to other early strips and characters that are still well known to this day such as Popeye. The first comic books were collections of reprints of these early strips.
As the comic industry expanded during the 1930’s, it developed a cultural and economic identity very different from newspaper syndicates of the time.
Though this is regarded as the birth of the modern comics, the format of the modern comic can be compared with narrative imagery of cave paintings. The format has also been compared to medieval broadsheets that were strips carved into sections of wood which were then used for printing. The authors would regularly produce stylized narrative images of public executions and caricatures which were then circulated. Other comparisons have been drawn to historic artifacts such as the Bayeux Tapestry which features a graphic narrative of the events leading to the Battle of Hastings in 1066.
Many of the thematic elements of comics can be followed back to ancient legends and mythology, for example, Achilles’ weakness was his heel can be compared to the weaknesses that afflict the modern superhero such as Superman’s weakness Kryptonite. In fact DC comics Justice League’s main members have been compared to the pantheon of gods from Greek Mythology, The Watch Tower serving as their Mount Olympus. Even the way that Superheroes are depicted with their Adonis like physiques can be compared to the way the ancient Greeks depicted their gods in their sculpture (though some artists took it a bit too far, giving Adonis a heavy course of steroids and Human Growth Hormone). The epic trials and adventures the characters in comics hark back to the ancient myths and legends such as the 12 Labours of Superman mirroring the Labours of Hercules.
When comics began they were initially considered a form of entertainment for children and mostly had their place on the fringes of pop culture, however they evolved into a sophisticated art form that was used to not only convey narrative but also ideologies and a social commentary of their times. During World War II Captain America was conceived by Marvel comics as a way to promote patriotism and boost morale. At the time DC Comics were more focused on more governmental and social welfare issues.
After WWII the industry declined, losing a percentage of its audience to Television and questions about the Social impact of comics were raised after the emergence and popularity of Horror comics. In the USA a Senate investigation was launched. One of the industry’s biggest blows came when Dr Fredric Wertham’s The Seduction of the Innocent accused some comic books of corrupting the young, inciting them to violence.
The industry responded by setting up the Comics Code Authority as a way of self-policing the industry and win back readers.
Over the years further examples of this kind of commentary can be seen. As the Vietnam War raged, the public opinion was not that of patriotism and pride but more one questioning the government’s intentions. With all this change, the superhero was reinvented and as a result more conflicted, flawed and complicated heroes were introduced. They battled against virtuous villains and took part in story lines that made the reader think more about both sides. The “Secret Empire” story line saw Steve Rogers abandon his alter ego Captain America as a reaction to Marvel’s fictionalized depiction of the Watergate Scandal.
As other forms of entertainment became more prevelant in the 70’s and 80’s reader numbers declined the focus for the major comic book companies became licensing their characters for film, TV shows and cartoons. Film such as Superman starring Christopher Reeves, TV shows such as The Incredible Hulk and Cartoons such as Fantastic 4 all gave the companies the resources to keep producing comics and keep their place in the industry.
Through the 80’s the industry went through a further transition towards bringing their characters into the real world, giving them personal issues to deal with, crisis of faith, and even bring into question their mortality. Characters such as Frank Millar’s Daredevil began to question his own motives as a superhero and at points his own sanity.
Darker story lines were introduced such as Batman: Knightfall which told the story of the defeat of Batman at the hands of Bane and Superman: Doomsday which followed the events leading up and the events after Superman dies in Lois Lane’s arms in front of the Daily Planet building.
During this time the industry saw one of its biggest booms. By making their characters not only more in depth but mortal gave rise to more intense story lines and rekindled the public’s interest in the medium and the stories it had to tell.
Through the 90’s to today the comic book industry has gone from strength to strength. More publishing houses can be found than ever before, comic book art (though it had a wobble in the mid 90’s) has evolved exponentially and now embraces not only digital colouring techniques but also 3D imaging as part of its production. The characters who were envisioned so long ago are now fully realized as part of multimillion dollar motion pictures, computer games, animated series and movies.
The industry has endured for decades, telling fans stories of their favorite characters facing off against the most diabolical villains. Hopefully if the industry continues to evolve with the times, keeps bringing in fresh writers, artists and dynamic new ideas it will endure well into the future.

Series Bible

As part of my third year project I produced a series bible for a story called "Hunters." The story centered around a team of intergalactic bounty hunters struggling to find their place in a galaxy set against them. Along with this I produced a potential design for a couple of the characters but that project was not about taking a story through to completed sequential pages.
This semester I plan to research and practice everything I need to take this series bible forward and produce the final artwork and covers for a comic book.